CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Okov, Slav Boykov |
|---|---|
| Title | New Media And Democratic Representation: The Bulgarian Environmental Movement And Its Perceptions Of The Digital Political Space |
| Summary | The debates around the concept of "digital democracy”, although extensive, remain at the normative level, seeking for the extent to which digital technologies can improve the current democratic practices. At the same time, various political agents – from parties to social movements – already make use of the political potential of digital media in order to search for better political representation within the democratic system. In this context, the current research leaves normative discussions aside and focuses on the Bulgarian example, answering the question: “How does the Bulgarian environmental virtual community perceive the digital political space in which it participates and how does it imagine its possibilities of political representation?” Applied to the online communication of the recently developed Green movement in Bulgaria, a qualitative content analysis shows a search for a more direct form of democratic representation in which digital technologies themselves are seen as a representative tool, shortening the distance between power-holders and citizens. At the same time, the research tries to overcome the difficulties of applying qualitative content analysis to data collected from online social media. The results show that the application of the method is both achievable and appropriate. |
| Supervisor | Sgier, Lea |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/okov_slav.pdf |
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