Métodos de la teología de la liberación

This section containing previous research has shown that communication between citizens and politicians is important for the democratic process, but current societal trends show that this communication is not as good as it should be. In an attempt to rectify this, government has applied ICT in a number of participation projects. The research field of eParticipation is concerned with these democratic ICT projects that in recent years have begun to include social media as well as traditional ICT.

eParticipation is part of the broader research area of eGovernment, and is concerned with the deliberative processes of democracy. The eParticipation field consists of different actors conducting several activities, producing different effects. These effects are determined through evaluation, and there are several contextual factors influencing and being influenced by eParticipation activities.

In order to understand participation, it is important to be aware that democracy can be conceptualised in a number of different ways. Athenian direct democracy is often implicitly applied to eParticipation studies, but most western democracies today are representative, receiving citizen input through deliberative debates.

Social media have increasingly been used by eParticipation actors in recent years. In social media, user generated content is a central element, and through blogs, wikis and social networks users come together and discuss a wide variety of issues. Existing

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research of social media shows that the current status is that they are being used for political purposes, but that often the users do not understand the underlying culture and contextual issues of social media. As social media is as much about culture and

context as it is about technology, a socio-technical lens is appropriate for understanding the technology and its use.

Finally, the section argues that in order to understand the communicative actions in social media the concept of the public sphere can be applied as analytical lens.

Existing eParticipation research does this to a large extent, but seldom goes in depth about their view on the public sphere. There are many different and competing

conceptualisations about the public sphere, related to how to define the public, where the public sphere is located, and what the rules of the public sphere should be.

Together, the topics covered in this section provide a theoretical and contextual backdrop for the research questions. The remaining sections of the thesis will merge this theoretical knowledge with empirical findings.

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3 Research approach

A coherent research approach consists of four basic elements that inform each other:

Epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology and methods (Crotty, 1998).

Epistemology describes our assumptions about knowledge (Bhattacherjee, 2012), and is closely related to ontology, our understanding of the world. While some researchers keep epistemology and ontology separate, the two are closely interconnected and therefore it has become increasingly common to only refer to one’s epistemological position (Crotty, 1998). Theoretical perspective refers to “the philosophical stance informing the methodology, and thus providing a context for the process” (Crotty, 1998).

Epistemology and theoretical perspective can considered as the paradigm, the researchers mental model of the world, informing and influencing the research (Bhattacherjee, 2012). The methodology is the overall design of the research, and methods the individual research methods being applied to collect and analyse data (Crotty, 1998). The research methodology needs to describe the type of study, research methods being applied, the unit of analysis and the techniques applied for data

collection and analysis (Butler, 1998).

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and understand these new forms of

participation in social media, and to evaluate how they contribute to democracy, so that researchers and practitioners can have a better foundation for both describing and critically reflecting on the phenomenon of social media use in eParticipation. The research approach has been to conduct four exploratory case studies following an interpretive paradigm.

The cases cover various levels of government and various civic activities, with an emphasis on understanding the social context as well as the technological capabilities present in social media. Data collection and analysis has followed a multi-method approach, in order to achieve method triangulation. The overall analytical approach has been hermeneutic, as hermeneutic analysis provides a deeper understanding through multiple iterations of analysis.

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Table 1 provides a summary of the research approach of this thesis, and the remainder of this section presents the arguments for why this approach is suitable for the purpose and objectives of the thesis.

Research approach components

Description

Paradigm

Epistemological stance Social constructionism: Knowledge is constructed in interaction between human beings, and transmitted within a given social context. Ontology: There is no objective truth to be observed in social relations, truth is an

intersubjective construction.

Theoretical perspective Interpretivism/hermeneutics: As knowledge is a social construction, there can be no “true” representation of knowledge. Interpretation of knowledge comes from the intersubjective understanding between researcher and participant, the context of the study and the prior knowledge of the researcher.

Methodology and methods

Type of study Exploratory case study with four Norwegian cases: The Labour Party’s social media platform, The 2009 parliamentary election, a municipality in southern Norway and municipal urban planning in a Norwegian municipality.

Research method Hermeneutic approach, where the public sphere and socio-technical theory were applied as grand theories in analysing the cases.

Unit of analysis Varies depending on the cases. Labour case: Social media sites of three local party groups. Parliamentary election case: Individual information workers in the political parties, and the online presences of each political party. Municipal case: eParticipation stakeholder groups. Urban planning case: individual actors representing political parties, government administration, media, activist groups and their online presences.

Data collection techniques Semi-structured interviews, content analysis of social media spaces, social network analysis, observation of public meetings, Delphi method

Data analysis techniques Genre analysis, stakeholder analysis, public sphere and IT artefact frameworks Table 1: Research approach components. Based on Crotty (1998) and Butler (1998)