Democracy and New Media

by Henry Jenkins (Editor)

Digital technology is changing our politics. The World Wide Web is already a powerful influence on the public's access to government documents, the tactics and content of political campaigns, the behavior of voters, the efforts of activists to circulate their messages, and the ways in which topics enter the public discourse. The essays collected here capture the richness of current discourse about democracy and cyberspace. Some contributors offer front-line perspectives on the impact of emerging technologies on politics, journalism, and civic experience. What happens, for example, when we increase access to information or expand the arena of free speech? Other contributors place our shifting understanding of citizenship in historical context, suggesting that notions of cyber-democracy and online community must grow out of older models of civic life. Still others consider the global flow of information and test our American conceptions of cyber-democracy against developments in other parts of the world. How, for example, do new media operate in Castro's Cuba, in post-apartheid South Africa, and in the context of multicultural debates on the Pacific Rim? For some contributors, the new technologies endanger our political culture; for others, they promise civic renewal.

Genres: Philosophy

385 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 2003

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that covers a lot of territory. At first it seems to focus on the Internet, but late in the book it talks about television. There are three sections, twenty-two articles. The first section deals with Democracy and Cyberspace, the next with Global Developments and the last and least interesting, because most obvious deals with news and information in the digital age. In the first section, many people raise the issue of whether the digital age will be more or less democratic. In many ways, it seems less democratic. Those who challenge the democracy of the Internet are more convincing. They make the point that the nature of computers focuses on the emotional rather than on the reasoned. Plebiscites do not allow for deliberation, but given how congress is currently functioning, representative government doesn’t seem to be doing too well. In the global section, there is an article on Cuba and the difficulties it has with the Internet, but more with the American blockade. In the section on South Africa, it does seem that the ANC has not sufficiently solved the problem of the rural workers and that the racist whites still own more land than they should. A television program explored this showing a variety of perspectives. There was also an article that made the point that cyberspace duplicated the imperialism of the west during its colonial period. One of the problems is access. Poor people and minority people don't have the same access to the technology. The articles on the medium itself focused on how quickly news is transferred both on the Internet and on w4 hour broadcasts. The web also demystifies the expert. There was an article that talked about art in museums being kept prisoner by curators and that through scanning, art was now available on the web. The author made the point that the copyright originally protected not the artist, but the publisher. Music can be downloaded and is therefore more accessible. Ownership has changed. There was also an article that talked about high, medium and low frequency writing and claimed that buildings were a form of communication, albeit rather low. This section dealt more with television than some of the other sections did. The book was interesting but I shouldn’t have tried to read it in such a short time. I am sure taken a little more slowly and savored would have been much more beneficial.