Jakob Svensson
opposing political views, something that socialized them into“ politically confrontational team players”( my translation: politiskt konfrontativa medspelare).
At least 100 million participate regularly on online communities today( Kozinets 2011: 10). One of these communities is Qruiser, the biggest LGTB community in Sweden. Qruiser is primarily used for flirting, dating and maintaining friendships. But there are also possibilities for political discussions in so‐called forums and clubs, even though clubs are mostly used to display preferences on the user ' s profile page rather than to discuss. Hence, there are many opportunities for Qruiser users to engage in political discussions with each other.
3. Political discussions on Qruiser
The study of political discussions on Qruiser primarily took place during November 2012. November 1 st the community had 109153 active members. According to member statistics 72 percent of these defined themselves as male and 72 percent defined themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The majority of the members are between 20 and 40 years old with an average age of 33. 72 percent of the members are based in Sweden and only 17 percent defined themselves as in a relationship, underlining Qruiser ' s main purpose to find a date.
During November participant observations of political discussions were conducted. All discussion threads started from November 1 st to 20 th under the tag Politics, Society & the World( my translation: Politik, Samhälle & Världen) were followed and postings downloaded until November 25 th. 76 different threads were started during this period by 31 different nicknames, containing 2853 postings. All thread starters and recurrent posters in these threads were invited to participate in online interviews. Not everyone agreed to participate. I currently conduct interviews with 30 different nicknames as well as reflective field notation documenting observations, feelings and experiences when I participated in discussions as well as during the analysis phase. The method is best described as netnographic( see Kozinets, 2011)
Resonating with Andersson ' s( 2013) study, the political discussions were very confrontational, perhaps due to the opposing political views represented and perhaps also due to the possibilities of anonymity. In interviews participants talked about the discussions as a competition, not against team‐players( as in Andersson ' s study) but against opponents. Hence, instead of seeking consensus, to understand each other, participants sought conflict. They actively tried to misinterpret each other ' s postings in order to attack, and use unflattering labels on each other. One illustrative example was when posting a question on how to understand the concept of anti‐Semitism in a thread on the Israel / Palestine conflict. I was then labeled as leftist and anti‐Jewish, questioning anti‐Semitism( something I did not do in the posting). Among other things I was also accused of being particularly ignorant for an academic. This was a disturbing experience, something which made me dislike the general tone of the discussions as well as certain participants. In a way this experience made me understand the harsh tone, since I myself sometimes felt an urge to attack those participants I felt had treated me unfairly. A preliminary conclusion is thus that conflict was the defining character of the political discussions on Qruiser.
4. Discussion: Political discussions as agonistic or antagonistic?
To understand these preliminary results, this paper makes use of the perspective of radical democracy as outlined by Laclau & Mouffe( 1985) and Mouffe( 2005). This perspective is contested especially by deliberative democrats( see for example Dryzek 2000). However the results above clearly show that deliberation was not at stake, but rather conflict. Conflict is a central concept in radical democracy and important for understanding political participation. A common understanding of political participation refers to engagement for the organization of human co‐existence( see for example Dewey 1927; Arendt 1998 / 1958). Political participation from a radical democratic perspective thus has to do with conflicts over resources and between interests in the organization of society. According to Mouffe( 2005), we should not be mislead to believe that consensus on this division ever could be achieved. Furthermore, participation ‐ being based in processes of identification ‐ will always entail the identification of an Other in contrast to an Us( Laclau & Mouffe 1985: 136). However, by outlining a normative concept of agonism ‐ in contrast to antagonism ‐ Mouffe( 2005) seeks to establish the Other, not as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an adversary to be acknowledged. In this way the perspective of radical democracy offers me a norm, an analytical category – agonism ‐ to measure the preliminary findings against. The question then becomes if the Other was conceived of as enemy or an adversary?
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