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TopNet Methodologies
Although public use of the Internet is a considerably recent event, we are already beginning to understand its concrete influence on politics. As Sey and Castells (2004) observed, its influence is no longer proclaimed as fate but established by observation. Thanks to the extensive research so far produced, we are far more enlightened on the issue today. We know how the Internet can increase political participation (Norris, 2001; Katz & Rice, 2002), and the role it plays in facilitating processes of governance (Alvarez & Hall, 2008; Trechsel, Kies, Mendez & Schmitter, 2003). We know what a powerful instrument it is for local political expression outside the formal political system (Hague & Loader, 1999), and we are also paying attention to the opportunities that the Internet offers social movements (Bennet, 2003; della Porta & Tarrow, 2005; Diani, 2001; Juris, 2004; Van Dijk, 1999).
In order to explore how the Internet fits into the political activities of social movements, researchers use different empirical tools such as web site analysis (Norris, 2001; Della Porta & Mosca, 2005), hyperlink analysis (Van Aelst & Walgrave, 2004) and issue crawling (Rogers, 2004). While these methodologies differ by the goals for which they are used, they have a common point. They explore only the WWW.
This is because it is commonly assumed that the WWW plays a role in spreading information and the claims of political groups. It is the channel of communication through which political communities provide information about their activities and make public their positions on specific topics. Thus, to explore the WWW is useful in order to understand how social movements use the Internet to create their own channel of communication (Della Porta & Mosca, 2005). In most cases, the WWW hosts information on how social movements use the Internet as a platform facilitating the coordination for protest events. Moreover, to explore the website of a political community is useful for collecting information on its identity and obtaining the political contents published there.
In order, however to explore the role of the Internet in developing these identities and political contents, looking at the WWW is less useful. The weakness of a WWW-based approach is that it does not provide data on the internal use of new technologies which influence the dynamics of a political community. Rather, the political community is made up by their continual interaction and debate, which today is influenced by network-based technologies as well. In this regard, Kavada (2006) stresses how the: “empirical evidence on the connection between organizing structure and the use of new communication technologies is quite scarce. This partly reflects the lack of research in the internal processes of social movements” (p. 3). Kavada (2006) adds that the cause of this lack might be explained by the fact that, as highlighted by Polletta (2002), “Our failure to tackle these questions reflects our inclination to see organizations as actors rather than as made up of actors and their interactions” (p. 225).