Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: The rapid rise of the mobile phone has resulted in a body of innovative research that spans the globe. While the subjects of such studies have been primarily educated, relatively affluent, urban youth in developed countries, scant attention has been paid to mobile phone use by their more economically or socially marginalized peers. This research attempts to intervene in this gap and is the result of 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork that explored how young rural-to-urban migrants working in the low-level service sector in Beijing engage with mobile phones to navigate their identity and autonomy in the city. Beijing’s rural-to-urban migrants are an extremely marginalized population as a result of cultural and structural factors. A mobile phone allows them to enhance their social and economic capital, but can also be used by employers as tools for surveillance. This research thus addresses the potentially positive and negative aspects of mobile technologies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study measures Internet access and mobile phone penetration in Colombia for 2008 and relates access to certain individual level characteristics of the population. Differences in use of ICTS are assessed and related to patterns of expressive political participation, mobilization efforts and traditional civic participation. Relying on data collected in August of 2008 from a random sample of respondents designed to represent Colombia’s adult urban population, this paper provides evidence that informational uses of ICTs (Internet and mobile phones) are significantly related to expressive participation in the online domain, that result, indirectly through mobilization efforts, in a host of traditional or offline civic and political participatory behaviors. That these relationships occur within the context of a society in crisis suggests that new communication technologies offer an additional pathway to democratic political engagement in such societies. Implications and directions for future research are addressed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The development of the Zapatista movement since the emergence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994 has occurred in highly complex circumstances. While the movement has enjoyed popular support, the political context has always been closed to their demands. Nevertheless, the Zapatistas have been able to maintain a constant level of protest activity over time within and outside their region of influence. This study investigates the local factors that have allowed the Zapatistas to maintain the level of protest activity by looking at the three main theoretical streams in the study of social movements, namely the structure of political opportunities, the availability of mobilizing networks, and the type of demands’ framing. I analyze the mobilizing capacity of the EZLN over an eight-year period (1994-2001). Using event history models, I analyze the ebb and flow of Zapatista initiated events across the 111 localities (municipios) of Chiapas. To complete these analyses, I coded protest events from national and local newspapers and collected data on socioeconomic and electoral information to create a comprehensive dataset on the Zapatista movement. The results of this study show that Zapatista protest events are more likely to occur in municipios ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), with low electoral fractionalization; where the Zapatistas could build upon pre-existing mobilizing organizations; where counter Zapatista organizations are also active; and where protests have been framed using political claims.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Tests whether validated registered voters who move more often (frequency of residential movement) in the previous five years are less likely to report being contacted by a candidate, political party, ororganization, controlling for other i

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines different aspects of media contexts at the macro-level, as well as at the micro-level, which may stimulate electorates to turn out and vote. After introducing the different aspects of media contexts that may matter in explaining voter turnout, the relationship between these variables and electoral participation in the European elections of 1999 will be studied. Media variables will be tested in an integrated model (at the individual level), controlling for other variables that have often been found to affect electoral participation, by using a large-scale survey dataset that contains all EU-member states. The results indicate that both partisan media contexts and a situation of intensive election campaigning can mobilize the electorate to turn out and vote. At the individual level, specific kinds of media exposure encourage people to turn out and vote, whereas other kinds are more likely to discourage people from electoral participation. All in all, this paper finds support for the notion that both media exposure and media contexts have the ability to mobilize electorates.