Professor Stephen Coleman

BA (London), PhD (London)

Position: Professor of Political Communication and Director of Research

Email: s.coleman@leeds.ac.uk
Tel: 0113 3435872
Office hours: Wednesdays, 12-1pm
 Stephen Coleman

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Main research interests are e-democracy, democratic theory and political representation, political efficacy, forms of deliberation and decision-making, reality TV formats and popular representation, modes of media interactivity and legislative institutions.

Research Centre: Co-Directs (with Professor Ann Macintosh) the Centre for Digital Citizenship, an interdisciplinary research centre which conducts research into the changing nature of citizenship and governance in a networked society; questions the broad range of theoretical and rhetorical claims made by proponents of e-governance and e-citizenship; contributes to the design and development of social technologies that have the potential to support public communication; engages with policy-makers in the UK, Europe and globally to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities of citizenship in the digital era; and works with communities and social movements to explore the democratic potential of digital media.

Currently Director of Research at the ICS and Co-Director, Centre for Digital Citizenship

Current research projects include:

  • (with Professor Vanalyne Green, Leeds) AHRC project on 'The Road to Voting', exploring how people experience the process of voting in contemporary society; the kind of issues, from local to global, that people would citizens like to vote on if they were given a chance to do so; ways of mediating the voting experience that could emphasise its quality as a live event; new ways of enabling citizens to reflect and deliberate upon the intensity of their collective preferences; designs for voting that emphasise reflexive and imaginative dimensions of choice-making; and ways of making the consequences of voting be made more visible.

  • Co-chair (with Professor Peter Shane) of the International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making, funded for three years by the US National Science Foundation.

  • (with Professor David Morrison) conducting a longitudinal study of political efficacy and its relationship to old and new media uses.

  • (with Professor Ann Macintosh) running Demo-net projects exploring European e-participation research; national and local policies for e-participation within European countries; and the mapping of online discussions across Europe.

  • (in collaboration with Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University) conducting a study on public trust in the news media, to be launched in 2008.

  • (in collaboration with Professor Liesbet van Zoonen, University of Amsterdam) conducting a study of politicians' participation in the TV show, Have I Got News For You?


    • AUTHORED BOOKS

    Coleman, S. and Blumler, J. (forthcoming, 2008) The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice and Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Coleman, S. and Ross, K. (forthcoming, 2008) Them and Us: how the media frames public discourse, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

    Coleman, S. (2001) What Happens in Parliament, London: Francis Watts.

    OTHER RECENT PUBLICATIONS

    Edited Books

    Coleman, S. (ed.) (2003) The E-Connected World: Opportunities and Risks, Montreal: McGill University Press.

    Coleman, S. and Taylor, J. (eds.) (2000) Parliament in the Age of the Internet, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Coleman, S. (ed.) (2000) Televised Election Debates International Perspectives, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Refereed Journal Articles

    Coleman, S. (2007) 'Mediated Politics and Everyday Life', International Journal of Communication, Feature: 49-60.

    Coleman, S. (2006) 'How The Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 British General Election Campaign', International Journal of Cultural Studies 9(4): 457-80.

    Coleman, S. (2006) 'Parliamentary communication in an age of digital interactivity', Aslib Proceedings 58(5): 371-388.

    Coleman, S. (2005) 'Just How Risky is Online Voting?', Information Polity 10: 95-104.

    Coleman, S. (2005) 'The Lonely Citizen: indirect representation in an age of networks', Political Communication 22(2): 197-214.

    Coleman, S. and Spiller, J. (2005) 'Exploring New Media Effects on Representative Democracy', Journal of Legislative Studies 9(3): 1-16.

    Coleman, S. (2005) 'New Mediation and Direct Representation: reconceptualising representation in the digital age', New Media & Society 7(2): 177-198.

    Coleman, S. (2004) 'Connecting Parliament to the Public via the Internet: Two Case Studies of Online Consultations', Information, Communication and Society 7(1): 1-22.

    Coleman, S. (2004) 'Blogs and the new politics of listening', Political Quarterly 76(2): 272-80.

    Coleman, S. (2004) 'Whose Conversation? Engaging the Public in Authentic Polylogue', Political Quarterly 75(2): 112-120.

    Coleman, S. (2003) 'A Tale of Two Houses: the House of Commons, the Big Brother house and the people at home', Parliamentary Affairs 56: 733-758.

    Coleman, S. (2002) 'Election Call 2001: How Politicians and the Public Interacted', Parliamentary Affairs 55(4): 731-742.

