Alerts and affairs in the “brigádnik” dossier. The trajectory of public problems in (and beyond) online discussion spaces

• Authors: Simon Smith
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article describes the covert seeding by political parties of forums and blogs hosted by one of the leading Slovak daily newspapers, and the techniques developed by journalists, administrators, bloggers and discussants to defend these ‘public spheres’ against perceived colonisation by professional political communicators acting under false identities. We follow a trajectory of accusatory forms and registers-a collective inquiry which gathered and evaluated evidence to support public accusations. The episode demonstrates the vulnerability of the sociotechnical systems used by the media to host e-participation as well as their capacities for self-regulation. It shows how citizens, journalists and party political communicators are engaged in complex boundary struggles for the appropriation and regulation of these new spaces of sociability in order to qualify the forms of knowledge that emerge there, agree conventions for the expression of disquiet and negotiate practically enforcable definitions distinguishing political marketing from free public debate.

Keywords

EN

e-participation; alert; affair; online discussion; journalism

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 423-436

Dates

published

2014-10-01

online

2014-10-02

Contributors

author

Simon Smith

• Slovak Academy of Sciences

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s13374-014-0238-5