The Double Conditioning of Political Participation: Grassroots Politics on Facebook. Conjunctions

Th e emergence of social network sites as a part of everyday life has given rise to a number of debates on the demo-cratic potential aff orded by these technologies. Th is paper addresses political participation facilitated through Facebook from a practice-oriented perspective and presents a case study of the political grassroots organisation, Fight For Th e Future. Initially, the paper provides a basic theoretical framework that seeks to map the relation between civic practices, materiality, and discursive features. Using this framework, the article analyses Fight For Th e Future’s use of Facebook to facilitate political participation. Th e study fi nds that user participation on the Facebook page is ‘ double conditioned’ by the material structure of the social network site on the one hand and by the discourses articulated by the organisation and users on the other. Finally, the paper discusses the fi ndings and raises a number of problems and obstacles facing participatory grassroots organisations, such as Fight For Th e Future, when using Facebook.