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The interaction between social media and government trust has been one of the most critical and dynamic research areas in the field of governance in recent years. In this paper, a scientometric analysis of 668 academic publications published from 2000 to 2018 related to social media and government trust is presented to characterise the intellectual landscape by identifying and visualising the evolution of the collaboration network, the co-citation network, and the emerging trends. The results show that the number of publications in this field has increased rapidly, and it has become an increasingly more popular interdisciplinary research subject. The most productive authors and institutions in this subject area are in the USA, China, Australia, and European countries. In this paper, we identify the most pressing topics of social media and government trust research as represented in the existing literature, which include the relationship between the Internet and governance, the impact of social media on government trust, and the contribution of social media to government trust and mitigation responses. The paper presents an in-depth analysis of social media and government trust research to better understand governance and the directions in this field that have emerged over the past 19 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in shaping citizens' political experience. We turn to it to consume political news and, in some countries, to even cast our ballots at parliamentary elections. Leading the way in embracing Internet voting (i‐voting) is Estonia where nearly half of the ballots cast during the 2019 parliamentary election were submitted online. Using original data from the 2019 Estonian Candidate Study, this paper explores the relationship between how candidates campaign and their electoral performance. It finds greater use of both offline and online campaign tools to contribute to higher vote shares as candidates win more traditional and i‐votes. These positive effects are similar in size, in terms of candidates' overall electoral performance as well as their ability to attract different types of votes. The results show not only that individual‐level campaigns continue to matter, but that online campaigns have become as important as offline campaigns for candidates, and voters' political activity often transcends the medium through which they receive political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much academic and media attention has been focussed on states' development of powerful surveillance capabilities to police the online space in recent years. In authoritarian contexts, these technologies serve to identify political dissidents and remove them from the sphere of public discourse for the sake of regime survival. However, this paper argues that direct repression is but one application of coercive technologies; authoritarian states are simultaneously pursuing longer-term strategies in the online space aimed at influencing citizens' conduct and generating discourse that aligns with regime priorities. Drawing on a theoretical framework conceptualizing the civil society-politics nexus in the specific context of emerging communications technologies, the paper comparatively evaluates the attempts of two Arab Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to depoliticize and de-civilize online debate through promoting regime-friendly narratives that expose, criticize, crowd-out, delegitimize and ultimately deter political dissidents. Evidence is collected from a broad range of literature on digital authoritarianism, as well as original open-source research analysing relevant social media content in the Gulf states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Internet has been profoundly changing how people participate in politics and is reshaping their political expressions in authoritarian countries, its exact effects remain ambiguous. This paper studies how Internet access and use influence public trust in local officials in authoritarian China. By using two-period panel survey data and combining difference-in-difference with propensity score matching, we find that, compared to Internet non-users, the Internet new-users show significantly lower political trust in local government officials. Further empirical evidence indicates that its causal mechanism primarily lies in the macro-structure of urban-rural heterogeneity and the micro-process of people's changing cognition and raised expectations. Our results substantially strengthen the argument that the diffusing power of the Internet is weakening the political legitimacy of authoritarian regimes like China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This pilot paper addresses the emerging phenomenon of the political cartoon in the Chinese social media. The central claim made is that as a bottom-up, critical voice, these cartoons have now entered the fledgling Chinese public sphere by having attracted the attention of netizens and so begun to play an important role in the emergence of critical discourse in China. The paper argues its case as follows. The Introduction embeds the argument on political cartoons in my ongoing research. In the main body of the paper I supplement a working definition of political cartoons with an emphasis on their enunciative modalities. A brief historical overview then leads to the discussion of a series of current bottom-up, critical cartoons in today's China. The main surfaces of emergence of this type of cartoon are argued to be the social media, especially the Internet and weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. By way of conclusion, I identify a number of salient features reiterating the paper's central claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General political knowledge is a central variable in American politics research. Individuals with high political knowledge exhibit behaviors that are consequential to a well-functioning democracy, including holding more stable political opinions, exhibiting greater ideological constraint, knowing more about political candidates, and being more likely to vote correctly. In this paper, we examine whether the internet revolution, enabling citizens to look up anything at any time, has changed the relative importance of political knowledge in American politics. We show that important generational differences exist between Americans raised during the broadcast era and Americans raised with the presence and accessibility of the internet. Internet access can be a substitute for political knowledge stored in long-term memory, particularly among this younger generation, who may be relying on the internet to store knowledge for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focusing on the Facebook activities of eighty-three political leaders from twenty-six Western and Latin American countries, we analyze their reliance on elements