Wainer Lusoli

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Updated: 07 December 2010

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expertise + research

expertise | research

• eID, social computing, cloud computing
  
  
• Representation in the Internet Age
  
  
• The Internet, political organisations and participation
  
  
• The Internet and democratic elections
  
  
• The electronic democracy rhetoric
  
  

EC JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies eID, social computing, cloud computing

At JRC IPTS, I work on various dossiers managed at JRC IPTS for the Commission and other policy colleagues and clients:

• EU27 survey regarding personal identity data transactions, privacy and protection [results December 2010];
• identity and social computing [report issued];
• law, economics and architecture of identity in Europe [report November 2010, various papers published];
• eID SAE – Socio-economic assessment of authentication and interoperability cross-border [results March 2011];
• governance and architecture of cloud computing [open dossier].
  
  

ESRC E-Society Programme Representation in the Internet Age

This project examines the impact and use of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by legislative assemblies and Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK and Australia. Specifically, it does assess:

1. how far the technology is used to reform Parliamentary operation as a whole, and how this affects its key functions of representation and executive scrutiny; and
   
   
2. the extent to which new ICTs are opening up channels of communication between MPs/AMs and their constituents and so widening public participation.

The project contributes to broader debates about the changing role of elected representatives and representative institutions in liberal democracies and build son ESRC funded work into political organisations and online participation in the UK.

The Project's principal researcher is Dr. Stephen Ward, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Dr. Rachel Gibson, Deputy Director atACSR, Australian National University is also involved in the project.

More in depth, research evaluates comparatively the use of the Internet by parliaments and representatives in the UK and Australia, between June 2003 and June 2005.

The project explores:

• How far members of UK and Australian parliaments are using new media to connect with their constituents and the public in general and whether such usage can widen participation in the political process.
  
  
• How far members of Parliament [MPs] and Assembly Members [AMs] collectively use the new technologies within parliaments and assemblies to improve scrutiny of the executive.
  
  
• The factors that shape patterns of individual and parliamentary Internet usage - such as institutional history, political rules, skills and motivations and and access to the technology.
  
  
• The public perceptions and uses of ICTs to contact and monitor their representatives, and the wider implications for representation and democracy.

The Project's principal researcher is Dr. Stephen Ward, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Dr. Rachel Gibson, Deputy Director at ACSR, Australian National University is also involved in the project.

• A public opinion survey, both in Australia and in the UK;
• Focus groups with Australian and British citizens;
• Interviews with MPs and officials at seven assemblies;
• Content analysis of MPs websites, at different time-points.

Explore methodologies and data in the tools section.

I co-authored a few, which are reported in full in the publications section.

Publications

Ward, S., & Lusoli, W. (2005). 'From Weird to Wired': MPs, the Internet and Representative Politics in the UK. Journal of Legislative Studies, 11(1), (pp. forthcoming).

Papers

Gibson, R. K., Ward, S., & Lusoli, W. (2005). Old Politics, New Media: Parliament, the Public and the Internet. Paper presented at the Political Studies Association Conference, University of Leeds, 5-7 April 2005.

Gibson, R., Lusoli, W. & S. Ward (2004) Phile or Phobe? Australian and British MPs and the New Communications Technology. Paper presented at the 100th Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, 31 August – 4 September 2004.

Ward, S. & Lusoli, W. (2004). "From Weird to Wired": MPs, the Internet and representative politics in the UK. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association, 5-8 April 2004, University of Lincoln.

ESRC Democracy and Participation Programme The Internet, political organisations and participation

The project assessed the use of the Internet by political organisations - parties, interest groups, trade unions and new social movements - to promote participation in two dimensions.

• Increasing vs. decreasing participation: examining whether the Internet will increase rates of political participation and attract new citizens into the political process, or lead to greater marginalisation and exclusion of existing non participants;
  
  
• Enhancing vs. reducing the quality of participation: analysing whether electronic participation increases political interest and efficacy, enhances elite accountability, or, due to the impersonal nature of online communication, it reduces the significance of participation.
  

It assessed the use of the Internet by political organisations - parties, interest groups, trade unions and new social movements - to promote participation in two dimensions.

• Increasing vs. decreasing participation: examining whether the Internet will increase rates of political participation and attract new citizens into the political process, or lead to greater marginalisation and exclusion of existing non participants;

• Enhancing vs. reducing the quality of participation: analysing whether electronic participation increases political interest and efficacy, enhances elite accountability, or, due to the impersonal nature of online communication, it reduces the significance of participation.

Overall the research contributed to debates about social inclusion and exclusion in political participation and the role and health of political organisations in the UK.

The project used four main methods: regular analyses of web-sites to assess the extent and nature of online participation; e-mail surveys of organisational elites and mail surveys of members/supporters to gauge the attitude and importance of Internet participation strategies, problems and benefits; semi-structured interviews with organisational elites to understand Internet participation strategies, problems and benefits; public opinion survey, to evaluate citizen awareness and usage of the Internet and to gather a profile of users. The methodological tools used are reported in the data section.

I co-authored a few publications, which are reported in the publications section of the site.

