The Myth of Digital Democracy

The Myth of Digital Democracy

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  • Author: Matthew Hindman
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 0691138680
  • Category : Computers
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 199

Matthew Hindman reveals here that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse in the United States, but rather that it empowers a small set of elites - some new, but most familiar.


Digital Democracy, Social Media and Disinformation

Digital Democracy, Social Media and Disinformation

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  • Author: Petros Iosifidis
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1000299783
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 114

Digital Democracy, Social Media and Disinformation discusses some of the political, regulatory and technological issues which arise from the increased power of internet intermediaries (such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) and the impact of the spread of digital disinformation, especially in the midst of a health pandemic. The volume provides a detailed account of the main areas surrounding digital democracy, disinformation and fake news, freedom of expression and post-truth politics. It addresses the major theoretical and regulatory concepts of digital democracy and the ‘network society’ before offering potential socio-political and technological solutions to the fight against disinformation and fake news. These solutions include self-regulation, rebuttals and myth-busting, news literacy, policy recommendations, awareness and communication strategies and the potential of recent technologies such as the blockchain and public interest algorithms to counter disinformation. After addressing what has currently been done to combat disinformation and fake news, the volume argues that digital disinformation needs to be identified as a multifaceted problem, one that requires multiple approaches to resolve. Governments, regulators, think tanks, the academy and technology providers need to take more steps to better shape the next internet with as little digital disinformation as possible by means of a regional analysis. In this context, two cases concerning Russia and Ukraine are presented regarding disinformation and the ways it was handled. Written in a clear and direct style, this volume will appeal to students and researchers within the social sciences, computer science, law and business studies, as well as policy makers engaged in combating what constitutes one of the most pressing issues of the digital age.


Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics

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  • Author: Nanjala Nyabola
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
  • ISBN: 178699433X
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 291

From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa. While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life. Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how 'fake news', a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola's ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.


The Internet Trap

The Internet Trap

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  • Author: Matthew Hindman
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 0691210209
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 254

Why there is no such thing as a free audience in today's attention economy The internet was supposed to fragment audiences and make media monopolies impossible. Instead, behemoths like Google and Facebook now dominate the time we spend online—and grab all the profits. This provocative and timely book sheds light on the stunning rise of the digital giants and the online struggles of nearly everyone else, and reveals what small players can do to survive in a game that is rigged against them. Challenging some of the most enduring myths of digital life, Matthew Hindman explains why net neutrality alone is no guarantee of an open internet, and demonstrates what it really takes to grow a digital audience in today's competitive online economy.


Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship

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  • Author: Karen Mossberger
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • ISBN: 0262633531
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 235

This analysis of how the ability to participate in society online affects political and economic opportunity finds that technology use matters in wages and income and civic participation and voting. Just as education has promoted democracy and economic growth, the Internet has the potential to benefit society as a whole. Digital citizenship, or the ability to participate in society online, promotes social inclusion. But statistics show that significant segments of the population are still excluded from digital citizenship. The authors of this book define digital citizens as those who are online daily. By focusing on frequent use, they reconceptualize debates about the digital divide to include both the means and the skills to participate online. They offer new evidence (drawn from recent national opinion surveys and Current Population Surveys) that technology use matters for wages and income, and for civic engagement and voting. Digital Citizenship examines three aspects of participation in society online: economic opportunity, democratic participation, and inclusion in prevailing forms of communication. The authors find that Internet use at work increases wages, with less-educated and minority workers receiving the greatest benefit, and that Internet use is significantly related to political participation, especially among the young. The authors examine in detail the gaps in technological access among minorities and the poor and predict that this digital inequality is not likely to disappear in the near future. Public policy, they argue, must address educational and technological disparities if we are to achieve full participation and citizenship in the twenty-first century.


The Digital Divide

The Digital Divide

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  • Author: Benjamin M. Compaine
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • ISBN: 9780262531931
  • Category : Computers
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 380

The 'digital divide' refers to the gap between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not. This book presents data supporting the existence of such a divide in the 1990s along racial, economic, and education lines.


Democracy's Fourth Wave?

Democracy's Fourth Wave?

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  • Author: Philip N. Howard
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0199323658
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 162

Did digital media really "cause" the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy's fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world's most entrenched dictators. Howard and Hussain find that the complex causal recipe includes several economic, political and cultural factors, but that digital media is consistently one of the most important sufficient and necessary conditions for explaining both the fragility of regimes and the success of social movements. This book looks at not only the unexpected evolution of events during the Arab Spring, but the deeper history of creative digital activism throughout the region.


The Social, Cultural and Environmental Costs of Hyper-Connectivity

The Social, Cultural and Environmental Costs of Hyper-Connectivity

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  • Author: Mike Hynes
  • Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
  • ISBN: 183909978X
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 202

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online. This book investigates the profound effects 21st century digital technology is having on our individual and collective lives and seeks to confront the realities of a new digital age.


Digital Detachment

Digital Detachment

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  • Author: Chet A Bowers
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317286324
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 130

The digital revolution is changing the world in ecologically unsustainable ways: (1) it increases the economic and political power of the elites controlling and interpreting the data; (2) it is based on the deep assumptions of market liberalism that do not recognize environmental limits; (3) it undermines face-to-face and context-specific forms of knowledge; (4) it undermines awareness of the metaphorical nature of language; (5) its promoters are driven by the myth of progress and thus ignore important cultural traditions of the cultural commons that are being lost; and (6) it both by-passes the democratic process and colonizes other cultures. This book provides an in-depth examination of these phenomena and connects them to questions of educational reform in the US and beyond.


The Internet Myth

The Internet Myth

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  • Author: Paolo Bory
  • Publisher: University of Westminster Press
  • ISBN: 1912656760
  • Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 169

‘The Internet is broken and Paolo Bory knows how we got here. In a powerful book based on original research, Bory carefully documents the myths, imaginaries, and ideologies that shaped the material and cultural history of the Internet. As important as this book is to understand our shattered digital world, it is essential for those who would fix it.’ — Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World The Internet Myth retraces and challenges the myth laying at the foundations of the network ideologies – the idea that networks, by themselves, are the main agents of social, economic, political and cultural change. By comparing and integrating different sources related to network histories, this book emphasizes how a dominant narrative has extensively contributed to the construction of the Internet myth while other visions of the networked society have been erased from the collective imaginary. The book decodes, analyzes and challenges the foundations of the network ideologies looking at how networks have been imagined, designed and promoted during the crucial phase of the 1990s. Three case studies are scrutinized so as to reveal the complexity of network imaginaries in this decade: the birth of the Web and the mythopoesis of its inventor; and the histories of two Italian networking projects, the infrastructural plan Socrate and the civic network Iperbole, the first to give free Internet access to citizens. The Internet Myth thereby provides a compelling and hidden sociohistorical narrative in order to challenge one of the most powerful myths of our time. This title has been published with the financial assistance of the Fondazione Hilda e Felice Vitali, Lugano, Switzerland.