Analysis of political and cultural communication online

Last Updated (Monday, 03 November 2008 12:31)

Jakob Linaa Jensen
When people interact in online, discussions there have several purposes: political participation, exchanges of knowledge, socialization and development, and manifestation of personal identity. Often it is difficult to distinguish the political elements in online interactions from those related to culture, lifestyle, and consumer habits.

In this part of the project, I investigate how various aspects of citizenship converge and interact through online processes, and how people themselves no longer make clear distinctions. As such, this project is inspired by Couldry, Livingstone & Markham (2007).

Empirically, the project addresses several online debates, selected based on a most-different-cases design (Yin 2002), and possibly also relevant interaction patterns on online social network sites, such as Facebook or MySpace. Quantitative content analyses (Holsti 1969, Krippendorf 2003) are applied, in order to shed light on the processes by which ideas of politics, culture, and citizenship are constantly (re)negotiated. I investigate how different media appear as sources, and how traditionally distinct spheres (politics, culture, consumption, religion, etc.) are mixed up  in the conversations. Furthermore, I apply critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995) to identify self-perceptions and political awareness of citizenship, etc. among the participants.