of populist communication for their competitive strategies. By integrating both a communication-centered and an actor-centered approach to the study of populism, we tackle four major research questions: Do populist and non-populist leaders adopt similar communication strategies on Facebook? Is there any evidence of the so-called populist zeitgeist in such arena? What different combinations between the so-called three “elements of populist communication” characterize the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook? Are there major differences between Western and Latin American leaders? The results of our analysis provide an important contribution to the existing literature on populism and political communication in different respects. First, the populist zeitgeist “thesis” does not apply to the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook. Second, the spread of elements of populist communication in Latin America is considerably lower in comparison with Western countries, irrespective of party ideological background. Finally, this paper identifies all the logical combinations that can occur between the interplay of the different elements of populist communication, thus enabling the classification of the communication strategies employed by political leaders on Facebook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to existing literature by reassessing the racial participation gap after placing online activity within the repertoire of minorities' political actions. Even though Asian Americans are the most resourced in terms of Internet access, I theorize about how individual and structural-level impediments uniquely disadvantage this group from participating in politics online—widening overall participation disparities. Using data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey, I find that while the racial participation gap is similar for Latina/os and African Americans compared to whites, regardless of the activity's platform either offline or online, disparities magnify solely for Asian Americans when considering digital modes of political behavior. The paper ends by noting how the Internet may contribute to rather than solve issues of political inequality across race and discusses distortions in which political voices are heard or muted offline and online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing state–society relations as a theoretic framework, this study investigates whether the Internet is used to facilitate or impede democratization in authoritarian regimes. The present paper uses governance practice as the mediating mechanism, along with a regime's degree of authoritarianism as a moderator, to measure the direct and indirect effects of the Internet on democratization. This research found that the Internet can be mobilized to suppress political freedom in authoritarian regimes, while at the same time reinforcing the legitimacy of the regime's basis—both of these deter democratization. The Internet, as a tool, must be complemented by democratic deliberation to fully generate democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's technological advancement especially in the area of Internet infrastructure and the usage of social media is widely recognized. These technological tools have been instrumental in mobilizing citizen protests around various political issues in recent years. Yet, our understanding is limited whether digital opportunities consisting of the Internet and social media have enhanced or maintained the existing patterns of democratic participation and representation in contemporary Korea. To explore this question, this paper begins with an overview of the rapid expansion of information technology in Korea as well as recent protest cases (2002-2012) where Internet and social media have played a crucial role in mobilizing citizens and influencing democratic politics. The paper develops the concept of "digital participation" and uses survey evidence to analyze the varying degrees of digital participation across different socioeconomic groups with a special focus on gender and social classes. Finally, the paper ends by problematizing the gendered and classed dimensions in digital engagement that resemble the predicaments of conventional political participation and discusses the implications for democratic representation in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Internet gains an almost ubiquitous status in much of today's world, the governance of the Internet has become an important subject of study. Internet governance affects various critical issues such as open access, freedom of expression, innovation and new applications, commerce, development, and security. To date much of the discourse on Internet governance has been within the ranks of politicians, political analysts, as well as I-School and Communications School researchers. Internet governance discussions are often dictated by geopolitical issues. The perceived hegemony of the developed West regarding the governance of the Internet is increasingly facing challenges from developing countries. Some of these developing countries have even sought to exercise control over the Internet within their countries. All of these issues make Internet governance a potentially important area of study for Information Systems researchers and academics. In this paper, I briefly trace the history of Internet governance, and using that as the basis, explore more deeply the issue of Internet governance from a developing country - namely India's perspective. The paper examines various issues and their genesis, and then provides some potential approaches for dealing with global Internet governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the social media presence of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Specifically, we examine how social media users interact with BLM by using hashtags and thus modify the framing of the movement. We call this decentralized interaction with the movement “distributed framing”. Empirically, we illustrate this idea with an analysis of 66,159 tweets that mention #BlackLivesMatter in 2014, when #BlackLivesMatter becomes prominent on social media. We also tally the other hashtags that appear with #BlackLivesMatter in order to measure how online communities influence the framing of the movement. We find that #BlackLivesMatter is associated with five types of hashtags. These hashtags mention solidarity or approval of the movement, refer to police violence, mention movement tactics, mention Ferguson, or express counter-movement sentiments. The paper concludes with hypotheses about the development of movement framings that can be addressed in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In response to the growing censorship of their national Internet, Russian users, content producers and service providers have developed several resistance tactics. This paper analyzes these tactics with particular attention paid to their materiality. It first addresses the different levels of Internet "governance by infrastructure" in Russia, then focuses on the different tactics of individual and collective resistance and concludes by discussing how forms of control enacted at different levels of infrastructure are reconfiguring the geopolitics of the Russian Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – South Korea imposes more stringent restrictions on political speeches during elections than many other democratic countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine the long-standing conflict between citizens and institutions in the Korean electoral environment and the effects of the internet on this conflict. