The Impact of the Internet on Political Activism - Research Proposal Example

THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON POLITICAL ACTIVISM The impact of the internet on political activism Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 27, 03, 2011 Table of Content Introduction 1 Literature Review 1 Research questions and hypotheses 4 Research methods 5 Ethical issues 10 Research samples 10 Methods and analysis of data 11 Timetable 11 References 13 Introduction This is a study of the effects of the internet on political activism. Literature on the issue has been explored comprehensively through literature review. The history of political activism has been studied with reference to the internet. The development of political activism has been documented from its origins on the internet. This has been done through the use of questionnaires administered to political activists, and their ardent followers. The data gathered will be analysed by means of coding (Birch and Miller 2002). Literature Review The internet provides an international forum for communication between billions of people through computer networks. It enlists the standard internet protocol suite, electronic and wireless technologies which enable it to provide connection to billions of people all over the world. The internet’s usage by individuals is not controlled by anybody. The internet provided a new front for lobbying for all causes including political activism. This can be described as deliberate effort to lobby for political causes over the internet. Activism, when carried out over the internet, is also referred to as online organising, electronic advocacy, cyber activism, E- campaigning, and E-activism (Seale 2004a). Through the internet, various kinds of political agenda have been found to be propagated. These, on the internet are usually spread by means of emails, the World Wide Web, and podcasts. The activities that are associated with activism over the internet include: soliciting for money or funds, fortification of groups of people with similar ideas, attempts to influence policies made by authorities in a region, and organization of followers in case action is needed. However, some actions pertaining to political activism are not very friendly, nor humane. These include: virtual Trojan horses, email bombs, denial of service attacks, and hacktivism among others. In general, online political activism can be classified into three groups. These are: awareness or advocacy, organization or mobilization, and action and reaction kind of activism (Hamel 1993). With the advent of the internet and the various technologies that were associated with it, heightened peoples’ faith in the medium as a medium of communication. Methods and aims of political activity also changed by virtue of the existence of this medium of spreading information, and from then onwards, it was the avenue for most of the messages whose nature was political activity. This equipped people with confidence that they had the power to make their own political plans through this medium; and traditional political activity methods were abandoned. The internet enabled anybody with access to it to spread their messages, including people with no political clout whatsoever. At the end of the nineties, there were numerous social groups that had come to existence out of internet technologies (Gillham 2000). Political activism over the internet has enabled spread of information; concerning issues such as poor governance, corruption, and human rights abuses among others to be spread especially in cases where the regions involved are under dictatorial rule. This can be done by posting emails by the activists to people on their mailing lists, who are in turn asked to forward those emails along to the people on their mailing lists (May 2001). Political activism over the internet can be said to have started in 1998. Dr. Daniel Mengara, a Gabonese in political exile in the United States of America, started a website in French, whose title was ‘Bongo Doit Partir’ which can be translated to ‘Bongo must go’. This was aimed at challenging, and possibly ousting the regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. In recent years, mass protests for political purposes; and even organisation of wars against regimes; has been carried out over the internet (Bryman 2008). The outcome of using social sites for the purposes of organising people unknown to each other has been impressive. Large numbers of people have been influenced and sometimes gone into action to lobby for political changes after encounters with the messages spread by cyber activists. This has brought political changes in various countries, most notably in Egypt and in Tunisia. Sometimes however, the result of cyber activism on politics has been closure of the websites in the regions concerned. Of particular importance in today’s political activism over the internet is the social networking site, Facebook. The internet has also been used in politics especially during elections (Seale 2004b). However, activism over the internet is not without its own problems. There are those who argue that the internet only represents the people who access it. In some countries, this can be a minority of the population. Thus for internet activism to be representative of the larger population, the global digital divide has to be overcome. Another concern about using the internet to spread political agenda is that by use of this medium for discussion of political nature, the result will be a fragmentation of people based on their opinions concerning a particular subject, and development of extremist ideas rather than bring people together (Gardner 2001). Political activism, in spite of its successes, has not exploited its optimum potential as far as political activism is concerned. The activists’ relationship to the internet can be considered an ambivalent relationship. This can be confirmed by the feeling that the internet did not reach this group of people’s expectations, coupled with their realisation of the opportunities it provided. This can be traced to the ideological nature of the internet; it attempts to influence day to day activities, habits, and dynamics, which are not identical to those desired by the activists. As far as the social media is concerned, it is not known what difficulties political activists encounter in the course of their activities through the social media groups (Mays and Pope 1995). Research questions and hypotheses The aim of this paper; however, is to study the impact of the internet on political activity. This research is qualitative in nature. This is because it seeks to establish and grade the opinions of the respondents. These may change over years and that will not render the research irrelevant as opposed to scientific theories which seek to test theories and establish eternal theories (Silverman 2001). Research methods There are various methods that can be considered for use with this kind of research. Ethnography is one