Information Politics on the Web

Information Politics on the Web
Author: Richard Rogers
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2004
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262182423

An analysis of how the Web practices politics in the way it makes information available, with a plan to make the Internet a "collision space" for alternative accounts of reality.

Political Internet

Political Internet
Author: Biju P. R.
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2016-11-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315389908

This book investigates the Internet as a site of political contestation in the Indian context. It widens the scope of the public sphere to social media, and explores its role in shaping the resistance and protest movements on the ground. The volume also explores the role of the Internet, a global technology, in framing debates on the idea of the nation state, especially India, as well as diplomacy and international relations. It also discusses the possibility of whether Internet can be used as a tool for social justice and change, particularly by the underprivileged, to go beyond caste, class, gender and other oppressive social structures. A tract for our times, this book will interest scholars and researchers of politics, media studies, popular culture, sociology, international relations as well as the general reader.

Politics and the Internet

Politics and the Internet
Author: William H. Dutton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Total Pages:
Release: 2013
Genre: POLITICAL SCIENCE
ISBN: 9780415561518

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE (Valid until 3 months after publication) It is commonplace to observe that the Internet and the dizzying technologies and applications which it continues to spawn has revolutionized human communications. But, while the medium s impact has apparently been immense, the nature of its political implications remains highly contested. To give but a few examples, the impact of networked individuals and institutions has prompted serious scholarly debates in political science and related disciplines on: the evolution of e-government and e-politics (especially after recent US presidential campaigns); electronic voting and other citizen participation; activism; privacy and surveillance; and the regulation and governance of cyberspace. As research in and around politics and the Internet flourishes as never before, this new four-volume collection from Routledge s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Political Science series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by William H. Dutton, Director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), the collection gathers foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions. With a full index and comprehensive bibliographies, together with a new introduction by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Politics and the Internet is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar and sometimes overlooked texts. For researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers, it is a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Information Politics

Information Politics
Author: Tim Jordan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9781783712977

A critical look into how far our lives are controlled by modern digital systems, and how digital information is used by the powerful.

Politics and Web 2.0: The Participation Gap

Politics and Web 2.0: The Participation Gap
Author: Paulo Serra
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1622739825

A point of departure for this book is the paradox between the seemingly limitless promise modern web technologies hold for enhanced political communication and their limited actual contribution. Empirical evidence indicates that neither citizens nor political parties are taking full advantage of online platforms to advance political participation. This is particularly evident when considering the websites of political parties, which have taken on two main functions: i) Disseminating information to citizens and journalists about the history, structure, programme and activities of the party; ii) Monitoring citizens’ opinions in regard to different political questions and policy proposals that are under discussion. Despite the integration of websites into political parties’ “permanent campaigns” (Blumenthal), television continues to be seen as the core medium in political communication and one-way and top-down communication strategies still prevail. In other words, it is still “business as usual”. This book questions whether Web 2.0 could help enhance citizens’ political participation. It offers a critical examination of the current state of the art from diverse perspectives, highlights persisting gaps in our knowledge and identifies a promising stream of further research. The ambition is to stimulate debate around the party-citizen "participation mismatch" and the role and place of modern web technologies in this setting. Each of the included chapters provide valuable explorations of the ways in which political parties motivate, make use of and are shaped by citizen participation in the Web 2.0 era. Diverse perspectives are employed, drawing examples from several European political systems and offering analytical insights at both the individual/micro level and at broader, macro or inter-societal systems level. Taken together, they offer a balanced and thought-provoking account of the political participation gap, its causes and consequences for political communication and democratic politics, as well as pointing the way to new forms of contemporary political participation.

