Abbate, J.: Democracy and new media (2003)
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- Footnote
- Rez. in: JASIST 55(2004) no.6, S.561-562 (J.P. Renaud): "While definitions of democracy are topics of debate, political activists and potentates, respectively, hope or fear that a relationship exists between expanded access to information and expanded public interest in shaping policy. The current U.S. presidential election cycle has brought dramatic attention to this, with primary candidates using the Internet both to reach out to disaffected potential voters and to quite effectively raise funds for their campaigns. In short, this "new media" is no longer a novelty in the political arena, but a force that commands respect. In Democracy and New Media, the editors have assembled contributions from the social sciences, humanities, information science, and communication studies that attempt to address the relationship between democracy and evolving technology, using empirical and theoretical analysis. In addition, policy makers and shapers are represented in this volume, sharing interpretations of the impact of Internet technology upon democratic processes and structures. In keeping with the deliberative stance of the work, Clinton advisor Ira Magaziner's essay appears next to that of The Heritage Foundation's David Winton. The book's strength is that it is balanced in a way that reflects intellectual conceptions of both the Internet and democracy, and thus avoids the tendency of some other collections of essays to become either stridently one-sided or, worse, a point/ counterpoint collection along the lines of the basic Taking Sides series. This volume is the second in the Media in Transition Series, standing between New Media, 1740-1915, edited by Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey Pingree, and Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition, edited by Jenkins and Thorburn. Democracy and the Internet: Some Considerations might have been a more accurate title for the volume under consideration here, because this tome poses questions and attempts to frame discussion, rather than provide concrete answers or definitive arguments. Andrew Feenberg's work, Questioning Technology (1999) and the essay collection Society an the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age (1999), edited by William H. Dutton, will definitely be worthwhile reading for scholars interested in these topics. Other books that pursue similar lines of dialogue and are worth examining are the essay collection Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace (1997), edited by David Holmes, and Decomcracy.com? (1999), edited by Elaine Cuilla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Articles that will complement these essays are Antje Gimmler's work, "Deliberative Democracy, the Public Sphere and the Internet," that appeared in Philosophy and Social Criticism 2 (2001), and a study by Thomas Johnson and Barbara Kaye, "A Boost or Bust for Democracy: How the Web Influenced Political Attitudes and Behaviors in the 1996 and 2000 Presidential Elections," that appeared in Press/Politics 8 (2003). Democracy and New Media is arranged around three themes. The first section, How Democratic Is Cyberspace? contains 11 essays. This is the most far-reaching and theoretical section of the book. The second section, a four-essay piece called Global Developments, raises some interesting questions that serve as micro examples of issues pursued at a more theoretical level in previous and subsequent chapters. The comparative nature of the volume is seen here, with chapters addressing the impact of technology an a nation interspersed with chapters that ultimately describe countries or regions where technology is absent in all but the most rudimentary forms. These contrasts, and the insights of the writers, allow seemingly disparate topics to become an intriguing dialogue. The third chapter, News and Information in the Digital Age, examines the changes created by faster and more accessible media.