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a case study of the 2007 presidential election in Korea. During the campaign period, two video clips (one on YouTube and the other on Daum, a major domestic web portal) emerged and implicated the then-leading candidate in a financial scandal. The paper investigates how these video clips were shared and discussed among Korean voters, even though the country's election laws restricted the sharing of such information in cyberspace. The paper employs a combination of network analysis techniques, including hyperlink analysis, interaction network analysis, and semantic network analysis. Findings – YouTube served as a medium for Korean voters to circumvent local electoral regulations, thus implying the neologism "cyber-exile". However, unlike Daum, YouTube failed to facilitate discussions on the posted video clip. The discussion through its comment feature was often derailed by irrelevant comments from seemingly uninterested parties. The address of the video clip was shared through personal blogs and online bulletin boards in Korean cyberspace, but these efforts led only to a fragmented sphere. Research limitations/implications – Any comparison between YouTube and Daum should be made with caution because of inherent differences between the two platforms. Practical implications – The results have important practical implications for those interested in designing e-deliberation environments. For example, they should have a clearer understanding of the composition of users and the undesirable consequences of a fragmented public sphere. Originality/value – This paper highlights how pre-internet institutions shape its members' political activity on the internet. In addition, the results clearly demonstrate that an innovative effort to circumvent barriers on the part of internet users is not enough to harness the potential of online discussions for a measured and sustained discourse on the issue at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of new media in the 2007 election. This election is commonly seen as a breakthrough for the use of Internet in electoral campaigning due to the high profile use of Internet channels in the 'Kevin 07' campaign and its association with the change of Government. The paper examines the impact of the technology on the presentation of political campaign messages in the campaign. In this election, the Internet played a more visible role in both centralised party and individual candidate campaign strategies. The paper concludes that while some innovation occurred, the overall application of new media was modest, which parties and candidates face unprecedented challenges from a wide variety of alternative online voices. The degree of political engagement with online channels remains limited, however, by the continued dominance of mainstream mass media channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saudi Arabia has imprisoned and tortured activists, religious leaders, and journalists for voicing dissent online. This reflects a growing worldwide trend in the use of physical repression to censor online speech. In this paper, we systematically examine the consequences of imprisoning well-known Saudis for online dissent by analyzing over 300 million tweets as well as detailed Google search data from 2010 to 2017 using automated text analysis and crowd-sourced human evaluation of content. We find that repression deterred imprisoned Saudis from continuing to dissent online. However, it did not suppress dissent overall. Twitter followers of the imprisoned Saudis engaged in more online dissent, including criticizing the ruling family and calling for regime change. Repression drew public attention to arrested Saudis and their causes, and other prominent figures in Saudi Arabia were not deterred by the repression of their peers and continued to dissent online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how Facebook and Google make and justify decisions regarding permissible political advertising on their platforms is increasingly important. In this paper, we focus on the U.S. case and present findings from interviews with 17 former social media firm employees (n = 7) and political practitioners (n = 11). We also analyze emails (n = 45) exchanged between Facebook government and elections staffers and two campaigns, a U.S. gubernatorial (2017) and presidential campaign (2016), regarding the platform's policies in the context of paid speech. In addressing questions about Facebook's and Google's processes and policies regarding paid political content, the rationales for them, and the ability of campaigns to contest decisions, this study shows how while Facebook and Google resist being arbiters of political discourse, they actively vet paid content on their platforms. These platforms differ with respect to how and what decisions they make in the context of paid speech and within each company there are active and ongoing debates among staffers about speech. These debates at times take place in consultation with political practitioners and often occur in the context of external events. Across these firms, policies regarding speech evolve through these internal debates, appeals by practitioners, and outside pressure. At the same time, both Facebook and Google make decisions in often opaque ways, according to policies that are not transparent, and without clear justifications to campaigns or the public as to how they are applied or enforced. This limits options for political practitioners to contest regulation decisions. Finally, we conclude by arguing for the need for expanded capacities for political practitioners and the public to exercise voice around the content decisions that these firms make, and for firms to create more robust institutional mechanisms for incorporating it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the influence of online news consumption on attitudes toward the European Union in a context of protracted economic crisis. Using data from the 2011 Irish National Election Study, we combine location-specific information on broadband availability with respondent geo-location data, which facilitates causal inference about the effects of online news consumption via instrumental