Virtual Politics

Virtual Politics
Author: Andrew Wilson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780300095456

States like Russia and Ukraine may not have gone back to totalitarianism or the traditional authoritarian formula of stuffing the ballot box, cowing the population and imprisoning the opposition - or not obviously. But a whole industry of 'political technology' has developed instead, with shadowy private firms and government 'fixers' on lucrative contracts dedicated to the black arts of organizing electoral success. This book uncovers the sophisticated techniques of the 'virtual' political system used to legitimize post-Soviet regimes; entire fake parties, phantom political rivals and 'scarecrow' opponents. And it exposes the paramount role of the mass media in projecting these creations and in falsifying the entire political process. Wilson argues that it is not primarily economic problems that have made it so difficult to develop meaningful democracy in the former Soviet world. Although the West also has its 'spin doctors', dirty tricks, and aggressive ad campaigns, it is the unique post-Bolshevik culture of 'political technology' that is the main obstacle to better governance in the region, to real popular participation in public affairs, and to the modernization of the political economy in the longer term.

Virtual Politics

Virtual Politics
Author: Dr David Holmes, Llb
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1997-12-08
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781446240069

Virtual Politics is a critical overview of the new - digital - body politic, with new technologies framing the discussion of key themes in social theory. This book shows how these new technologies are altering the nature of identity and agency, the relation of self to other, and the structure of community and political representation.

Deep Roots

Deep Roots
Author: Avidit Acharya
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691203725

"Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven't these sentiments evolved or changed? Deep Roots shows that the entrenched political and racial views of contemporary white southerners are a direct consequence of the region's slaveholding history, which continues to shape economic, political, and social spheres. Today, southern whites who live in areas once reliant on slavery--compared to areas that were not--are more racially hostile and less amenable to policies that could promote black progress. Highlighting the connection between historical institutions and contemporary political attitudes, the authors explore the period following the Civil War when elite whites in former bastions of slavery had political and economic incentives to encourage the development of anti-black laws and practices. Deep Roots shows that these forces created a local political culture steeped in racial prejudice, and that these viewpoints have been passed down over generations, from parents to children and via communities, through a process called behavioral path dependence. While legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act made huge strides in increasing economic opportunity and reducing educational disparities, southern slavery has had a profound, lasting, and self-reinforcing influence on regional and national politics that can still be felt today. A groundbreaking look at the ways institutions of the past continue to sway attitudes of the present, Deep Roots demonstrates how social beliefs persist long after the formal policies that created those beliefs have been eradicated."--Jacket.

Future Politics

Future Politics
Author: Jamie Susskind
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0192559494

Politics in the Twentieth Century was dominated by a single question: how much of our collective life should be determined by the state, and what should be left to the market and civil society? Now the debate is different: to what extent should our lives be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms? Digital technologies - from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality - are transforming the way we live together. Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these powerful entities - usually big tech firms and the state - will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what may be done and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will determine vital questions of social justice. In their hands, democracy will flourish or decay. A landmark work of political theory, Future Politics challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and what it means for a political system to be just or democratic. In a time of rapid and relentless changes, it is a book about how we can - and must - regain control. Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.

AP U.S. Government and Politics Crash Course

AP U.S. Government and Politics Crash Course
Author: Larry Krieger
Publisher: Research & Education Assoc.
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2009-12-04
Genre: Study Aids
ISBN: 0738608092

REA's Crash Course for the AP® U.S. Government & Politics Exam - Gets You a Higher Advanced Placement® Score in Less Time Crash Course is perfect for the time-crunched student, the last-minute studier, or anyone who wants a refresher on the subject. Are you crunched for time? Have you started studying for your Advanced Placement® U.S. Government & Politics exam yet? How will you memorize everything you need to know before the test? Do you wish there was a fast and easy way to study for the exam AND boost your score? If this sounds like you, don't panic. REA's Crash Course for AP® U.S. Government & Politics is just what you need. Our Crash Course gives you: Targeted, Focused Review - Study Only What You Need to Know The Crash Course is based on an in-depth analysis of the AP® U.S. Government & Politics course description outline and actual AP® test questions. It covers only the information tested on the exam, so you can make the most of your valuable study time. Our easy-to-read format gives you a crash course in the major ideas and concepts in government and politics, including constitutional underpinnings of the U.S. government, political culture, federalism, civil rights/civil liberties, elections & campaigns, congress, the presidency & the executive branch, and more. Expert Test-taking Strategies Written by a former AP® teacher, the author’s question-level strategy and advice explains how to handle the multiple-choice and free-response questions so you can raise your overall point score! Key Terms You Must Know Mastering AP® vocabulary terms is an easy way to increase your total score. Our AP® expert gives you the key terms all AP® U.S. Government & Politics students must know before test day. Take REA's FREE Practice Exam After studying the material in the Crash Course, go to the online REA Study Center and test what you've learned. Our free practice exam features timed testing, detailed explanations of answers, and automatic scoring analysis. The exam is balanced to include every topic and type of question found on the actual AP® exam, so you know you're studying the smart way. Whether you're cramming for the test at the last minute, looking for extra review, or want to study on your own in preparation for the exams - this is the study guide every AP® U.S. Government & Politics student must have. When it's crucial crunch time and your Advanced Placement® exam is just around the corner, you need REA's Crash Course for AP® U.S. Government & Politics! About the AuthorLarry Krieger earned his B.A. and M.A.T. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his M.A. from Wake Forest University. In a career spanning more than 40 years, Mr. Krieger has taught a variety of AP® subjects including American History, World History, European History, American Government, and Art History. His popular courses were renowned for their energetic presentations, commitment to scholarship, and helping students achieve high AP® exam scores.

