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Archive for March 2007

Presenting the International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking

Posted on Sat, Mar 31, 2007 at 7:52 PM by Andrew Chadwick

I'm currently at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard for the opening conference of the new, NSF-funded International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking led by Peter Shane of Ohio State and Stephen Coleman of Leeds. The group consists of 17 members from around the world; a great mix of senior and junior colleagues with a diverse range of interests and concerns. The meeting has been extremely interesting and fruitful so far, with an excellent programme of future events and concrete outputs, including a special issue of the journal I/S and a jointly-authored book to follow. A list of the participants:

Professor Peter M. Shane, The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds
Steven J. Balla, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Patrizia Bertini, independent practitioner and Researcher, European Internet Accessibilità Observatory, Manerbio, Italy
Andrew Chadwick, Royal Holloway College, University of London
Sungsoo Hwang, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pittsburgh
David Lazer, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Jeffrey Lubbers, Washington College of Law, American University, Washington, D.C.
Laurence Monnoyer-Smith, University of Technology at Compiègne, France
Beth Noveck, New York Law School
Kerrie Oakes, Ph.D. Candidate, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
Oren Perez, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Vincent Price, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Alicia Schatteman, Ph.D. candidate, The State University of New Jersey at Newark, NJ
Polona Picman Štefancic, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Peter L. Strauss, Betts Professor of Law, Columbia University
Scott Wright, De Montfort University, Leicester, England.

See also David Lazer's blog entry at the Kennedy School Program on Networked Governance.

(Crossposted at the New Political Communication Unit Blog).

Wikipedia edit wars

Posted on Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 4:48 PM by Andrew Chadwick

There's been some discussion on the AOIR list lately of Wikipedia "edit wars" - conflicts that break out over the precise content of entries. This page illustrates some of these. The academic in me makes me think that some of these are actually pretty serious and not at all lame, but maybe that's my problem.

Watching them watching you watching them

Posted on Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 10:56 PM by Andrew Chadwick

A rather bizarre new web service called Atten.tv. It allows you to watch others' web browsing sessions in what looks like a quasi-video format. To quote:

"Watch what others are watching. See who is watching you. Influential individuals. Voyeuristic groups."

This is the tragedy of ubiquitous digital surveillance. It turns us all into voyeurs.

Challenges to GooTube

Posted on Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 11:10 PM by Andrew Chadwick

News Corp and NBC are banding together to create an online video presence that they, rather than Google, control. As I blogged when the GooTube deal was first struck, they were always in danger of intellectual property related weakness. The Los Angeles Times says:

"Hollywood has long been the king of entertainment. It believes that viewers will eventually get tired of the amateur videos that populate YouTube and other video-sharing sites, and that professionally produced material will win out."

They might be onto something.

(Crossposted at the New Political Communication Unit Blog).

Another "Army of Davids" example?

Posted on Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 11:04 PM by Andrew Chadwick

Another example for the "Army of Davids" hall of fame, as Arianna Huffington mobilizes thirty citizen journalists to successfully unearth the identity of the person who made the Hillary Clinton "1984" video. Turns out the video was heavily borrowed from Connecticut Bob, the citizen journalist who featured in the Ned Lamont vs Joe Lieberman contest last autumn.

Edited on: Mon, Mar 26, 2007 11:36 PM

Fortnightly link roundup for March 23, 2007

Posted on Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 5:01 PM by Andrew Chadwick
Free Security Tool Attracts 38 Million Downloads - Yahoo! News
Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before
Digital Dialogues
Blogging the Presidential Race | Wanna Be Presidents
How much 'lived experience' does your news site cover?
Webcameron & 18 Doughty St.
All Politics is Local, Or is It?
The Web on the Candidates
MySpace Impact
Social network traffic up 11.5 percent; MySpace still dominates
outside.in
The Secret Diary of Hillary Clinton
Microsoft-only Estonian Internet Voting: Troubling Reports (updated)
Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration
EFF: FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project
Pakistani intelligence services using U.S. surveillance tech in aid of kidnapping, torture, and murder?
Daily kos dem candidates straw poll results March 16, 2007
Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites
Caste communities on Orkut
Against Well-designed Reputation Systems (An Argument for Community Patent). Many-to-Many:
Second Life, Games, and Virtual Worlds. Many-to-Many:
At 18 Doughty Street
A visit with Webcameron in London
Ask David
Online Politics: Web teams
China dissident's wife: "Yahoo betrayed my husband."
The Information Literacy Website
Ning - Create your own Social Networks!
Big Brother State - an animated short by David Scharf
DoJ: FBI misused Patriot act in domestic spying activities
India: Google's Orkut helps cops censor? New cyberterror law... UPDATED
More on Orkut and law enforcement: Brazil
Journalism.org- The State of the News Media 2007
GlobalSecurity.org - Reliable Security Information
In Policy Shift, C-Span Clears Some Clips for Web Use
Freebase
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Viacom Sues Google Over Video Clips on Its Sharing Web Site
RSS Compendium - RSS Readers - Web-Based
Twitter / johnedwards
3spots: Ajax (or Flash) Startpages (or Homepages)
tech decentral » Ajax Start Pages Suck
EFF: Paper: Who Controls Your Television?

