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                                     POLITICAL CULTURES DIGITIZED

Prevailing thought about the impact of new media and politics seems to have passed through three major stages. Initially, many thought the Net had a bit of progressive bias, stemming perhaps from the left-libertarian nature of the counterculture that was among the first significant group of users. Then, in a second stage, more sober folks saw the digital world as pretty much politically neutral, equally available for use by people of all political persuasions. Since 2016, in the wake of the US presidential election and the UK Brexit, along with the rise of right-wing authoritarian movements in the US, Europe, Brazil and around the globe aided by online fake news, Russian trolls, and shady digital campaign companies like Cambridge Analytic, some have begun to wonder if digital politics is ushering in a new kind of totalitarianism.

But this would be as much a mistake as assuming the Net would usher in a political utopia. The digital world no doubt poured accelerant on political fires set by a new wave of racists, sexists and authoritarians, but the fires had already been set. Social media and other elements of digital culture are tools that can be used by anyone with the skill and knowledge to use them. Whether they are used to build more egalitarian political cultures or to deepen inequality will depend upon which forces develop the political will and skill to prevail.

fake news

The materials below offer varying perspectives on new media, digital cultures and politics, including the rise of fake news, digital campaigning and propaganda, and a host of related analyses of the positive and negative impacts of new media on politics.

Featured Book

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President: What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. One of the world's foremost experts on the media and elections offers a meticulous empirical analysis of the Russian impact on the US presidential vote of 2016, concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that Russian hacking and trolling, combined with negligent reporting by the media, swung the election to Donald Trump.

Bibliography

Some Research Sites that Include Analyses of Digitized Politics

Some Journals that Include Analyses of Digitized Politics

See also our section of "Activism Digitized" on the use of digital tools by social movements.