This book examines the recent evolution of online spaces and their impact on networked democracy. Through an illuminating mix of theoretical and methodological analysis, contributors provide an understanding of how a range of individuals and groups, including activists and NGOs, governments and griefers, are using digital technologies to influence public debates. Contributions consider these phenomena in a global contemporary context, providing within the same volume rigorous examinations of the design of digital platforms for deliberation, users’ attempts to manipulate those platforms, and the ways activists and governments are responding to emerging threats to democratic discourse. Providing diverse, global case studies, this collection is a valuable tool for academics within and beyond the fields of new media, communication, and information policy and governance.

Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of liberation'' versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia.

A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements’ greatest strengths and frequent challenges To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today’s social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests—how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change. Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture—and offer essential insights into the future of governance.

The world is undergoing a profound set of digital disruptions that are changing the nature of how governments counter dissent and assert control over their countries. While increasing numbers of people rely primarily or exclusively on online platforms, authoritarian regimes have concurrently developed a formidable array of technological capabilities to constrain and repress their citizens. In The Rise of Digital Repression, Steven Feldstein documents how the emergence of advanced digital tools bring new dimensions to political repression. Presenting new field research from Thailand, the Philippines, and Ethiopia, he investigates the goals, motivations, and drivers of these digital tactics. Feldstein further highlights how governments pursue digital strategies based on a range of factors: ongoing levels of repression, political leadership, state capacity, and technological development. The international community, he argues, is already seeing glimpses of what the frontiers of repression look like. For instance, Chinese authorities have brought together mass surveillance, censorship, DNA collection, and artificial intelligence to enforce their directives in Xinjiang. As many of these trends go global, Feldstein shows how this has major implications for democracies and civil society activists around the world. A compelling synthesis of how anti-democratic leaders harness powerful technology to advance their political objectives, The Rise of Digital Repression concludes by laying out innovative ideas and strategies for civil society and opposition movements to respond to the digital autocratic wave.

Recent years have seen an enormous increase in protests across the world in which citizens have challenged what they see as a deterioration of democratic institutions and the very civil, political and social rights that form the basis of democratic life. Beginning with Iceland in 2008, and then forcefully in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece and Portugal, or more recently in Peru, Brazil, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Ukraine, people have taken to the streets against what they perceive as a rampant and dangerous corruption of democracy, with a distinct focus on inequality and suffering. This timely new book addresses the anti-austerity social movements of which these protests form part, mobilizing in the context of a crisis of neoliberalism. Donatella della Porta shows that, in order to understand their main facets in terms of social basis, strategy, and identity and organizational structures, we should look at the specific characteristics of the socioeconomic, cultural and political context in which they developed. The result is an important and insightful contribution to understanding a key issue of our times, which will be of interest to students and scholars of political and economic sociology, political science and social movement studies, as well as political activists.

Networks of Outrage and Hope is an exploration of the new forms of social movements and protests that are erupting in the world today, from the Arab uprisings to the indignadas movement in Spain, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the social protests in Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere. While these and similar social movements differ in many important ways, there is one thing they share in common: they are all interwoven inextricably with the creation of autonomous communication networks supported by the Internet and wireless communication. In this new edition of his timely and important book, Manuel Castells examines the social, cultural and political roots of these new social movements, studies their innovative forms of self-organization, assesses the precise role of technology in the dynamics of the movements, suggests the reasons for the support they have found in large segments of society, and probes their capacity to induce political change by influencing people’s minds. Two new chapters bring the analysis up-to-date and draw out the implications of these social movements and protests for understanding the new forms of social change and political democracy in the global network society.

This insightful text rigorously examines and accounts for contemporary developments – and crucially a reversal of ‘democraticness’ - in democratic polities and related political processes comparing 38 democracies across the world. The focus is on contemporary developments and recent volatile levels of democraticness. Democracies in Peril introduces theoretical backgrounds of what makes democracy tick and scrutinizes empirical trends and development in ‘democraticness’ in an accessible manner. It explores what ‘democracy’ as a political regime implies and how the liberal democratic model developed, as well as examining the present state of affairs in democracies, the challenges democracies encounter and the perils of democracy as a legitimate system of governance in the 21st century. The book provides a ‘systemic’ approach to adjudicate the effects of this assumed reversal in democratization in terms of popular preferences, party behaviour, institutional architecture and policy performance. The effects of public policy formation and the role of the state on actual democratic performance are also analysed. Finally, case studies on the Covid pandemic and the development of social welfare demonstrate the complex relationship between government capacities – under pressure - and the quality of democracy, approaching the question: How do 38 democratic states cope with societal problems, populist tendencies and a fast-changing world without degrading their institutional quality and legitimacy? This text will be of key interest to students, scholars, journalists and interested readers of comparative politics, democratization, public administration, political economy, constitutional law, and the social sciences in general.

Social media is broken -- or at least it appears that way. To many, the industry seems to have come undone, but what if, in fact, it's just coming together? As social media has become integrated into both business and mainstream culture, we've seen euphoric novelty give way to hysteria around the ill effects of misinformation, data privacy and polarizing echo chambers. Now, as everything from the ethics behind algorithms to the legal shield social networks use to protect themselves from liability is being discussed at the highest levels of government, many are wondering if social media's problems are simply too great to fix. Against the backdrop of a global crisis, Ryan Holmes, the Founder and Chairman of Hootsuite, takes a sobering look at concerns surrounding the social media industry today and offers an optimistic view of where it's headed. Holmes argues that the hysteria we're experiencing now is part of a natural lifecycle all game-changing communication technologies go through before finding balance. As North America faces a global pandemic and societal unrest, social media has become more crucial than ever. Holmes' incisive combination of history and future-think will help industry insiders and average readers alike understand the potential and pitfalls of social media and map out a plan to thrive in the years ahead.

The rise of far-right communities on digital platforms is a global crisis. Digital Islamophobia tracks far-right groups where they are a virtual and vicious threat, exploring how these networks grow, develop, and circulate Islamophobic hate-speech on Twitter. Reconstructing this media ecosystem, Digital Islamophobia traces the reactionary political ideologies animating these groups through feminist data analytic techniques in a transnational study of German and American far-right, digitally networked users. This work illustrates far-right communities using data visualization techniques, identifies a taxonomy of user-types, analyzes themes and stories that motivate far-right users, and tracks the spread of linked forms of anti-Muslim sentiment, reactionary ideologies, and (mis)information. In doing so, Digital Islamophobia details how far-right discourse is not merely national, or even transatlantic, but increasingly transnationalized among American, German, as well as Indian and Nigerian digital networks. By tracking and tracing the contours of these far-right digital communities on Twitter and analyzing the content of their conversations, Digital Islamophobia provides policy-makers, researchers, and scholars with a potential road-map to stop them.