Diaspora Online

Diaspora Online
Author: Ruxandra Trandafoiu
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2013-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857459449

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, millions of Romanians emigrated in search of work and new experiences; they became engaged in an interrogation of what it meant to be Romanian in a united Europe and the globalized world. Their thoughts, feelings and hopes soon began to populate the virtual world of digital and mobile technologies. This book chronicles the online cultural and political expressions of the Romanian diaspora using websites based in Europe and North America. Through online exchanges, Romanians perform new types of citizenship, articulated from the margins of the political field. The politicization of their diasporic condition is manifested through written and public protests against discriminatory work legislation, mobilization, lobbying, cultural promotion and setting up associations and political parties that are proof of the gradual institutionalization of informal communications. Online discourse analysis, supplemented by interviews with migrants, poets and politicians involved in the process of defining new diasporic identities, provide the basis of this book, which defines the new cultural and political practices of the Romanian diaspora.

Close Up at a Distance

Close Up at a Distance
Author: Laura Kurgan
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1935408283

Maps poised at the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography trace a profound shift in our understanding and experience of space. The maps in this book are drawn with satellites, assembled with pixels radioed from outer space, and constructed from statistics; they record situations of intense conflict and express fundamental transformations in our ways of seeing and of experiencing space. These maps are built with Global Positioning Systems (GPS), remote sensing satellites, or Geographic Information Systems (GIS): digital spatial hardware and software designed for such military and governmental uses as reconnaissance, secrecy, monitoring, ballistics, the census, and national security. Rather than shying away from the politics and complexities of their intended uses, in Close Up at a Distance Laura Kurgan attempts to illuminate them. Poised at the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography, her analysis uncovers the implicit biases of the new views, the means of recording information they present, and the new spaces they have opened up. Her presentation of these maps reclaims, repurposes, and discovers new and even inadvertent uses for them, including documentary, memorial, preservation, interpretation, political, or simply aesthetic. GPS has been available to both civilians and the military since 1991; the World Wide Web democratized the distribution of data in 1992; Google Earth has captured global bird's-eye views since 2005. Technology has brought about a revolutionary shift in our ability to navigate, inhabit, and define the spatial realm. The traces of interactions, both physical and virtual, charted by the maps in Close Up at a Distance define this shift.

The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere

The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere
Author: Gaurav Desai
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2020-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000059243

This book explores how new media technologies such as e-mails, online forums, blogs and social networking sites have helped shape new forms of public spheres. Offering new readings of Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, scholars from diverse disciplines interrogate the power and possibilities of new media in creating and disseminating public information; changing human communication at the interpersonal, institutional and societal levels; and affecting our self-fashioning as private and public individuals. Beginning with philosophical approaches to the subject, the book goes on to explore the innovative deployment of new media in areas as diverse as politics, social activism, piracy, sexuality, ethnic identity and education. The book will immensely interest those in media, culture and gender studies, philosophy, political science, sociology and anthropology.

Resisting the Virtual Life

Resisting the Virtual Life
Author: James Brook
Publisher: City Lights Books
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1995
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

A variety of contributors gauge the impact of the new video, computer, and networked communications on the ways of life in a restructured world, exposing relations of power and dependence and offering strategies of resistance.

The Politics of Knowledge.

The Politics of Knowledge.
Author: Patrick Baert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134004370

Social scientists often refer to contemporary advanced societies as ‘knowledge societies’, which indicates the extent to which ‘science’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge production’ have become fundamental phenomena in Western societies and central concerns for the social sciences. This book aims to investigate the political dimension of this production and validation of knowledge. In studying the relationship between knowledge and politics, this book provides a novel perspective on current debates about ‘knowledge societies’, and offers an interdisciplinary agenda for future research. It addresses four fundamental aspects of the relation between knowledge and politics: • the ways in which the nature of the knowledge we produce affects the nature of political activity • how the production of knowledge calls into question fundamental political categories • how the production of knowledge is governed and managed • how the new technologies of knowledge produce new forms of political action. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, political science, cultural studies and science and technology studies.