Resumen de Power laws on the web a threat for pluralism onpolitical mobilization? The case of the intellectual propertyand digital contents management in Spain.: Panel 3
Mayo Fuster Morell, Jorge L Salcedo
This paper addresses the democratic quality of the networked public space (Benkler 2006) as a space to host public debate on policy issues. In concrete, the paper provides an analysis of thedynamics of participation and interaction on the controversy between actors involved in the policy issue about the internet and use of copyright contents. This bring light on how technological skilled actors are using the Web as an instrument of mobilization and lobby. We compare in a first stage how the dynamics of the policy debate are developing. We took attention to the dimension of the mobilization and the interaction dynamics between actors inthe issue network on diverse spheres. We focus our empirical analysis on the Sinde Law (Spain) but always comparing with the findings of Benkler et al. (2013), in his analysis of the SOPA-PIPAbills (USA) mobilization. The empirical analysis is not developed in a single channel over the internet. Contrary, we analyse the transmedia practices of policy actors (Costanza Chock 2011),that means the multiple web channels or spheres (Rogers 2009) by the policy actors. We compare how is developing the debate on multiples channels (mainstream media, webs of policy actors, blogs and Twitter accounts). These results will be triangulate with some key experts’ interviews. The decision to adopt a mixed methods approach permits us to test and better understand the strengths and limitations of the quantitative methods applied. Regarding Sinde Law case, the data was obtained by advanced search on Google. To have access to historical tweets about the controversy we use the specialized search engine TOPSY which has access to the Twitter firehose. We made some correlation between levels of visibility on different channels to compare if the same actors are also visible. It seems that the direct lobby of big internetenterprises on USA was determinant to avoid a bill that benefits the interest of entertainment industry contrary to the Spanish case where in spite of the highly visible mobilization on the Webagainst the bill, finally this was approved, nevertheless in terms of a pluralist perspective the controversy on the Web was dominated by social grassroots. The Web on both cases (US-Spain) was highly effective at mobilizing and amplifying expertise to produce a counter-narrative to the one provided by proponents of the law. When we evaluate the concentration level of the visibility of policy actors on different channels, we find a power law distribution, nevertheless we consider that in this case is not a threat to pluralism because it was an intentional strategy to develop a scale economy on the political mobilization process and in this vein collective platforms in the role of hubs give voice to the lowest visible actors. Benkler et al (2013) on US found a strong correlation between web native channels and mainstream media, something that was not the case in Spain, we identify that to be highly visible on a channel do not mean to be visible in the others, fact that gives more chance for the creation of a more plural web space.
