International audience in the network political space: an online mass or a global political actor?

In: Political Science (RU), Heft 4

Abstract

The aim is to explore political actorness of international internetaudience, describing networks as a political phenomenon, assessing relations within the international internet-community, defining internet-audience identity, and compiling global effects of international audience' s online activities. The research based on interpreting Latour's actor-network theory, the Habermas' theory of communicative action, and the theory of the political reality construction reveals that the international audience concept is simultaneously narrower than a mass audience and broader than a language community. Our findings indicate that the international internet-audience is a specific segment of politically engaged citizens supporting, generating, and disseminating political ideas in the network space, primarily in social networks, beyond national, linguistic, and ethnic borders. This content is represented in government officials' rhetoric, media coverage, public discourse of political actors and, thus, can reach a wider audience. Consequences of online activities can be found in both network forms of political participation (liking, sharing or commenting a political post; writing political content online; signing online petitions; contacting politicians and media online; donating), and in the local and global offline activities (picketing; participating in protest marches; membership in political organizations; volunteering; partaking in "colourcoded" revolutions). Parallel to conscious attempts of constructing international audience identity for solving foreign policy challenges citizens' self-identity is formed in the global political space. Together with horizontally integrated architecture of the internet-audience and relations based on partnership and trust between its members local, multicultural, international, cosmopolitan or transnational identity is developed.