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The Hyperlinked Society and the Online Public Sphere |
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Written by Matt
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Friday, 23 May 2008 |
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Another edited volume to which I've contributed has made it to press. The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age, edited by Joe Turow and Lokman Tsui , has come out from DigitalCultureBooks, a new imprint of the University of Michigan Press.  My contribution is entitled "What is the Online Public Sphere Good For"? My very short answer: scandals and fact-checking, but NOT giving ordinary citizens greater voice in politics. I am particularly critical of what I term "trickle up" theories of online discourse. Scholars like Yochai Benkler , Daniel Drezner , and Henry Farrell are right about many things, but I argue that their vision of an accessible, bottom-up political discourse doesn't fit with the available evidence. You can see a preprint of the chapter here . If you like what you read, the book can be purchased from Amazon here .
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Last Updated ( Friday, 04 July 2008 )
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