Open AccessScottish Disability Organizations and Online Media: A Path to Empowerment or “Business as Usual”?
Author(s) -
Filippo Trevisan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
disability studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2159-8371
pISSN - 1041-5718
DOI - 10.18061/dsq.v34i3.3359
Subject(s) - empowerment , the internet , public relations , power (physics) , social media , online participation , empirical research , sociology , internet privacy , political science , psychology , computer science , world wide web , law , philosophy , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics
Normal 0 14false false falseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4Can online media help disabled people become more engaged in the organizations that represent their interests in the public arena? Using a combination of Web content analysis and qualitative interviews, this article investigates whether online communications are challenging traditional patterns of power distribution in Scottish disability organizations. Overall, empirical findings only partially matched expectations that member-led groups would be more inclined than ‘professionalized’ charities to embrace interactive online media. Although most groups acknowledged the Internet’s potential to empower disabled users, none of them deliberately pursued that outcome through their respective Web outlets. Instead, conservative views on the Internet prevailed across the entire organizational spectrum. Nonetheless, the analysis revealed also that such ‘minimalistic’ approach to online media was in fact underpinned by very different motives for disability non-profits on one side and self-advocacy groups on the other.