variable models. Results show that Irish citizens who source political information online are more prone to blame the EU for the poor state of the economy than those who do not. There is evidence of preference reinforcement among those with negative predispositions toward the EU, but not among pro-EU citizens. We complement this analysis with a study of voting behavior in the European Fiscal Compact Referendum, employing a similar methodological approach. The results from this second survey confirm the anti-EU influence of online news consumption among Irish citizens, although evidence suggests a pro-EU effect among voters who browsed the website of the politically neutral Irish Referendum Commission. Our paper contributes to the literature on public opinion, the EU, and political attitudes in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details research on online designs to overcome the collective action problem in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. This problem is created by pluralistic ignorance (Chwe, M. S. (1999). Structure and strategy in collective action.American Journal of Sociology,105(1), 128–156) – people do not know what each other thinks. They are unaware how many other people would want to do what they want to do, and not knowing this, they are unwilling to act alone. However, if this information was known, they could all pre-agree to act together to make their collective aim a reality. The internet's capacity to enable cheap and rapid communication overcomes the structural barrier to this problem. It allows latent groups (Olson, M. (1965).The logic of collective action. Public goods and the theory of groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) to be made visible and act collectively and so to ‘no longer suffer in silence’ (p. 165). The paper analyses the spectacular growth of Groupon and Kickstarter in the economic and cultural spheres. Based upon my data analysis of Pledgebank, it argues that there is no structural barrier to a similar explosion in the use of this mechanism in the political field. Pledgebank users showed no less reluctance to use the site's ‘I will if you will’ process for political challenges than for charitable or social projects. Once a proposal reached around 30% of its target of required support to go ahead, a tipping point was reached and commitment levels quickly reached the target. The data collected show a power law curve distribution in the size of collective actions undertaken, suggesting that linear analyses are likely to dramatically underestimate the potential impact of this new mobilisation mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although a growing number of studies are examining the relationship between Internet use and political participation, varying study characteristics make the overall effect size difficult to estimate. Using a meta-analysis, we estimated the mean effect size and tested whether the effect size was influenced by study characteristics. Data for this meta-analysis were derived from 56 papers reporting 63 independent studies. Results revealed that Internet use had a weak relationship with political participation (rc = .22). Moderator analyses demonstrated that type of Internet use, Internet use measure, Internet use for news, type of political participation, sample origin, and survey year significantly moderated the relationship between Internet use and political participation. For instance, Internet use including news (rc = .27) had a significantly stronger relationship with political participation than did Internet use excluding news (rc = .19). European samples (rc = .27) had the largest mean correlation followed by North American samples (rc = .23) and Asian samples (rc = .18) in decreasing order of strength of relationship. The theoretical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to account for the resurgent interest in the protections provided in the Malaysian Federal Constitution and to understand the rights-based language used by Malaysian civil society actors over the past few years. Observers of Malaysian politics have concluded that since the 1980s the country has been “taking the long march to desecularisation” (Kessler, 2008). I argue, however, that Habermas’ notion of “constitutional patriotism” is alive and well in Malaysia and that it stands as a counterpoint to the trend of desecularisation. Constitutional patriotism is in fact growing, partly as a response to the concatenation of Islamisation and the discourse of Malay ethnic hegemony (ketuanan Melayu) which perpetuates identity boundaries between Malays and non-Malays and between Muslims and non-Muslims. Using discourse analysis to examine blogs and media reports, this paper illustrates that conscientious individuals and civil society invoke the discourse of citizenship and constitutional rights to counter the dominant politics of race perpetuated by the National Front (Barisan Nasional).They actively assume or perform “acts of citizenship” (Isin and Nielsen, 2008) that invoke patriotism towards the Constitution. I posit that constitutional patriotism in the Malaysian case is a call to return to the Constitution’s liberal democratic ideals that recognise religious and ethnic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses Gallup poll data to assess two narratives that have crystallized around the 2011 Egyptian uprising: (1) New electronic communications media constituted an important and independent cause of the protests in so far as they enhanced the capacity of demonstrators to extend protest networks, express outrage, organize events, and warn comrades of real-time threats. (2) Net of other factors, new electronic communications media played a relatively minor role in the uprising because they are low-cost, low-risk means of involvement that attract many sympathetic onlookers who are not prepared to engage in high-risk activism. Examining the independent effects of a host of factors associated with high-risk movement activism, the paper concludes that using some new electronic communications media was associated with being a demonstrator. However, grievances, structural availability, and network connections were more important than was the use of new electronic communications media in distinguishing demonstrators from sympathetic onlookers. Thus, although both narratives have some validity, they must both be qualified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prerequisite for the durability of authoritarian regimes as well as their effective governance is the regime’s ability to gather reliable information about the actions of lower-tier officials. Allowing public participation in the form of online complaints is one approach authoritarian regimes have taken to improve monitoring of lower-tier officials. In this paper, we gain rare access to internal communications between a monitoring agency and upper-level officials in China. We show that citizen grievances