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.
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
- Allcott, Hunt and Matthew Gentzkow. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Journal of Economic Perspective 31.2 (Spring 2017): 211-236.
- Anderson, Janna and Lee Raine. "The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online." Pew Research Center (October 19, 2017).
- Barisione, M and Asimina Michailidou, eds Rethinking Power and Legitimacy in the Digital Era. New York: Palgrave, 2017.
- Benker, Y., et al. "Study: Breitbart-led Right-Wing Media Ecosystem Altered Broader Media Agenda." Columbia Journalism Review (March 3, 2017).
- Boler, M., ed. Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
- boyd, banah. "Why Is America Self-segregating?" Zephoria (2017).
- Caplan, Robin. "How Do You Deal with a Problem Like Fake News?" Points (2017).
- Carty V & Onyett J. "Protest, Cyberactivism and New Social Movements: The Reemergence of the Peace Movement Post 9/11." Social Movement Studies 5. 3, (2006): 229-249.
- Chandler, David & Christian Fuchs, ed. Digital Objects, Digital Subjects: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Capitalism, Labour and Politics in the Age of Big Data. University of Westminster Press, 2019..
- Coleman, G. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
- Coleman, Stephen and Jay G. Blumler. The Internet and Democratic Citizenship. Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Dewey, Caitlin. "Facebook Face-News Writer: 'I Think Donald Trump is in the White House Because of Me." Washington Post (November, 17, 2016.
- Ehrenkranz, Melanie. "To Fight Fake News, This Game Teaches Players how to Spread Misinformation." Gizmodo (February 2, 2018).
- Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018.
- Garton Ash, Timothy. Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.
- Goldsmith, J & Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Gray, Chris Hables. "Big Data, Actionable Information, Scientific Knowledge and the Goal of Control." Revista Teknokultura 11.3 (2014): 529-554.
- Han, H. How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Hersh, E. Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
- Higgins, Kathleen. "Post-Truth Pluralism: The Unlikely Political Wisdom of Nietzsche"
- Human Rights & the Internet. Special issue of Open Democracy.
- Jeong, Sarah. "If We Took 'Gamergate' Seriously, 'Pizzagate' Might Never Have Happened." Washington Post (December 14, 2016).
- Karpf D. The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Kreiss, D. Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2017.
- Langin, Katie. "Fake News Travels Faster than Truth on Twitter." Science (March 8, 2018).
- Lee, Dave. "The Tactics of a Russian Troll Farm." BBC Online (February 16, 2018).
- Lees, Matt. "What Gamergate Should Have Taught Us about the Alt-right." Guardian (December 1, 2016).
- Loader, B. D., and D. Mercea, eds. Social media and democracy: Innovations in participatory politics. New York: Routledge, 2012.
- Lotan, Gilad. "Fake News Is Not the Only Problem: Bias, Propaganda, and Deliberately Misleading Information are Much More Prevalent and Do More Damage." Points (2017).
- McCaughy M & Ayers M. Cyberactivism – Online Activism in Theory and Practice, Routledge, New York, 2017.
- McIntyre, Lee. Post-Truth. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2018.
- Parkinson, Hannah. "Click and Elect: How Fake News Helped Donald Trump Win a Real Election." Guardian (November 14, 2016).
- Persily, N. “Can Democracy Survive the Internet?" Journal of Democracy 28 (2017) 63-76.
- McKinnon, R. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. Basic Boooks, 2013
- Morozov, E. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2012. One of the strongest critics against web politics.
- Read, Max. "Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook." New York Magazine (November 9, 2016).
- Soldatov, Andrei and Irina Borogan. The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russian Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries. New York: Public Affairs, 2015.
- Solon, Olivia ad Emma Graham-Harrison. "The Six Weeks that Brought Down Cambridge Analytica." Guardian (May 3, 2018).
- Turner, Fred 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Vaidhuanathan, Siva. Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Vosoughi, S. et al. "The Spread of True and False News Online." Science 359 (March 2018): 1146-1151.
Some Research Sites that Include Analyses of Digitized Politics
- Berkman Center for Internet & Society
- Digital Civil Society Lab
- Pew Internet Research Center on US Politics Online
- Politico: Digital Politics
- Oxford Internet Institute
Some Journals that Include Analyses of Digitized Politics
- First Monday
- Information, Communication and Society
- Journal of Information Technology and Politics
- New Media and Society
- Points: Data and Society
- Political Communication
See also our section of "Activism Digitized" on the use of digital tools by social movements.