    Book Chapters and Working Papers

    Coleman, S. (2007) 'How Democracies Have Disengaged From Young People', in Loader, B. (ed.) Young Citizens in the Digital Age: Young People, Citizenship, and ICTs, London: Routledge.

    Coleman, S. (2007) 'From Big Brother to Big Brother: two faces of interactive engagement', in Dahlgren, P. (ed.) Young Citizens and New Media: Learning Democratic Engagement, London: Routledge.

    Coleman, S. (2007) 'Doing It For Themselves: Management versus Autonomy in Youth E-Citizenship', in Bennett, W.L. (ed.) Digital Media and Youth Civic Engagement, Boston: MIT Press.

    Coleman, S. (2007) 'E-Democracy: the History and Future of an Idea', in Quah, D., Silverstone, R., Mansell, R. and Avgerou, C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Coleman, S. (2006) New Media, New Democracies: What's New? E-Governance Academy, Tallin.

    Coleman, S. (2006) Guide to the UK Media, London: British Council.

    Coleman, S. (2005) 'New Media and Parliamentary Democracy', in Giddings, P. (ed.) The Future of Parliament: Issues for a New Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Coleman, S. (2005) Direct Representation: towards a conversational democracy, IPPR, London.

    Coleman, S. (2005) Remixing Citizenship: Democracy, Young People and the Internet, Carnegie Trust Youth Initiative.

    Coleman, S. (2005) Learning to live with the internet: European MPs and ICT, EPRI, Brussels.

    Coleman, S., Frazer, E. and Hardman, H. (2004) 'Democratic Culture and the Internet: Constructing an agenda for critical research', in Piech, K. (ed.) The Knowledge Based Economy in Transition Countries: selected issues, London:SSEESS, pp. 141-174.

    Coleman, S. (2004) 'Internet Voting and Democratic Politics in an age of Crisis and Risk' in Trechsel, A.H. and Fernandez, F. (eds.) The European Union and e-Voting: addressing the European Parliament's internet voting challenge, London: Routledge.

    Coleman, S. (2004) 'From service to commons: re-inventing a space for public communication', in Tambini, D. & Cowling, J. (eds.) Public Service Communications, London: IPPR.

    Coleman, S. (2003) 'e-Coverage of Europe', in Bond, M. (ed.) Europe, Parliament and the Media, London: Federal Trust.

    Coleman, S. (2002) 'The European Union in the age of interactive policy-making', in Zerdick, A., Picot, A., Silverstone, R. and Burgelmann, J-C (eds.) E-merging Media, digitalisation of the media economics, European Communication Council report, Berlin: Springer.

    Coleman, S. (2002) 'Towards an e-connected Europe', in Rüb, U. (ed.) European Governance - Views from the UK on democracy, participation and policy-making in the EU, The Federal Trust for Education Research.

    Coleman, S. (2002) 'Rewiring Democracy', in Hart, T. and Schmidt, O. (eds.) Balanced E-Government. Connecting Efficient Administration and Responsive Democracy, Bertelsmann Foundation.

    Coleman, S. (2002) 'BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback Phone-in: Public Feedback in a Divided Public Space', in Jankowski, N. (ed.) Community Media in the Information Age, Hampton Press.

    Coleman, S. (2002) Elections in the 21st Century: from paper ballot to e-voting, Report of the Independent Commission on Alternative Voting Methods, London: Electoral Reform Society, 2002.

    Coleman, S. (2001) 'The People's Voice?', in Bartle, J., Mortimore, R. and Atkinson, S. (eds.) Political Communication: the General Election of 2001, Frank Cass.

    Coleman, S. (2001) 'The Online Campaign', in Norris, P. (ed.) Britain Votes, 2001, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Coleman, S. (2001) 'The Transformation of Citizenship?', in Axford, B. and Huggins, R. (eds.) New Media and Politics, Sage.

    Coleman, S. and Gotze, J. (2001) Bowling Together: online public engagement in policy deliberation, London: Hansard Society, 2001.

    Coleman, S. and Blumler, J.G. (2001) Realising Democracy Online: A Civic Commons in Cyberspace, London: IPPR, 2001.

    TEACHING

  • MA module: 'New Media and Citizenship' (semester 1, 2007-08).

  • Undergraduate Communications Studies module: 'Political Communication' (semester 2, 2007-08).


    • CURRENT RESEARCH STUDENTS

    Yuri Misnikov
    Fabro Steibel