Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics

Citation

Stuart, D. (2009), "Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics", Online Information Review, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 840-841. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520910985783

The importance of internet politics as an area of research is not only due to the increasing importance of the internet in the way we engage with existing government institutions, but also the way it is changing these institutions, and potentially the nature of government itself. Taking internet politics to refer to both the politics of the internet and politics on the internet, the Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics attempts to cover both of these broad definitions in 31 chapters organised into four parts:

1. 1.

   BL institutions;

2. 2.

   behaviour;

3. 3.

   identities; and

4. 4.

   law and policy.

The first part looks at the effect of the internet on political institutions: campaigning on the internet, new forms of political organisation, open government, e‐government. This is followed by people's political behaviour online: our interaction with the news, the possible Balkanisation of communities, the potential of direct democracy. Part 3 covers the changing nature of identity: the effect of the internet on national identity, the changing nature of public and private identity, gender and the internet. Finally, the last part of the book covers law and policy: censorship, surveillance, property, protocols, governance and the digital divide.

Two potential pitfalls of a handbook on internet politics are the changing way we use internet technologies and the tendency to place too much emphasis on internet politics in the Anglo‐American world – both of which the Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics manages to avoid. While it has a number of chapters that focus on internet politics in the UK and the USA, this has been balanced by chapters that compare politics on the internet throughout the world, across Europe, and in the Arab world.

Although it fails to include some of the more recent social media technologies, such as micro‐blogging, the handbook's focus on the changing nature of the relationships between the actors caused by the technologies rather than technologies themselves means that it will be useful for a while a yet.

Without a doubt the handbook is an excellent reference work on internet politics in its broadest sense. It is, overall, well written, includes an extensive index to aid quick consultation, and has a bibliography that runs to over 50 pages.

My one criticism of the handbook would be the combining of politics of the internet and politics on the internet into a single work. Although the two areas have much in common, with themes such as the digital divide running throughout the book, the two areas are diverse enough and broad enough to warrant their own handbook. As it is, those whose primary interest is politics of the internet may feel short‐changed, while those interested in politics on the internet will probably skip over a few of the later chapters.