Politics: Deliberation, Mobilization, and Networked Practices of Agitation
Politics: Deliberation, Mobilization, and Networked Practices of Agitation
The Internet has become a popular medium worldwide for politicians and government officials to spread their message. Two examples represent a turning point in the use of the Internet in politics and highlight how democracy might be transformed online, one relating to 9/11 and the other to the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. This chapter examines whether the Internet promotes democracy or if it is a new public sphere. It argues that the Internet is a convivial domain that allows various political uses to thrive and new tools for political criticism and commentary to emerge. It looks at how activists use the Internet to advance democracy by comparing online efforts to promote deliberative democracy and democratic mobilization. It also considers new types of political participation that cannot be classified as mobilization or deliberation: blogging and remix.
Keywords: Internet, politics, democracy, mobilization, deliberation, blogging, remix, political participation, public sphere
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