Worldmapper - global internet user maps

Posted on Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 3:13 PM by Andrew Chadwick

Worldmapper is "a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest." This produces some remarkably intuitive depictions of global internet diffusion. Thanks to Yenn Lee for alerting me to this.

Hansard Society's Digital Dialogues project

Posted on Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 10:00 AM by Andrew Chadwick

Digital Dialogues

Just before last Christmas I was lucky enough to be at a conference at the OII which involved some discussion of the new interim report of the Hansard Society's and UK Department for Constitutional Affairs' excellent new e-democracy initiative, Digital Dialogues. The report is now publicly available and the project continues. One of the main themes that emerges is the lack of marketing in several of the initiatives, but there are some good examples of small-scale successes. The other thing I like about the approach is that it doesn't rely on just forums, but encompasses blogs and chats. Phase Two is now underway.

(Crossposted at the New Political Communication Unit Blog).

All the (wannabe) presidents' blogs

Posted on Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 11:24 PM by Andrew Chadwick

David Silver and David de Ugarte have built a page that brings together all of the primary candidates' blogs (or at least those that have rss feeds) in an attractive format, at wannabepresidents.com.

Personal Democracy Forum

Posted on Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 7:17 PM by Andrew Chadwick

I'm really enjoying the coverage of the primaries this time around, especially the excellent Personal Democracy Forum with its informative round-ups. Highly recommended.

(Crossposted at the New Political Communication Unit Blog).

MySpace Impact

Posted on Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 7:27 AM by Andrew Chadwick

MySpace now has a dedicated politics portal.

OpenCongress

Posted on Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 2:32 PM by Andrew Chadwick

OpenCongress - the latest excellent example of context-rich web media.

To what extent does China block external sites?

Posted on Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 2:24 PM by Andrew Chadwick

We're in dire need of some kind of up to date quantitative study of the extent of filtering and blocking by the 'great firewall of China'. Especially when one considers this:

China blocks my Department

It's ironic, given that I've recently heard that Internet Politics is to be translated into Chinese!

Fortnightly link roundup for March 9, 2007

Posted on Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 2:46 PM by Andrew Chadwick
Great Firewall of China | Home
Local Democracy Under Siege: Activism, Public Interests and Private Politics: Books: Dorothy Holland,Donald M. Nonini,Catherine A. Lutz,Lesley Bartlett,Marla Frederick-McGlathery,Thaddeus Countway Guldbrandsen,Enrique G. Murillo
Presenters University
Who's Who - ICT for Development Network
H2O Playlist: Home
Pipes: Rewire the web
Infoscape Research Lab
Media Studies 2.0 - Article on future of media studies by David Gauntlett at Theory.org.uk
China Blocks LiveJournal
AlterNet: MediaCulture: Howard Dean 2.0: Obama Engages Youth on the Web
Study: P2P effect on legal music sales "not statistically distinguishable from zero"
Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society: Books: Jon Anderson,Jodi Dean,Geert Lovink
The old dog's new tricks
BBC NEWS | Politics | Citizens speak up at Number 10
What's the cost of e-mailing 1.8m people?
s e-democracy now a reality?
BitTorrent download portal debuts
Where Have All the Protests Gone? Online

About the book

Posted on Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 8:12 PM by Andrew Chadwick

From the book cover:

Andrew Chadwick, Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, April 2006).
ISBN13: 9780195177732
ISBN10: 0195177738

In the developed world, there is no longer an issue of whether the Internet affects politics-but rather how, why, and with what consequences. With the Internet now spreading at a breathtaking rate in the developing world, the new medium is fraught with tensions, paradoxes, and contradictions. How do we make sense of these? In this major new work, Andrew Chadwick addresses such concerns, providing the first comprehensive overview of Internet politics.

