Maren Lübcke

Weblog Campaigning in the German Bundestag Election 2005

Election campaigns are catalysts for new forms of political communication. They are a field of experimentation for new techniques and technologies to reach target groups and influence voters. This article explores how weblogs were used in the 2005 Bundestag election campaign in Germany, examining their effect on the mediatized political field. It is based on an empirical analysis of 317 campaign weblogs. Building on mediatization theory and research on campaign weblogs in other countries, weblog usage is examined along the dimensions of activity, interactivity, and connectedness. The results of the study indicate that weblog communication largely follows the dominant logic of mass media. But weblogs also offer forms of communication that allow political actors to bypass established media practices. Although the results are limited by the fact that the political blogosphere in Germany is still under construction, they reveal the potential of weblogs to enrich campaigns.

How to Grow? Online Consultation about Growth in the City of Hamburg: Methods, Techniques, Success Factors

This paper is concerned with the online public engagement ‘Leitbild Metropolis Hamburg – Growing City’ which has been conducted in the context of the EU project DEMOS (Delphi Mediation Online System). The result of DEMOS is an innovative Internet platform facilitating democratic discussions and participative public opinion formation. The test of the DEMOS approach and the software system during the online discussion in the City of Hamburg was one of the most successful projects in electronic democracy or participation ever conducted on a municipal level. The paper introduces the DEMOS approach and system, describes the political background of the discussed ‘Leitbild Growing City’ and the results. The authors try to identify success factors for online public engagement projects.

Scalability and the social dynamics of communication. on comparing social network analysis and communication-oriented modelling as models of communication networks

Internet communication is a major challenge for anyone claiming to design scalable multiagent systems. Millions of messages are passed every day, referring to one another and thus shaping a gigantic network of communication. In this paper, we compare and discuss two different approaches to modelling and analysing such large-scale networks of communication: Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Communication-Oriented Modelling (COM). We demonstrate that, with regard to scalability, COM offers striking advantages over SNA. Based on this comparison, we identify mechanisms that foster scalability in a broader sense, comprising issues of downscaling as well.

Wie verändern neue Medien die Öffentlichkeit? Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel von Weblogs im Bundestagswahlkampf 2005

In der sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskussion uber „Social Software“ — d.h. Weblogs, Wikis und ahnliche Formen der computervermittelten Kommunikation — steht meist die Sozialdimension im Vordergrund, also die interpersonellen Beziehungen, die durch diese neuen Medien beeinflusst werden (vgl. Gochenour 2006, Renz 2006, J. Schmidt 2006). Dagegen verweist die Perspektive der Medien- und Kommunikationssoziologie auch auf die Frage, wie sich unter dem Einfluss dieser neuen Medienformen die eher abstrakten, unpersonlichen Beziehungen verandern, die die Strukturen der Offentlichkeit pragen.

Das BürgerForum – ein überregionales, nachhaltiges Beteiligungsformat

In modernen Demokratien wird die Einbeziehung der Burger bei der Festlegung politischer Prozesse zunehmend als wichtig angesehen, um sich den Herausforderungen unserer Zeit zu stellen. Dies ist umso relevanter in Deutschland, wo die Wahlbeteiligung sinkt und das Vertrauen der Offentlichkeit in die Politik rucklaufig ist, wahrend sich immer mehr Menschen aktiv in der Politik einbringen wollen. Eine ganze Reihe an Versuchen sind in den letzten Jahren unternommen worden, um die neuen Internettechnologien hierfur nutzbar zu machen und neue Beteiligungsformen zu schaffen. Die meisten dieser Versuche gelangen jedoch nicht uber den Experimentstatus hinaus. Nur wenige Ansatze sind bisher nachhaltig, was derzeit eine der grosten Herausforderungen fur E-Partizipationsprojekte darstellt. Nachhaltiges Handeln bedeutet in der Regel, Ressourcen nicht schneller zu verbrauchen als sie sich selbst wieder auffullen.

Communicational Patterns as Basis of Organizational Structures

Researchers in Distributed Artificial Intelligence have employed the notion of “organization” to guide the design of distributed software systems. There is a growing consciousness that MAS designers have to be aware of the social factors underlying the formal organizational design. The study presented in this paper attempts to contribute to this development threefold: on a conceptual level, we offer a notion of organizational structures grounded in the theory of social systems according to Niklas Luhmann. On a methodological level, we employ methods of social network analysis as a tool for the detection and operationalization of such structures. Empirically, we demonstrate what results can be obtained by this approach to the observation of communicational patterns. With this study, we exemplify the fruitfulness and the scope of the novel perspective on organization for the design of MAS.