posted publicly online that contain complaints of corruption are systematically concealed from upper-level authorities when they implicate lower-tier officials or associates connected to lower-tier officials through patronage ties. Information manipulation occurs primarily through omission of wrongdoing rather than censorship or falsification, suggesting that even in the digital age, in a highly determined and capable regime where reports of corruption are actively and publicly voiced, monitoring the behavior of regime agents remains a challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the various roles and contributions that the media, particularly social media, have played in the democratic journey of Ghana. The focus is on the 2012 and 2016 elections, though the country returned to multiparty democracy in 1992. A review of literature and the deployment of quantitative methodological tools helped unpack the inherent dynamics of the users of social media, mostly the youth. The key questions tested revolve around political knowledge, efficacy and participation. The intensity with which social media is becoming a key feature in Ghana’s democracy is explained and the study’s findings support this claim. Imperatively, access to new communication technologies such as the Internet and mobile telephony are promoting democratic discourses and enhancing participation through social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores key Internet search trends for electoral information vis-à-vis the broader media ecology in the UK and the US. An innovative methodology is introduced that maps the informational trajectories of key election events by combining Google Trends data linked to significant news events during the campaigns. While the research found spikes of search that suggested a seemingly trivial event in the US could drive voters to search out deeper information on related policy issues, the study did not find the same phenomenon in the UK. This invites a reflection on the opportunities available to Internet users/voters in the changing informational landscape and how scholars can leverage Google Trends records to better understand how voters seek information in new and evolving media ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alleged Russian digital interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election presented international law with the challenge of characterizing the phenomenon of politically motivated leaks by foreign actors, carried out in cyberspace. Traditionally, international law's norm of non-intervention applies only to acts that are coercive in nature, leaving disruptive acts outside the scope of prohibited intervention. This notion raises a host of questions on the relevancy and limited flexibility of traditional international law in relation to new threats and challenges emanating from the use of cyberspace capabilities. The discourse on transnational cyberspace operations highlights how it has become increasingly difficult to deal with nuanced activities that may cause unprecedented harms, such as the hack of the Democratic National Committee, as well as disinformation campaigns on social media, online propaganda, and sensitive information leaks. This Article argues that state interference with a legitimate political process in another state through cyberspace ought to be considered a violation of the norm of non-intervention. Although the constitutive coercion element is seemingly absent, international law should adapt to the digital era's threats and consider non-coercive interferences that constitute "doxfare"--the public release of sensitive documents with the intent of disrupting legitimate domestic processes--as violations of the norm. As this paper contends, cyberspace operations are distinct in their effects from their physical counterparts, so a traditional standard of coercion for the norm on non-intervention is outdated and requires the introduction of a more nuanced approach, that takes into account interventions that are non-coercive in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia's Internet connectivity has increased immensely. Colombia has also 'opened for business', leading to an influx of extractive projects to which social movements object heavily. Studies on the role of digital media in political mobilisation in developing countries are still scarce. Using surveys, interviews, and reviews of literature, policy papers, website and social media content, this study examines the role of digital and social media in social movement organisations and asks how increased digital connectivity can help spread knowledge and mobilise mining protests. Results show that the use of new media in Colombia is hindered by socioeconomic constraints, fear of oppression, the constraints of keyboard activism and strong hierarchical power structures within social movements. Hence, effects on political mobilisation are still limited. Social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures. Attention to both internal and external knowledge sharing is therefore conditional to optimising digital and social media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the concept of cosmopolitanism in relation to two types of communication systems: the mainstream press and alternative networked communications of new social movements. Through the example of the hacking scandal, the paper discusses how the cosmopolitan ethics of the “freedom of the press” have become distorted by a thoroughly commercialized tabloid media, to mean little more than freedom of the market to do as it pleases. This is presented as a form of cosmopolitan capitalism via a communication system that is part of a global economy and one that requires new communication policies in order to preserve and promote democratic values over consumerist ones. The paper then turns to an entirely different form of communication online that seeks to establish cosmopolitan solidarity via forms of political democracy that rest on the principle of contestation. The paper suggests that cosmopolitanism invites universalist assumptions that at once deny the particularities of time and space while also being susceptible to the particular hegemonic order of the day and the balances of power in any given context. It is, therefore, always both conformist and contestatory, universal and particular. However, it is through contestation that cosmopolitanism can truly flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WikiLeaks is a controversial organisation that attracts polarised responses. This is not unexpected given its key objective of exposing the secrets and social control ambitions of the powerful. While its supporters laud its pursuit of an informational commons, its detractors condemn its antisocial character, its megalomania-and its anarchism. It is the latter that particularly interests us here. This paper treats the 'charge' of anarchism seriously, however, giving