Publications

Lusoli, W. & Ward, S. (2005). Hunting Protestors: Mobilisation, Participation, and Protest Online in the Countryside Alliance, in S. Oates, D. Owen  &  R. K. Gibson (Eds.), Civil Society, Democracy and the Internet: A Comparative Perspective, (pp. forthcoming), London: Routledge.

Lusoli, W. & Ward, S. (2004). Digital Rank-and-File: Party Activists' Perceptions and Use of the Internet. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6(4), 473-450 [in press, pre-print PDF available]

Gibson, R. K., Lusoli, W., Römmele, A., & Ward, S. J. (2004). Representative democracy and the Internet. In R. K. Gibson & A. Römmele & S.J. Ward (Eds.), Electronic Democracy: Mobilisation, Organisation and Participation via new ICTs (pp. 1-16). London: Routledge.

Ward, S. J., Gibson, R. K., & Lusoli, W. (2003). Online Participation and Mobilisation in the UK: Hype, Hope and Reality. Parliamentary Affairs, 56 (4).

Ward, S. J., Lusoli, W., & Gibson, R. K. (2003). Virtually Participating: A Survey of Online Party Members. Information Polity, 7(4), 199-215.

Ward, S. J., & Lusoli, W. (2003). Dinosaurs in cyberspace? British Trade Unions and the Internet. European Journal of Communication, 18(2), 147-179.

Gibson, R. K., Ward, S. J., & Lusoli, W. (2003). The Internet and Political Campaigning: the new medium comes of age? Representation, 39(3), 166-180.

Lusoli, W., Ward, S. J., & Gibson, R. K. (2002). Political organisations and online mobilisation: different media - same outcomes? New Review of Information Networking, 8, 89-108.

Lusoli, W. (2002). Click Here to Join GPMU? Direct, July-August, p. 13.

Lusoli, W., & Ward, S. (2003). Digital Rank-and-File: Party Activists' Perceptions and Use of the Internet. Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the the American Political Science Association, 28-31 August 2003, Philadelphia, PA.

Lusoli, W., & Ward, S. J. (2003). Hunting Protestors: Mobilisation, Participation, and Protest Online in the Countryside Alliance. Paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions, Edinburgh, 28 March - 2 April.

Lusoli, W., Gibson, R. K., & Ward, S. J. (2002). Digital engagements: online participation in the UK and US. Paper presented at the EURICOM Colloquium, 9-12 October 2002, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Gibson, R. K., Lusoli, W., & Ward, S. J. (2002). Online Campaigning in the UK: The Public Respond? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the APSA, August 31 - 2 September 2002, Boston.

Gibson, R. K., Lusoli, W., & Ward, S. J. (2002). The Public Response. A survey of citizens' political activity via the Internet. Salford: ESRC Report.

The Internet and democratic elections

I was involved in two main research initiatives.

First, the Internet and Elections Project (I&E), which spanned a pool of more than 20 research teams across Europe, Asia and America. I&E is an international, longitudinal research project focusing on how the Internet is introduced and incorporated into democratic electoral campaigns. The objectives are:

• To assess the impact of legal, regulatory, political and cultural factors that may mediate deployment of online structure in different political arenas.
  
• To identify opportunities for political action provided by a cross-national sample of Web sites related to electoral activity.
  
• To collect, archive and analyze these Web sites, both to support project research and to provide a basis for further analysis and investigation by the scholarly community.
  
• To provide policy-specific advice regarding effective and mature deployment of Web sites for a wide range of political actors, from governments and political parties to electoral candidates and issue-oriented citizen groups.

Second, I was involved with Steve Ward (OII, now Salford) and Rachel K. Gibson (ANU, now Manchester) in a project looking at the impact of the Internet on the 2005 UK general election. The study comprises:

• A public opinion survey of British citizens (NOP) as concerns their use of the Internet for electoral information / action.
• Overall survey and content analysis of candidates' and political parties' websites.
• Focus groups of British citizens as concerns the importance of ICTs as a campaign medium.
• Interviews with stake-holders in selected constituencies.

Internet & Elections is an international, longitudinal research project focusing on how the Internet is introduced and incorporated into democratic electoral campaigns. The central research question of the project is: In what ways and to what extent are online structures for political action produced within different political systems during electoral campaigns?

A pool of more than 20 research teams spans Europe, Asia and America. The research team is co-ordinated by Kirsten Foot (University of Washington), Randy Kluver (Nanyang Technological University), Steve Schneider (SUNY Institute of Technology) and Nick Jankowski (University of Nijmegen).

The objectives were:

• To assess the impact of legal, regulatory, political and cultural factors that may mediate deployment of online structure in different political arenas.
  
  
• To identify opportunities for political action provided by a cross-national sample of Web sites related to electoral activity.
  
  
• To collect, archive and analyze these Web sites, both to support project research and to provide a basis for further analysis and investigation by the scholarly community.
  
  
• To provide policy-specific advice regarding effective and mature deployment of Web sites for a wide range of political actors, from governments and political parties to electoral candidates and issue-oriented citizen groups.

