Unrealized Digital Democracy
A Critical Analysis of Power in the Digital Age- Authors:
- Publisher:
- 2023
Summary
Garrett Pierman argues that the Internet, as it is structured today, is inhospitable to democracy. What began as a government-funded defense project became, with the commercialization of the Internet in the early 1990s, a network that makes it simultaneously easier for falsehoods to spread and more difficult for people to lose touch with reality. Many millions of Internet users have not encountered the online world as many scholars had hoped, as a place for careful democratic deliberation. The Internet is now a platform in which their fears and anxieties are exploited by corporations that have carved up digital fiefdoms. In these digital fiefdoms, fake news and lies are shared and consumed at speeds that far exceed our ability to sort fact from fiction, leading to instances of political violence once people’s lie-based fears overcome their better judgement. It should be of no surprise that the current Internet enables and encourages political violence: scared and overwhelmed users are the ideal denizens of digital fiefdoms.
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Bibliographic data
- Copyright year
- 2023
- ISBN-Print
- 978-1-6669-3557-8
- ISBN-Online
- 978-1-6669-3558-5
- Publisher
- Lexington, Lanham
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 88
- Product type
- Book Titles
Table of contents
- Contents No access
- Acknowledgments No access
- Introduction No access Pages 1 - 16
- A Critical Digital History No access Pages 17 - 38
- Compressed Political Temporalities in a Feudalized Internet as a Threat to Peaceful Democratic Participation No access Pages 39 - 56
- Thinking Politically through Digital Task Saturation No access Pages 57 - 70
- Conclusion No access Pages 71 - 74
- Bibliography No access Pages 75 - 82
- Index No access Pages 83 - 86
- About the Author No access Pages 87 - 88





