Introduction: Political Behavior and Technology

Internet use by parties, citizens, and various organized interests has been transforming political participation across much of the world. While much of this research has searched for internet effects on political participation (Boulianne 2009; Bimber 2003; Best and Krueger 2005; Gibson and Cantijoch 2011; Tolbert and McNeal 2003; Gainous and Wagner 2011), more recent work has turned its attention to the manner in which the internet has become imbricated in political processes and contexts (Jensen, Jorba, and Anduiza 2012; Vaccari 2013; Crozier 2012). That is to say, the internet is more usefully conceived of not as an independent variable related to behavior but a communication space in which political life takes place along with the sundry other spaces of political communication. And despite the common technical architectures of these online spaces, the factors that give rise to their use, the political identities performed, and the consequences of this activity are subject to the wider political context in which they operate. For this reason, it is useful to investigate the use and implications of online political tools and communication in locations outside of familiar Western contexts (Anduiza, Jensen, and Jorba 2012; Howard and Hussain 2013).