Internet Politics examines the impact of new communication technologies on political parties and elections, pressure groups, social movements, local democracy, public bureaucracies, and global governance. It also analyzes persistent and controversial policy problems, including the digital divide; the governance of the Internet itself; the tensions between surveillance, privacy, and security; and the political economy of the Internet media sector. The approach is explicitly comparative, providing numerous examples from the U.S., Britain, and many other countries. Written in a clear and accessible style, this theoretically sophisticated and up-to-date text reveals the key difference the Internet makes in how we "do" politics and how we "think about" political life.

A companion website, www.andrewchadwick.com offers dynamic, regularly updated material to supplement the book, along with PowerPoint slides for students and instructors, data spreadsheets, and additional case studies.

Each chapter includes an opening overview, discussion points, and a guide to further reading. Featuring numerous figures, tables, and text boxes, Internet Politics is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in political science, international relations, and communication studies.


Contents

Figures, Tables, and Exhibits (download pdf)
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Introduction

Part One: Contexts
Chapter 2: Internet Politics: Some Conceptual Tools
Chapter 3: Network Logic: A Political Pre-History of the Internet
Chapter 4: Access, Inclusion, and the Digital Divide

Part Two: Institutions
Chapter 5: Community, Deliberation and Participation: E-Democracy
Chapter 6: Interest Groups and Social Movements: E-Mobilization
Chapter 7: Parties, Candidates, and Elections: E-Campaigning
Chapter 8: Executives and Bureaucracies: E-Government

Part Three: Issues and Controversies
Chapter 9: Constructing the Global Information Society
Chapter 10: The Rise of Internet Governance
Chapter 11: Surveillance, Privacy, and Security
Chapter 12: The Political Economy of Internet Media

Chapter 13: Conclusion: The Future of Internet Politics

Bibliography
Index (download pdf proof)


About the Author

Andrew Chadwick is Professor of Political Science, Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations and Founding Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Product Details: 400 pages; 18 illus.; 6-1/2 x 9-1/4; 0-19-517773-8


Awards

Internet Politics was awarded the American Sociological Association's Communication and Information Technologies Section Outstanding Book Award for 2007.


Pre-publication and jacket review comments

"Chadwick provides us with the most comprehensive look at the Internet and politics to date. This valuable text covers the history of the Internet, patterns of citizen use, debates over the impact of e-politics, and comparative perspectives on e-government, citizen participation, activism, privacy issues, and the governance issues facing the most decisive political technology of the twenty-first century. A most impressive work." - W. Lance Bennett, University of Washington.

"Its strengths include exemplary organization of the topics, extremely thorough research, and the inclusion of just about every significant source or opinion on the issues addressed. Chadwick has done a remarkable and superb job with this book. It will be an outstanding contribution to the literature on the Internet's impact on society." - Gary Chapman, The University of Texas at Austin.

"It tells the stories it needs to tell in a very clear, pithy way. It covers the issues I think most research scholars are addressing and that most students should be discussing." - Kenneth Rogerson, Duke University.

"The most thorough and comprehensive book available about the Internet and politics - Chadwick is able to combine well-crafted introductory material aimed at students first approaching the subject with an erudite overview of the leading research literature." - Bruce Bimber, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Post-publication reviews

"This is the book for which many of us have been waiting: a comprehensive, scholarly and accessible text on the significance of new technologies for the study and practice of contemporary politics and government. And in general it does not disappoint. Chadwick displays an infectious enthusiasm for his subject, he is frighteningly well-read in the grey literature that proliferates in this field, he can summarise neatly all the main bodies of theoretical work in the field and he displays a handy knack of explaining complex technologies with clarity and aplomb. Above all, he manages to convey his keen conviction of the importance of technological change and the fun of researching it... What will strike any reader of this book is the sheer ambition of its scope... [It] should become a well-read and widely-cited contribution to this fascinating field." - Professor Christine Bellamy, Nottingham Trent University, in Public Administration 85 (4), 2007.

"Andrew Chadwick’s Internet Politics provides an extremely comprehensive and useful summary of the ever-expanding literature on politics and the Internet... [T]he book is remarkably successful and the author should be commended for imposing such sophisticated order on what has become, rather like its subject, an expanding and increasingly diversifying field... [T]he treatment of e-government initiatives is particularly instructive, with the author offering an incisive critique of their consumer-oriented focus and under-developed and increasingly fractured relationship with the e-democracy agenda. Essential reading for any new scholar entering the field of internet politics, or for more established scholars entering unfamiliar sub-field territory." - Professor Rachel Gibson, University of Manchester, in Governance, 21 (1), 2008.

