Dimitra L. Milioni

Youth, ethnicity, and a ‘reverse digital divide’ A study of Internet use in a divided country

Internet use among young people in multicultural societies is differentiated according to socioeconomic and cultural factors, one of which is their ethnic background. This study is concerned with the unreported case of Cyprus – the last divided country in Europe, with most Greek Cypriots living in the south and most Turkish Cypriots living in the northern part of the island. The study explores two main questions: First, are online experiences of young people in Cyprus shaped by socioeconomic factors, such as gender, education, and income? Second, is ethnicity a defining factor regarding the kinds of activities young people undertake online? Analysis of data obtained by a representative sample survey of about 350 young adult Cypriots aged 18–24 in both communities suggests the existence of a ‘reverse digital divide’, as the more disadvantaged community engages more often in expression, association, and learning online. This finding provides support for the diversification hypothesis that suggests a compensatory or remedial use of the Internet by disadvantaged youths.

“I don’t Wear Blinkers, All Right?” The Multiple Meanings of Civic Identity in the Indignados and the Role of Social Media

The global upsurge in collective action has highlighted the extensive use of social media by social movements. Yet the extent to which citizenship is enacted and potentially transformed by social media use within these movements remains under-explored. This study employs a cross-country comparative analysis of the relationship between social media, movement mobilisation and civic membership within the Indignados movement in Greece and France. Through interviews with Indignados members and content analysis of activist discourses in the movement’s Facebook groups, we critically evaluate the potential of social media in (re)defining the meaning and practice of civic membership. The study reveals that civic membership plays a significant role in activist self-identification because the “citizen” category unites subjects despite differences in their political identities. However, social media’s role in the construction of civic and collective identities is highly ambivalent. While on Facebook different subjectivities are brought together under a shared civic identity, in specific Facebook groups users re-enact their partial (nationalistic) identities, creating digital enclaves that host a distinct “we” within the broader Indignados movement. These findings problematise the notion that Facebook has an intrinsic capacity to facilitate online communities which transcend given boundaries; social media can equally sustain existing boundaries of exclusion.

Representations of the Economic Crisis and Austerity Politics

In the period between the 2009 and 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the international economic recession and related global debt crisis impacted seriously in several European Union (EU) member states. The rights and wrongs of debt fuelled growth and bank bailouts packages shaped political discourse not just in member states seeking sovereign external support but also placed great strain on the European project and raised real questions about the very future of the eurozone. The discussion draws on the content analysis data set generated from the assessment of posters and videos in the 2014 European Parliament election. The subsample in this chapter – focused on countries which experienced significant economic decline due to the post-2008 crisis – includes 321 items – 188 posters and 133 videos – which enables significant comparisons of trends and differences in six member states (Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Italy and Malta). Moving beyond this core group of countries, in the final section of the chapter we examine how themes such as ‘austerity’ were also evident in other member states and discuss how the economic backdrop to 2014 elections was evident in posters and broadcast spots produced by parties and candidates across the EU. It is possible to conclude that the ideological issues and national themes that played in the past an important role (Reif and Schmitt 1980) have been replaced by economic issues. The conomy and the crisis have become the new battlegrounds among parties, even bypassing the traditional distinction between right and left. The 2014 European Parliament campaign allows us to talk of the existence of a European anti-European campaign, which may well be a feature of EU politics beyond the economic crisis itself.

e-Strategy and Legislatures: A Longitudinal Analysis of Southern Europe’s Parliaments

Parliaments are the cornerstone of representative democracy and one of the most significant loci of democratic politics. A growing number of studies have focused on the effects of ICTs on parliamentary function, but there is still a lack of systematic empirical research which measures change overtime. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by studying the extent and nature of change in ICT use by the parliaments of Southern Europe, focusing on whether parliaments have moved significantly forward toward opening up their digital gates to concerned citizens. To this end, comparative website analysis is deployed to track the use of ICTs by the legislatures in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Portugal, as well as the legislature of the European Union, at three different time instances, namely 2004, 2011, and 2013. Change is measured using the ‘E-Legislature Index’ and its four dimensions: Information provision, Bilateral interactivity, Multilateral interactivity, and User-friendliness. The study’s findings show that ICT use by parliaments is characterized by volatility and discontinuity rather than continuous linear growth. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that e-government and e-governance follow different trajectories: whereas ‘Information Provision’ follows a steady but expected progress and ‘Bilateral Interactivity’ shows an upward but unsteady trend, ‘Multilateral Interactivity’ fluctuates between stagnation and retrogression, pointing to a tendency of the parliaments to avoid taking greater risk of opening up their practices to citizens. In light of these findings, ICT use by parliaments is evaluated from the perspective of ICT strategic planning, providing suggestions for future research in the field.