example of such methods. This involves one researcher who goes into the community or individuals of interest and integrates with them for the purpose of being inconspicuous as he studies them. The researcher may sometimes be forced to participate in the day to day activities of his subjects. This usually takes long periods of time-sometimes up to one year and preparation in readiness of ethnographic research may involve study of a new language so as to fit in with the natives, study of the people’s culture beforehand, and the investigator must be thoroughly competent with the subject for which he is investigating. The methods that are used to collect and record data in this case are interviews of the subjects, observation and documents. The categorisation of information collected is influenced by the way that has been used to gather the information. These classes of information collected are: citations, descriptions, and extracts from documents. When put together they are called a narrative description. Excerpts of documents may include mathematical data such as graphs and tables, among others (Spicer 2004). The measure of the researcher’s steadfastness varies. They range from those who are simply on lookers to those that participate fully in the lives of the people they are studying. Sometimes it is not possible for the researcher to integrate fully with the people he is studying. In this method, people’s behaviour is examined while they carry on with their day to day activities as opposed to creation of experimental conditions for them. The data recorded is obtained from various means but the most preferred data is that which comes about when it is not being actively sought, for example, from informal conversations. The disadvantages of this method are that it may take a long time and may be tedious. It is also known that people will behave differently once they are aware that they are being observed and this may put the accuracy of the results in doubt. There is also the risk of the researcher being sufficiently compromised, due to creation of bonds with the subjects and this may influence they way he looks at the people he/she is studying. On the other hand, this is the best method there is that can be used to aptly capture the behaviour of human beings while in their natural surroundings (Gerring 2004). Another method of carrying out qualitative research project is the use of interviews. This involves the issuance of questions to people for answers. The nature of the questions is varied as is the nature of issuance by the investigator for answers. The collector of the information, normally referred to as the interviewer, is responsible for one on one issuance of the questions to the respondents, and recording them. This makes the method tedious, time, energy, and money consuming. There are two kinds of interviews: informal conversational interviews, standardised open ended interviews, closed fixed response interviews and general interview guide approach. The informal conversational interview is devoid of questions set for the purpose of the interview and, as the name suggests, it carries on as though it is a conversation between the interviewer and the respondent (Barrett and Coleman 2005). The general interview guide also is devoid of specific questions. However, the interviewer steers the interview in the direction of specific topics.-and thus there is more focus with this method. In the standard, open ended interview, a set of open ended questions, set before the interview proceeds, are administered to all the respondents. The respondents have the freedom to be as expressive as they can when answering the questions. There is no limitation on that. This brings about some consistency in the areas covered. Closed, fixed response interviews also involve structured questions, but in this case, the answers expected are also listed down, and the respondent is supposed to choose one which is as close as possible to his/her response. It results in a lot of consistency in the data collected and helps when doing comparison or classification of the information. When carrying out interviews, the researcher has to be highly trained because this affects the quality of both the interview and the result. Disadvantages of interviewing while collecting data is that the interviewer, if inconsistent, can affect the quality of data he collects. It is a very tedious process as well, taking a lot of time and emotional involvement, the respondents may not be honest and it is not suitable for large groups of people. The advantages of using interviews as a method of collecting data include: it is helpful in case a respondent is illiterate unlike in the case of questionnaires, they are useful for investigating complex topics, the interviewer has the chance to clarify questions in case they were not well understood, and to ask for further clarification on answers given (Gardner 2001). A third method of carrying out qualitative research is use of focus groups. This is a method whose participants are a group of people including a moderator whose work is to ask open ended questions. This triggers a discussion among the group and the results are recorded, normally by video. The people that make up the group should be representative of the population and therefore, should be picked carefully. Focus group discussions may be carried out to pave the way for the same investigation on a larger scale. They take less time than the methods previously discussed and the results obtained from them are considered more accurate. Questions answered by the focus groups may help the researcher in the formulation of hypotheses in future. This kind of research method may be used in conjunction with a method like ethnography. It helps explain the origin of people’s attitudes, beliefs, superstitions, and habits among others. Focus groups are good for situations whereby people are expected to be honest, where the issue in discussion affects a large number of people in the same way, and when people’s opinions, and impressions need to be assessed. The disadvantages of the focus groups are that a few individuals may be dominant in the discussions, deny the others a chance to air their views and thus the results will be biased; they may not be productive whereby the topic of discussion is a sensitive issue and the participants may not reveal their true feelings; the results of focus groups cannot be extrapolated to the general population due to their sizes, this is unless several focus groups bring about the same results; and the environment in which these focus groups are carried out is very artificial, and this can have an effect in the participants answers. The advantages of focus groups are that the discussion can avoid domination by a few individuals through the moderator and thus help achieve higher precision in the results given; while in the course of discussion, the participants conversation can open up new areas to explore in the subject that had not been thought of by the researcher; the