The project involves collaboration in data collection, methodological focus and analysis techniques among the nationally-based research teams.  Data collection is focused on identification and archiving of Web sites from various nations.

In this framework, Janelle Ward and I drafted a report on the use of the web in the 2004 EP election, in Britain (see outputs, below).

Lusoli, W., & Jankowski, N. W. (Eds.). (2005). The World Wide Web and the 2004 European Parliament Election. Special issue: Information Polity, 10 (3/4).

Lusoli, W. (2005). The Internet and the European Parliament Elections: Theoretical Perspectives, Empirical Investigations and Proposals for Research. Information Polity, 10(3/4), pp. 153-163.

Lusoli, W. (2005). A second-order medium? The Internet as a source of electoral information in 25 European countries. Information Polity, 10(3/4), pp. 247-265.

Lusoli, W. & J. Ward (2005). 'Politics makes strange bedfellows': the Internet in the 2004 European Parliament election.Harvard International Journal of Press / Politics, 10(4), pp. 71-97.

Seminar: MMU Politics Research Seminar 9 March 2005, Manchester – Seminar presentation on the 'The ghost in the (electoral) machine: the ubiquity of the Internet and the next general election'
download powerpoint presentation

Lusoli, W. (2004)'Politics makes strange bedfellows': the Internet in the 2004 European Parliament election Paper presented at the AoIR 5.0 Conference: Ubiquity, University of Sussex, England, 19-22 September 2004.

Lusoli, W. & Ward, J. (2004).Country report for the Internet and Election project, 2004 European Parliament election - UK component. 31 August 2004, I&E Project, Salford and Amsterdam.

The electronic democracy rhetoric Issue of production and consumption

Out of a concern I developed in my PhD research, I look at the dynamics of production, co-production and re-production of the electronic democracy discourse in the UK. Specifically, I consider the electronic democracy discourse as rhetorical in nature, building on political, structural and semantic dynamics unfolding in the cultural domain, promoted by left-wing political entrepreneurs in strange alliance with ‘dark’ forces of high-tech capitalism, and among an extraordinary degree of public acquiescence. In this project, I analyse a wide range of documentary sources and literature, and look at EuroBarometer data for public acceptance of ICTs.

From the projects expounded above, new media appears to offer unprecedented opportunities of political engagement to a wide range of political actors - political parties, candidates, pressure and interest groups, protest networks, political elites and sub-elites. On the other hand, however, lay citizens seem more reluctant to take on the onlineengagement opportunities, where provided. The discourse of electronic democracy, as it were, stands on its head.

The are two interesting aspects to this consideration. At least to me.

The first concerns the top-down construction of the electronic democracy discourse. I am interested in the production dynamics of electronic democracy, on the one hand: how the discourse has been shaped especially in the UK. Both in my PhD and in a later paper I argued that the electronic democracy discourse is rhetorical in nature, and builds on political, structural and semantic dynamics unfolding in the cultural domain, promoted by left-wing political entrepreneurs in strange alliance with ‘dark’ forces of high-tech capitalism, mainly amongst academic quiescence.

I proposed three explanations for the coalescence of the discourse. First, a ‘policy window’ theorem, whereby the discourse results from the encounter of demand and offer of radical change in the political marketplaces of idea – the city council, the western polity, the supra-national sphere. Second, an ‘iron triangle’ theorem takes into account the role of third interested parties – the computer and IT industry – in the making of the discourse. Finally, a ‘semantic’ corollary explains the resilience of the discourse to critical understanding.

Two papers mapping these dynamics were presented at a number of conferences and are in print, see below for details.

The second aspect however, has to do with the re-telling of the story, the co-productive making of the myth. If political producers of the discourse sell tech-for-vote, and industrialist sell tech-for-money, the public is happy to buy into the discourse. Hands down.  In other words, the audience is not innocent as it seems. Information technologies are good. Or so people think. Overwhelmingly.

Steering clear of the conceptual mine-field, and gold-field of audience activity (and I point the interested reader here to the continued work of Sonia Livingstone), I am interested in public sense-making of electronic democracy; why information and communication technologies are so highly appreciated; why people think, as they do, that ICTs are a force for social good. On the background of limited political use.

I looked at EB data, and thought about in-depth interviews. A paper based on EB data was almost ready, which got stolen with my laptop, beginning of September (2004). I was told once that Harold Lasswell entered political science from mass communications as he lost a truck of notes when moving home. He could not face starting over again in the same field. Thankfully. On a much smaller scale, I hope the paper will benefit from me having had to re-think it from my notes.

Papers and presentations

Lusoli, W. (2006). Of windows, triangles and words: the political economy of the e-democracy discourse. 'Comunicazione Politica', theme issue on e-democracy.

Lusoli, W. (2005).Democrazia (elettronica) e definizioni. Paper presented at the Strumenti della Democrazia workshop, University of Bologna, 25 November 2005. [in Italian]

Seminar: LSE MC500, 3 March 2005, London – Seminar presentation on the 'Electronic Democracy Myth'
download powerpoint presentation
download paper