TECHNICAL CAPITAL AND PARTICIPATORY INEQUALITY IN EDELIBERATION

Abstract

This paper examines how participatory inequalities are (re)produced in eDeliberation, a practice that purposely fosters open, fair, and rational discussions among citizens over the Internet. Relying on the theoretical traditions of Bourdieu's capital and actor–network theory, this paper proposes that technical capital, along with social, economic, cultural, and symbolic capital, function in eDeliberation as inequality makers. Two cases of eDeliberation practices conducted in the United States serve as the sources of data. Both statistical analyses of close-ended questions and a qualitative content analysis of open-ended questions from surveys were used to generate the empirical findings. Technical capital is found to reproduce existing inequalities through the unequal accumulation rates and the unbalanced convertibility associated with different actors. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings are suggested.

Keywords:

• eDeliberation
• inequality
• technical capital
• actor–network

Notes

The data came from two grants given to Principle Investigator Vincent Price and Joseph N. Cappella, both professors at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. The Electronic Dialogue 2000 (ED2K) project was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect opinions of the sponsoring agencies and principle investigators.

Bourdieu uses the structural relation to criticize the tendency among sociologists to exclusively focus on visible social connections and interactions, as well as the Saussurean tradition that only concerns symbolic representations.

ANT provides the insight that technologies and their influences are not always socially constructed. Technologies do not determine human actors, nor do human actors determine technologies. Both of them are part of the network and have to exert their influence within the network. This understanding differentiates an actor–network analysis from the popular social network analysis. The social network analysis recently became popular mainly because new ICTs allow actors to be connected quickly and easily. But ironically, ICTs themselves are pushed into the background when scholars focus on individuals or organizations that are connected and treat technologies as channels or tools that connect. Another important network theory comes from the concept of network society (Castells 1996; van Dick 2006). ANT is quite different from both theories because it insists that society is always organized as networks and technologies have never been absent. Castells and van Dick tend to argue that the logic of information networks, which are managed and processed based on technologies, marks a new structure of society. ANT, however, argues that the so-called network society is only a network that emerged out of the existing network (e.g. the industrial society) while some of the actors, such as ICTs, are able to align other actors and translate them using their logic.

Typos and grammatical mistakes in direct quotes were not corrected.

A statistical analysis was conducted to see whether the SES groups that are less likely to participate in eDeliberation differ from other groups in terms of technical capital. A series of logistic regressions were operated to test the effects of demographics on the most mentioned reason for non-participation, i.e. technical problems.