"A timely, relevant book, of ambitious scope, that is a worthy addition to undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists across a spectrum of social science courses. Importantly, it is a book that students should find interesting to read and encouraging of considered reflection upon questions of contemporary and deep significance for society, polity, and citizen." - Dr Eleanor Burt, University of St. Andrews, in Information Polity 12 (2007), pp. 95-96.

"Lack of predictability regarding the Internet can be dealt with by academics in a variety of ways... A common approach is to speculate wildly, making grand predictions of online virtual lifestyles and electronic penetration into every aspect of our lives... An alternative strategy is to provide a solid and well-researched account of the origins, current status and likely directions for some specific trends in the world of the worldwide web. It is this latter approach that Chadwick chooses to take in Internet Politics." Dr Mark Erickson, University of Brighton in European Journal of Communication 22 (2), 2007.

"Starting with an overview of the Internet's development - providing a context for understanding why it works in the way it does, how far it has managed to permeate society, and giving a realistic picture of its impact to date - Chadwick goes on to discuss various key issues in detail. His choices, ranging from "e-democracy" to the difficulties of regulating such a broad and ever-changing medium, are all excellently explained. With the web still being developed without any real guiding hand, with no effective systems of regulation, and with no proven models for online success in any area - be it commercial, political, or personal - it is hard enough to keep track of recent developments, let alone predict the future paths or apparent trends... He has therefore sensibly set up a companion website to continually update this intelligent and considered textbook... [I]t promises to be a fascinating resource for both students and political actors alike." - J. Clive Matthews, Times Literary Supplement, December 1, 2006.

"Well researched, timely and readable... manages to impress both in its scope and its depth... Internet Politics should be required reading for anyone attempting to understanding the way in which the Internet affects our lives." - Dr Mathias Klang, University of Göteborg, in Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society 5 (1), 2007.

"Consistently relying on his extensive command of political science theory, Chadwick covers a large number of examples in each chapter and elucidates the ways in which the Internet has modified political practices and, in the process, generated new versions of existing political theories. Its methodology and its insights... go far beyond introductory material and stand as a model of scholarly analysis. Chadwick is fully aware of the risks with which the field of Internet Studies is fraught, yet he has managed to transcend the essential fluidity of his subject matter to write a solidly researched and constantly illuminating book." - Professor Viviane Serfaty, Université de Marne-la-Vallée (Book of the Month review for December 2006, for Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies).

"Chadwick's work is a remarkably comprehensive examination of the online phenomenon and its contribution to politics. His book, however, is not just an exploration of parties and policies. He also acknowledges the very real political battles for control of the technology that allows the World Wide Web to function. He offers a compelling outline of efforts to control Internet development, of attempts by some governments to regulate the Internet, and of access that contributes to a very real Digital Divide. Whether or not it is intentional, the book conveys a sense of drama." - W. Joe Watson, Baker University, in Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 52 (1), 2008.

"That the internet is having a profound effect on politics has become a commonplace in academia; now, with Internet Politics, Andrew Chadwick has provided us with an… authoritative establishing statement for this emerging sub-discipline of politics." Professor Christopher May, Lancaster University, in Political Studies Review 6 (2), 2008.

"Chadwick has successfully produced a book that offers diverse perspectives on the political nature of the internet. A significant strength of this book is that it has opened the door for those interested in the political internet beyond the familiar and well-trod terrain of elections and participation… Chadwick reminds us that the internet is not a neutral medium, but is political in its very nature… this book will serve researchers well." Paul Zube, Michigan State University in New Media and Society 9 (5), p. 881-888.

"The distinctive feature of Internet Politics is its extensive use of the professional literature to frame its examinations of societal, technological, organizational, and international topics. Its nuanced and sophisticated treatment of the literature will make the book a valuable reference for those engaged in investigations of specific Internet subjects. Chadwick is particularly successful in reviewing the disparate work of others while still pushing ahead to develop his own insights and perspectives." - Professor Richard Lehne, Rutgers University (in Step Ahead: Newsletter of the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Section of APSA 4 (1), 2006.

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Edited on: Fri, Jul 25, 2008 6:11 PM

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