Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 2, pp. 147-148. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710730330

This competitively‐priced addition to the extensive literature on the internet offers two things of real interest and relevance. The first is a competent review of the uses to which political organizations, like political parties and interest groups, put the internet, with all the canny packaging and marketing of political messages and ideologies that entails. Included here is some useful commentary, too, on e‐government and e‐democracy. The second is an interesting and probing examination of the politics of the internet (rather than politics on it), taking the reader into well‐known territory like the global information society and the digital divide, internet governance and the challenges of regulation and self‐regulation, the role economic power plays in and on the internet, and surveillance and privacy there.

Because of its wide reach, this is clearly a book for students studying the current role of and challenges for the internet, from an information studies and communication studies perspective, as well as for any academic library keen to improve its collection on books and journals where the internet and politics converge. It is likely to go through several editions and is one of those books that academic libraries tend to buy in duplicate for short‐loan as well as for general lending. It reaches out, too, to higher levels of the school and college curricula and their libraries. Of significant benefit will be its comprehensive (mainly UK and USA) bibliography, to books and journal and website articles. Chadwick (who is a lecturer in politics in the University of London) has done a good job and produced an attractive and useful mainstream text.

Internet politics of any kind is a fast‐moving and increasingly politicized field. Governments and political parties, campaigning interest groups and political activists, are all at work building sticky websites to disseminate and gather information, identify and reach market segments and constituencies, enlist support and attract funding, and widen participation. Views are mixed as to whether the internet (e‐government, e‐voting, and so forth) can and will reactivate a perceived apathy towards the conventional political process. Views are also mixed as to whether newsgroups and blogs have superseded conventional media like television and the broadsheet press in offering topical political comment and a chance to influence policy‐making.

For all the talk of the digital divide, political participation has growth substantially in recent years because of – and on – the internet. Governments promote it for efficiency, transparency, ideological control, and social capital. Virtual political communities, mainstream and counter‐cultural (and even terrorist) are more numerous than ever, and community and grassroot networks arguably play a deliberative as well as a consultative role. Internet‐mediated politics attracts PR professionals to design the websites, conduct the market research, and sell the message. It operates intra‐ and inter‐state, and internet politics turns local politics into global issues. It is a great mobilizer and converger of opinion. Chadwick's discussion highlights key trends, provides relevant background, offers apt examples (of community networks and blogs and so forth), as well as a dispassionate and rightly sceptical survey of (mainly USA and UK) e‐government and IT strategies and programmes. The jury is still out on e‐government, as commentators and teachers in this field know all too well.

For readers interested more in internet governance, who regard politics on the internet as something more for political specialists (it is not in fact!), Chadwick's analysis of governance issues will appeal. It is clear and well‐documented, even though it is clear that the earlier politics sections really fire his enthusiasm. He is right to say that all the rhetoric of the information society should be qualified by a realistic look at political and economic power – the major players keen to converge the internet with telephony and telecoms and media, the mixed success and credibility of bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assignment Names and Numbers, the body with domain name oversight (its objectivity is found wanting), and the powerful mix of technology (protocols and standards will, he says, decide much of what ultimately happens on the internet) and legislation/regulation.

Whether control can and should be exercised over the internet takes him logically into different models (the EU likes to regulate and the USA to self‐regulate), whether the debate about control has got side‐tracked into terrorism and pornography while the real power struggle lies in corporate economics, relationships between corporates and governments, and intellectual property (music is the clear example. Control is also driven by the facts of (and the moral panics associated with) privacy rights, the surveillance trade‐offs between individual and the state in a democracy, and security. The book is international up to a point (mainly UK and USA), with side glances at Singapore and China, Canada and Australia but nothing systematic (OUP publicity is slightly misleading in saying it is so international). Even so, this is an excellent accessible and topical study, a sure winner with students, a bargain for duplicate purchase by libraries, and with appeal for internet wonks who like politics and political wonks who like the internet.