moderator, due to the environment, can change the subtopics for discussion which were prepared earlier if he/she feels the discussion will be more productive that way; other people may observe the proceedings of the discussion; body language can be monitored and recorded as part of the research; and it is easy for the participants to feel comfortable and engage freely in the discussion (Seale, Gobo, Gubrium & Silverman, 2004). Questionnaires are also another method used for the purposes of collecting qualitative data. This is a series of organised queries which may be open ended or close ended. It is considered an instrument for collection of data. Questionnaires can be administered in a variety of ways such as through the internet, by the researcher, in the presence or in the absence of the researcher, and in various other ways. The advantages of using questionnaires in research are: they are a cheap method of collecting information; it is possible to conduct a research among very numbers of respondents by use of this method; it is not difficult nor time consuming to formulate the questions, assess the date, nor interpret it; it makes it easy to compare and contrast the information given from the respondents as they were all asked standard questions; and they can be used to investigate issues considered embarrassing as the identity of the respondents is not always exposed. Disadvantages of use of questionnaires for the purposes of research are: it is difficult to analyse complex topics that were investigated in the research; postal questionnaires usually result in responses for only about 10% of the questionnaires sent out; it is not possible to ask for clarification on the responses given, nor give clarification for questions asked; the questions asked in the questionnaires may be interpreted differently by the researcher, and the respondent; and when the response rate is very low, it is not advisable to consider the responses a it is known that people with very strong opinions are the ones that make up most of the responses in such a case (Keen and Packwood 1995). Ethical issues Ethical issues that should be considered in all these methods include: the principle of voluntary participation; participants should not be forced, coerced, or bribed so as to take part in research; the principle of informed consent states that permission for one to be included in a study should be sought from the individual or from a guardian in case of disability or age restriction, while seeking this permission, all aspects of the research should be explained to the potential participant including the fact that he/she can withdraw from the research at any point if they so wish; participants should not be exposed to any harm and any harm inherent in the study should be mitigated as much as possible; the details of the participants and their responses should be kept a secret, this is the principle of confidentiality; and if there are any benefits to be gained from the study, they should be equitably distributed (Flyvbjerg 2004). Research samples In this study, the respondents will invariably include political activists, and users of the internet’s social sites. The method of choice for the investigation is the questionnaire; this will be used to assess the perception of political activity over a period of the last 10 years, track the changes in the delivery of political messages across the internet, and the effect of those messages on the behaviour of those who were reached by these messages. These questionnaires will be issued through the internet to willing respondents (Gillham 2000). Methods and analysis of data Design of the questionnaire and formulation of the questions will be followed by a pilot study to test the instrument. This will be done in order to establish its validity, acceptability and its reliability. The coding technique of assessment will be used in this case. The responses in the questionnaire, before its issue to the respondents, will have been categorized in the codes. These will then be used in conjunction with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. First the distribution and range of the responses, given by the codes, will be assessed. This will be followed by another coding session of the data into classes based on age of respondents, to enable comparison and contrasting of information given. Bi variate analyses will then be employed. This will be in order to identify relationships between variables if any. The regression analysis technique will then be used to study the impact of one variable and another (Seale 2004b). The requirements for carrying out this research are: good internet connectivity, steady supply of electricity, Statistical Package for Social Sciences programme, a computer in good condition, and a student’s stipend (Gardner 2001). Timetable Formulation of Questionnaires ID of Code Pilot study Field administration of questionnaires Analysis of results Presentation of results References Barrett, G and Coleman, M 2005, Ethical and political issues in the conduct of research. In A. Bowling and S. Ebrahim (Eds.) Handbook of Health Research Methods: investigation, measurement and analysis, Open University Press, Maidenhead. Birch, M and Miller, T 2002, Encouraging participation: ethics and responsibilities. In M. Mauthner, M. Birch, Jessop, J. and T. Miller (Eds.) Ethics in Qualitative Research, Sage, London. Bryman, A 2008, Social Research Methods, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gardner, J 2001, Alternative and activist media, Applecross, Australia. Gerring, J 2004, ‘What is a case study and what is it good for?’, American Political Science Review, vol. 98, no. 2. pp. 341-354. Gillham, B 2000, Case Study Research Methods, Continuum, London. Seale, C, Gobo, G, Gubrium, J & Silverman, D (eds.) 2004, Qualitative Research Practice, Sage, London. Hamel, J 1993, Case Study Methods, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Flyvbjerg, B 2004, Five misunderstandings about case-study research. In C. Seale, G. Harding, S 2004, Is there a feminist method?. In C. Seale (Ed.) Social Research Methods: a reader, Routledge, London. Keen, J and Packwood, T 1995, ‘Qualitative Research: case study evaluation’, British Medical Journal, vol. 311, no.7002, pp. 444-446. May, T 2001, Social Research: issues, methods and process, 3rd edn, Open University Press, Maidenhead. Mays, N and Pope, C 1995, ‘Qualitative research: rigour and qualitative research’, British Medical Journal, vol. 311, no.6997, pp.109-112. Seale, C 2004a, Social Research Methods: a reader, Rout ledge, London. Seale, C 2004b, Validity, reliability and the quality of research. In C. Seale (Ed.) 2004, Researching Society and Culture, 2nd edn, Sage, London. Silverman, D 2001, Interpreting Qualitative Data: methods for analysing talk, text and interaction, 2nd edn, Sage, London. Spicer, N 2004, Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, In C. Seale (Ed.) 2004, Researching Society and Culture, 2nd edn, Sage, London. . Read More