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Asylum Politics, The Internet, And The Public Sphere: The Case of UK Refugee Support Groups Online

Abstract This paper constitutes an exploration of use of the Internet for political purposes. The theoretical background is that of a critical approach to the theory of the public sphere and deliberative democracy. The substantive focus is on the political debate on immigration and asylum in the United Kingdom, and the empirical analysis is concerned with 45 activist organisations supporting immigrants and asylum seekers. The paper asks the following questions: Who do these websites primarily address? What type of information do they provide and to whom? Through focusing on the issues of addressees and communicative formats, this paper draws tentative conclusions regarding some of the political uses of the Internet. The findings indicate a variety of online communicative formats, including expressive, strategic and instrumental communications, with notable absence of any deliberation or dialogue. None of these conforms to the requirements for the functioning of the public sphere, but this paper argues that to discount them renders the theory oblivious to the political gains of the instrumental use of the Internet by activist groups. This, alongside the publicness of the Internet, suggests possible revisions to our understanding of the Internet’s role in politics.