it the analytical attention it warrants. It does this by first identifying those characteristics of the organisation that would render it anarchist, and then to conceptualise what this anarchism means. It highlights two important elements of the WikiLeaks story: the anarchical character of the technologies it utilises to foment its dissent; and the anarchical ethos of the organisation's radical politics. We conclude by also considering the tensions and contradictions in WikiLeaks that temper both its anarchism and its social change objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether the Internet's heavy reliance on nonhierarchical, networked forms of governance is compatible with growing concerns about cyber-security from traditional state actors. Networked governance is defined as a semipermanent, voluntary negotiation system that allows interdependent actors to opt for collaboration or unilateral action in the absence of an overarching authority. Two case studies-Internet routing security and the response to a large-scale botnet known as Conficker-show the prevalence of networked governance on the Internet and provide insight into its strengths and limitations. The paper concludes that both cases raise doubts about the claim that introducing security concerns into Internet governance necessarily leads to more hierarchy and/or a greater role for governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet offers opportunities for political mobilization that parties are under-exploiting. Drawing on the rational choice approach to party behaviour, this paper builds an argument for why this is the case. I argue that if parties are not using new media to mobilize support, it is because the benefits of using it are uncertain while there are very certain costs – communicational and organizational – involved in the decision. I also argue that party characteristics shape incentives to use the internet for political mobilization and hence help to account for observed differences in party behaviour online. Using evidence from parties in Spain and Catalonia, the study finds that parties that are large, in opposition, non-programmatic, and non-bureaucratic tend to have greater incentives to use the internet for political mobilization, both because they expect to get the largest benefits and to pay the minimum costs from online mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper highlights the trends of political communications (PC) that have arisen in Hungary after the collapse of communist regime (1989).The authors have identified four main trends in the field of PC: fragmentation, the multiplication of PC channels and means, endless amount of PC arenas, lnternet,Web 2.0, fragmentation of content, amateurism in PC; post-objectivity, the end of the requirement of unbiased and balanced coverage, more emphasis on the rise of opinion, on media as community focal point rather than window to the objective reality; the performative turn, the representation of self, a strong focus on act, dramaturgy, and aesthetics in PC; and popularization, the convergence of popular culture and politics, fan democracy, entertaining politics, involvement of citizens, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article gives an overview of example approaches of Critical Internet Studies and points out key concepts of this field. Critical Cyberculture Studies and Critical Political Economy/Critical Theory of the Internet are identified as two approaches in Critical Internet Studies. The paper also discusses the role of 11 Marxian concepts for Critical Internet Studies. Marxian concepts that have been reflected in Critical Internet Studies include: dialectics, capitalism, commodification, surplus value/exploitation/alienation/class, globalization, ideology, class struggle, commons, public sphere, communism, and aesthetics. The paper points out the importance of explicitly acknowledging the importance of Karl Marx's thinking in Critical Internet Studies. Marx's concepts are today frequently used implicitly, without acknowledging and engaging with their roots. A critique of the approach of "Critical" Cyberculture Studies is advanced. This approach is compared to the approaches of Critical Theory and Critical Political Economy of the Internet. The difference between these two approaches reflects the debate about class exploitation and non-class domination between Cultural Studies and Critical Political Economy in Media and Communication Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper constitutes a theoretical research. It argues that the internet does neither constitute the centre of a new epistemological representation of the individual - individual acquiring citizenship agency - nor is it transforming the modes of apprehension towards reality - increase in political participation. The internet is not a displacement media but a spectacle of democracy and thus reinforces preexisting social structures, norms and practices. The principal originality of this paper resides in the development of three models: (i) the mechanistic model; (ii) the pyramidal model; and (iii) the model of system theory, adding theoretical input to the actual state of literature. Furthermore, by interpreting information in a new way, as a social process defined within a relational paradigm of the alter/ego, the very importance of the human agency capacity is evidenciated. Lastly, it is shown that the individual is caught and administered into an imaginary collective conscience since the internet is subjected to marketing and commodification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We shall focus here on the transnational flow of political information and ideas, the mass-mediated public sphere, and the industrial infrastructure of media production and distribution. The objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of new structures of television production and distribution, the openness of the new media, and the new social tools and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislators like Michele Bachmann and Alan Grayson become nationally infamous for their provocative behavior, yet there is little scholarly attention to such infamy. This paper examines the predictors of congressional infamy, along with its electoral consequences. First, infamy is measured through the frequency with which internet users conduct searches of legislators’ names, paired with epithets attacking their intelligence or sanity. Then, ideological extremism and party leadership positions are shown to be the best statistical predictors. The electoral consequences of infamy follow: infamous legislators raise more money than their lower-profile colleagues, but their infamy also helps their challengers to raise money. In the case of House Republicans, there appears to be an additional and direct negative effect of infamy on vote shares. The fundraising effect is larger in Senate elections, but there is no evidence of