Access Denied

Access Denied
Author: Ronald Deibert
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2008-01-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262290723

A study of Internet blocking and filtering around the world: analyses by leading researchers and survey results that document filtering practices in dozens of countries. Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens—most often about politics, but sometimes relating to sexuality, culture, or religion. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in more than three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of an accelerating trend. Internet filtering takes place in more than three dozen states worldwide, including many countries in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Related Internet content-control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions. Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each two-page country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings. Contributors Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva [as per Rob Faris], Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, Jonathan Zittrain

Protocol Politics

Protocol Politics
Author: Laura Denardis
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2009-07-31
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262258153

What are the global implications of the looming shortage of Internet addresses and the slow deployment of the new IPv6 protocol designed to solve this problem? The Internet has reached a critical point. The world is running out of Internet addresses. There is a finite supply of approximately 4.3 billion Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—the unique binary numbers required for every exchange of information over the Internet—within the Internet's prevailing technical architecture (IPv4). In the 1990s the Internet standards community selected a new protocol (IPv6) that would expand the number of Internet addresses exponentially—to 340 undecillion addresses. Despite a decade of predictions about imminent global conversion, IPv6 adoption has barely begun. Protocol Politics examines what's at stake politically, economically, and technically in the selection and adoption of a new Internet protocol. Laura DeNardis's key insight is that protocols are political. IPv6 intersects with provocative topics including Internet civil liberties, US military objectives, globalization, institutional power struggles, and the promise of global democratic freedoms. DeNardis offers recommendations for Internet standards governance, based not only on technical concerns but on principles of openness and transparency, and examines the global implications of looming Internet address scarcity versus the slow deployment of the new protocol designed to solve this problem.

Transforming Politics and Policy in the Digital Age

Transforming Politics and Policy in the Digital Age
Author: Bishop, Jonathan
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2014-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1466660392

Digital technology and the Internet have greatly affected the political realm in recent years, allowing citizens greater input and interaction in government processes. The mainstream media no longer holds all the power in political commentary. Transforming Politics and Policy in the Digital Age provides an updated assessment of the implications of technology for society and the realm of politics. The book covers issues presented by the technological changes on policy making and offers a wide array of perspectives. This publication will appeal to researchers, politicians, policy analysts, and academics working in e-government and politics.

The Political Lives of Information

The Political Lives of Information
Author: Janaki Srinivasan
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2022-10-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262370379

How the definition, production, and leveraging of information are shaped by caste, class, and gender, and the implications for development. Information, says Janaki Srinivasan, has fundamentally reshaped development discourse and practice. In this study, she examines the history of the idea of “information” and its political implications for poverty alleviation. She presents three cases in India—the circulation of price information in a fish market in Kerala, government information in information kiosks operated by a nonprofit in Puducherry, and a political campaign demanding a right to information in Rajasthan—to explore three uses of information to support goals of social change. Countering claims that information is naturally and universally empowering, Srinivasan shows how the definition, production, and leveraging of information are shaped by caste, class, and gender. Srinivasan draws on archival and ethnographic research to challenge the idea of information as objective and factual. Using the concept of an “information order,” she examines how the meaning and value of information reflect the social relations in which it is embedded. She asks why casting information as a tool of development and solution to poverty appeals to actors across the political spectrum. She also shows how the power to label some things information and others not is at least as significant as the capacity to subsequently produce, access, and leverage information. The more faith we place in what information can do, she cautions, the less attention we pay to its political lives and to the role of specific social structures, individual agency, and material form in the defining, production, and use of that information.

Democracy and Fake News

Democracy and Fake News
Author: Serena Giusti
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000286819

This book explores the challenges that disinformation, fake news, and post-truth politics pose to democracy from a multidisciplinary perspective. The authors analyse and interpret how the use of technology and social media as well as the emergence of new political narratives has been progressively changing the information landscape, undermining some of the pillars of democracy. The volume sheds light on some topical questions connected to fake news, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of its impact on democracy. In the Introduction, the editors offer some orientating definitions of post-truth politics, building a theoretical framework where various different aspects of fake news can be understood. The book is then divided into three parts: Part I helps to contextualise the phenomena investigated, offering definitions and discussing key concepts as well as aspects linked to the manipulation of information systems, especially considering its reverberation on democracy. Part II considers the phenomena of disinformation, fake news, and post-truth politics in the context of Russia, which emerges as a laboratory where the phases of creation and diffusion of fake news can be broken down and analysed; consequently, Part II also reflects on the ways to counteract disinformation and fake news. Part III moves from case studies in Western and Central Europe to reflect on the methodological difficulty of investigating disinformation, as well as tackling the very delicate question of detection, combat, and prevention of fake news. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, law, political philosophy, journalism, media studies, and computer science, since it provides a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of post-truth politics.