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Introdução

Introductory note

Paula Espírito Santo

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Notice of the editor: All texts are the sole responsibility of their authors. A brief general revision of language, for better stylistic/linguistic accuracy, by Isabel Soares (ISCSP, ULisboa). By revision is not intended translation.

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1Participative democracy is, more than ever, a constant work-in-progress and an ever challenging dilemma both for citizens and the civil community and also for political elites and democratic governments. One of the core questions to address is on which side to be: on ‘their’ side, the side of the power elites, cooperating with them, or on the ‘other’ side, the side of the people and of civil society, growingly critical and suspicious about the status quo system and its elites. This special issue and the contributions therein is focus on three main interrelated areas of inquiry: political web communication, civil society and citizenship. Briefly, we seek, on the one hand, to get closer to the inner process of political interactivity in the web space, particularly by questioning how citizenship has been performed. On the other, we engage in a broader discussion about civil society and the different forms of citizenship. In other words, in political terms, citizenship should be one of the most urgent concepts to be discussed because interfering in public debate means to choose and interact with the development of participative democracy.

2Thus, this edition includes several contributions that discuss the potentialities of the public debate and how civil society and citizenship are built and constructed through these collaborative processes. Darren Lilleker focuses on the role of hypermedia campaigning in the UK and how interactivity and political communication are fundamental in democracy. In the article entitled “Interactivity and Political Communication: hypermedia campaigning in the UK”, Lilleker examines the adherence to the conventions of online communication and hypermedia campaigning techniques, among European political parties, using UK parties as a case study. This contribution tries to demonstrate that campaigning norms prevail in a permanent, vibrant way although opposition parties tend to be more active, exploring the resources political web technology allows.

3Sónia Sebastião introduces the concept of ‘digitania’ in the article: “Digitania© or the disillusion with a digital citizenship”, and works on the theoretical domain of e-democracy. The aim is to investigate the multiple practices of citizenship. Despite the importance of citizenship traditional practices, such as voting and party membership, the inclusion of a specific concept of citizenship - ‘digitania- opens discussion for its multiple formats, as many as those that the democratic process can reinvent.

4“Web 2.0 and deliberation. The ongoing practice of political debate in weblogs” is the article in which Gil Baptista Ferreira develops a critical analysis on the potential of technological and political uses of the blogosphere. This contribution aims at debating the contours of the public sphere in a discursive space with political density. Gil Baptista Ferreira investigates the normative requirements of the deliberative model and patterns of interaction between authors and readers of blogs. The selected topic is ‘austerity’ and the analysis is centred on the discursive process related to austerity as a discursive formation in blogs politically connected with political parties.

5João Carlos Correia’s contribution is entitled ‘Selfies in a lonely crowd: interaction and meaning in social networks’. The author discusses how cyber culture has emphasized a contingent and flexible experience of selfhood, in a context strongly dominated by online social networks that contribute to strengthen the links between citizens in political and social terms. João Carlos Correia aims at discussing the issue of autonomy of the self with relevance to the meaning of political activism and mobilization.

6Paula do Espírito Santo identifies the several indicators of ‘civil society’ and its linkages to the concept of ‘social class’ in the article “Looking for social class and civil society in political discourse in Portuguese democracy (1976-2006) – a content analysis approach”. Espírito Santo analyses a corpus of Presidential political discourses over a period of 30 years. By doing so, the analysis seeks to identify ‘civil society’ and ‘social class’ concepts in, hypothetically connected, political discourses. The decrease and loss of impact of ‘social class’ in literature is an important basis to discuss the role of political discourse, and how it deals with social class, an increasingly, ideologically inoperative concept to democracy.

7Jūratė Imbrasaitė discusses “Forms of citizenship in Lithuania” in an article thus entitled. The concept of citizenship, a fashionable one politically speaking, is a controversial concept when considering the low participation rates in post-communist countries. This article investigates postmodern citizenship forms of participation in Lithuania. A survey was carried out and its findings show the effects of the post-transitional period after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The results enhance the effects of the post-transitional problems, such as frustrated rising aspirations of well-being, a persisting inequality and, consequently, the emergence of new forms of citizenship stemming from this political context.

8Hopefully this issue will promote a critical discussion about the connection between political communication and participation, on the one hand, while, on the other, it also tries to identify, through quite different case studies, a similar set of concerns regarding forms of performative citizenship in contemporary societies. These contexts bring evidence about the growing change of how people can achieve higher levels of proximity, not necessarily to the power elite, but to the system itself, including a more critical, informed and open civil society.

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Referência eletrónica

Paula Espírito Santo, «Introductory note»Comunicação Pública [Online], vol.10 nº 18 | 2015, posto online no dia 15 outubro 2015, consultado o 29 março 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/cp/976; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/cp.976

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Autor

Paula Espírito Santo

Centro de Administração e Políticas Públicas
Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas
Universidade de Lisboa
Rua Almerindo Lessa
1300-663 Lisboa, Portugal
Tel. (00) (351) 21 361 94 30
paulaes@iscsp.ulisboa.pt

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