direct electoral cost for infamous senatorial candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of the Internet in China has provoked heated discussion about its impact on democracy in the country. Based on an extensive review of the literature, this paper examines the political impact of the Internet in China. It argues that the Internet itself will not be a driving force for political changes, but rather will play a facilitating role during democratization in China. This paper takes a macroscopic approach, and its main contribution lies in three areas. First, it provides a succinct synthesis of the current research on the development of the Internet, censorship, and counter-censorship in China. Second, it adopts a comparative perspective by relating the roles of the Internet to those of traditional media during the democratization processes in history. Third, it offers insights into factors that mediate the democratizing power of the Internet in China, including citizens' political participation, the political environment, media revitalization, and international influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government policy-making emphasis worldwide is moving increasingly to how ICT can be used to achieve efficiency savings ( Gershon 2004 ) or to transform activities ( Cabinet Office; Transformational Government 2005 ). The role of ICT in achieving efficiency benefits or supporting transformational change is almost universally accepted by policy-makers, despite the fact that little robust evidence exists. eGovernment evaluation methodologies are reviewed and evidence is provided in this paper to demonstrate that transformational eGovernment projects produce greater benefits than other types of initiatives. The level of benefits for different groups of beneficiaries is examined. A key factor determining benefits and impact of any project is the number of users of the service and/or the frequency of use of a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans are turning to the Internet to learn about politics in greater and greater numbers. Under the current 'Web 2.0' paradigm in which users are encouraged to interact with online content, voters encountering political information on the Internet are typically exposed to more than just the news; online information is often colored by the reactions of previous readers, whether in the form of displayed comments or in readily apparent tallies of the number of 'likes' or 'shares' a particular item has received. In this paper we consider the effect these social cues have on online political information search and evaluation. Using processing-tracing software to monitor the patterns of information search and evaluation among our subjects, we find that social cues can function as a heuristic, allowing voters to reach judgments similar to those of their more informed counterparts. However, we also find that negative cues can adversely influence candidate evaluation, making subjects less disposed to a candidate than they would be in the absence of such signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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How do individuals' influence in a large social network change? Social scientists have difficulty answering this question because measuring influence requires frequent observations of a population of individuals' connections to each other, while sampling that social network removes information in a way that can bias inferences. This paper introduces amethod tomeasure influence over time accurately fromsampled network data. Ranking individuals by the sum of their connections' connections-neighbor cumulative indegree centrality-preserves the rank influence ordering that would be achieved in the presence of complete network data, lowering the barrier to measuring influence accurately. The paper then shows howto measure that variable changes each day, making it possible to analyze when and why an individual's influence in a network changes. This method is demonstrated and validated on 21 Twitter accounts in Bahrain and Egypt from early 2011. The paper then discusses how to use the method in domains such as voter mobilization and marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1989, many of the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have made the dramatic change from communist regimes to democratic nations that are integrated in the European sphere. While these sweeping changes have given rise to a successful transition to democracy unlike any the world has ever seen, there remain issues with governance as well as citizen support for the regime. While other studies have shown that mass media can influence a person's attitudes and opinions in the region, none has explored what effect social media can have on orientations toward democracy in the region. In the following paper, I build several hypotheses based on previous studies of media effects and democratic survival. I then employ survey data to empirically test whether social media increases support for democracy. The study finds that not only does using social media increase support for democracy, but also simple usage rather than information seeking provides more consistent effects on a person's support for democracy in CEE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The past three decades have witnessed a rapid global uptake of digital media. Does an increase in internet access lead to more anti-government protests globally, in both democracies and non-democracies? Has the role of the internet changed over time from benefiting the opposition to benefiting the regime? We use time-series cross-national data and negative binomial regressions to model protest data in 151 countries from 1990 to 2020. By leveraging change in the development of digital information globally, the results show that increases in internet penetration and mobile cellular subscription rates increase the number of anti-government protests in non-democracies in the period from 1990 to 2010, but not among a subsample of democracies. After 2010, increases in internet penetration rates did not affect the number of protests in either democracies or non-democracies. The use of cellular internet continues to have a small positive effect on protest frequency after 2010. We also test the government's internet censorship efforts as a mechanism for decreasing information access and diminishing mobilization. Results suggest authoritarian regimes modified their strategies over time, more effectively using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to quell anti-government protests using digital repression and information control consistent with the theory of informational autocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissidents mobilizing against a repressive regime benefit from using public information for tactical coordination since widespread knowledge about an upcoming event can increase participation. But public calls to protest make dissidents' anticipated activities legible to the regime, allowing security forces to better stifle mobilization. I examine collective action during Sudan's 2018–19 uprising and find that mobilization appeared to be publicly coordinated through social movement organizations and internet and communicative technology, consistent with common channels identified by existing literature. Yet embedded field research reveals that some dissidents independently used public calls to secretly organize simultaneous contentious events away from publicized protest sites, perceiving that their deviations would make the regime's repressive response relatively less efficient than the resulting efficiency losses on the movement's mobilization. These findings push future work to interrogate more deeply the mechanisms by which dissidents use coordination channels that are also legible to the regime they are mobilizing against. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the international controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We argue that the uncommonly high levels of opposition to genetically modified food in both the United States and in Europe can be attributed to the overwhelming success of the online visual campaign against GMOs. By exploiting the unique characteristics of the internet to create memetic images that can travel freely across linguistic and cultural borders, opponents of the technology have been able to refute rationalist claims about the safety of GMOs. In response to the single coherent narrative of scientific certainty, a diffuse set of challenges emerges. The risk of genetic engineering holds within it the potential for catastrophe, leaving the industries that produce and manufacture the technology in a perpetual state of crisis. Instead of a unified narrative of scientific certainty, each challenge presents a multiplicity of diffuse narratives that unsettle the public's understanding of the risk presented by GMOs. We aim to augment traditional understandings of the way that publics may interact with the "public screen" by explicating one way in which dominance of the visual in mediated political discourse may privilege non-rational political decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet as a communication platform for netizens has become the hybrid space for social mobilization to forward political agenda. A take-off from Manuel Castells' hypotheses on power and counter-power in the network society, this paper is a reading of "Boycott SM Baguio" Facebook Group Page as a space and site for social mobilization. Using textual analysis as a method, reading of the selected posts revealed that the spatial conditions present in the net space effected the reconstruction of identity, group and public and re-shaped the communication process. Elaborating on these two main points elicited a different kind of social mobilization located in the online space that emerged discourses on power, counter-power, political legitimacy and exacerbated questions on sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Internet tools used for consensus building during the 2010 Italian regional elections, especially focusing on the use of the Internet to involve the electorate in a background of political disaffection. Previous experience from the United States and European countries suggests that the Internet is an interesting tool for the creation and development of consensus and shows an increasing use of Internet-based communication for elections. In this context, the research has two objectives. The first is to measure the degree of use of Internet tools by the main candidates to develop participation in several local areas, more limited than those traditionally investigated in the literature. To this end, we used the technique of analysis of site functionality, properly integrated to make it suitable for measuring the use of tools for participation, to compute for each candidate a reliable index of participation. Second, the work aims to understand how different contexts of electoral competition may encourage or lessen the inclination to use Internet communication tools in a participative sense. The analysis reveals a positive correlation between the affiliation of the candidate for the ruling party and the tendency for this candidate to use tools of participation more than the competitor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Upon achieving independence in 1957, Malaysia became a sovereign political entity. Now, fifty-seven years later, there is still uncertainty as to whether the state has developed into a nation. I question the extent to which all Malaysians are allowed to be part of a larger, national community within the politically-constructed framework of the state. For politically-expedient reasons, citizens are constructed as being fundamentally different from each other, and these differences have had a deep and damaging effect on their perceptions of their place, and the place of others, within the social framework. This has been compounded by the lack of space for open discussion of these issues. I wish to argue in this paper that the growth of the Internet and the burgeoning of social media have created a space within which a broader and more inclusive sense of community can be considered, examined and argued about, thus perhaps being allowed to grow and develop further. In order to examine this subject, I will be analysing a popular Malaysian web show called That Effing Show, which comments on Malaysian politics and society. What makes That Effing Show worth taking a closer look at, is the fact that it is disseminated via the internet, and is easily accessible on YouTube. The medium allows for immediate and visible responses from viewers. It is, therefore, a far more dialogical medium than traditional print media. This paper will analyse both the content of the shows and the responses generated in the comments section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to capitalize on the experiences of LiquidFeedback, providing insights that can be helpful for future developers of voting technologies. The condition of LiquidFeedback as a digital platform carries dramatic implications in terms of its ability to perceive, secure, and make effective the political expression of the community. Beyond the hype, can the LiquidFeedback platform accurately perceive the political will of participants? As a voting technology, is it socially located in a position from where it can meaningfully change the state of affairs of society? Is it configured so that it guarantees fairness and safety from both public and private perspectives? As a result of the conjunction of interviews and critical analysis, three fundamental dimensions to all voting technologies are proposed: Expressivity, Influence, and Integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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