Political Communication, Policy and Participation

Dr Chris Poor

MA(Auck) PhD(New School, New York)

Researcher with the Political Communication, Policy and Participation Research Cluster

Contact details

Email: chri...@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

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Research Interests

Intra-party democracy, e-democracy, political socialization, use of new technology by children and youth, new media and political communication, institutional learning, emotional and normative motivation in collaborative and collective action, theories of causality in the social sciences, ethnography, multi-level & qualitative network analysis, interdisciplinary research methods.

My research has been concerned with the causal powers of social structures, the relative strength of emergent positional power and relational power, and the conditions which allow agents to change social structures. The ontological issues of downward causation (structural determination) and upward causation (agency) have been central to my studies of critical (Habermasian) theories of education and of democratization in political parties.

Based on my research I argue that the innovative use of communicative technologies can promote fundamental democratization in political parties through feedback in network formation and in perceptions of authority promoting voluntary political action to causal primacy over the emergent powers of bureaucratic structures. I also argue for legal requirements for internal party democracy and for e-democracy initiatives to be oriented toward active citizenship.

In my current research I am employing a critical realist adaptation of complexity concepts to develop a theory of Socio-Ontological Flux in terms of environmental, relational and cognitive mechanisms, and the transformative capacity of communicative action. My model focuses on the process of positive feedback between causal mechanisms and on the phase transition in communication regimes from hierarchical to network form.

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Current Research

I propose the concept of socio-ontological flux to characterize the dynamism of situations in which unstable relations of social forces allow communicative action to be promoted to causal primacy over the emergent powers of structure. My use of complexity theory facilitates the integration of our understanding of structure with that of reflexive agency by studying the crucial effect of changes in information flow within political parties, social movements, organizations, communities, polities and transnational populations.

Collaborative Research

Organizing a series of workshops to build interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborative research capability. Funded by University of Otago Research Contestable Funds. Interdisciplinary research. (.pdf 159 KB)

Research

Visiting Researcher: Department of Sociology, University of Auckland: 2001-2002.

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Conference Presentations

Realism and Marxism to be presented at Rethinking Marxism 2006, the 6th major international conference of Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, October 26-28, 2006.

Paradigms Revisited: Changing Social Ontology, European Group for Organizational Studies, Bergen, 2006. (.pdf 211 KB)

Phase Transition in Intra-Party Communication: A Study of Socio-Ontological Flux, Midwest Political Science Association annual conference, Chicago, 2006.

Can Innovation Change Social Ontology? Small Scale Research Looking for Big Answers, Pacific Sociological Association, Portland, Oregon, 2005.

Using Internet Communication in Grassroots Challenges to Political Elites, The Australian Sociological Association, Beechworth, Victoria, December 2004.

Network Capital and Accountability in Political Parties, American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August 2004.

From Nightmare to Consciousness: Democratising Political Parties, American Sociological Association, Chicago, August 1999. (.pdf 194 KB)

Can We Take Democracy for Granted or Should We Learn More from the German Experience as We Enter the Era of MMP?, New Zealand Political Science Association, Auckland, July 1996. (.pdf 154 KB)

Teaching Interests

Political Sociology, Sociological Theory, Critical theory, Democratic Theory (modern and classical), Political Communication and Networks, Comparative Politics, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, Social Movements, Qualitative and Interdisciplinary Research methods.

Qualifications

Ph.D. Dissertation title:
Accountability of Political Party Elites: Intra-party Democratization in the New Zealand Alliance. (.pdf 1.4 MB)

This dissertation studied the use of communication networks by activists of the New Zealand Alliance party in holding party elites accountable for supporting the U.S. “war on terror” and for further unmandated action; Argued that the use of computer-mediated communication aids activists in creating a new regime of information flow with the network capital of activists negating the officials’ monopoly of organizational resources; Longitudinal, case study including participant observation and in-depth interviews; Used complexity theory and qualitative network analysis to explain the transformation of organizational structure and presented the outline of a theory of agency grounded in the concept of socio-ontological flux developed from my research.

M.A. Thesis title:
Towards a Critical Realist Theory of Education. (.pdf 372 KB)

A realist critique of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action and critical theories of education, this thesis outlines an alternative conception of emancipatory praxis.

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