Netfluence.org: Do Networked Technologies Influence Political Power Structures?
We are delighted to announce our new co-authored blog Netfluence.org, which is an investigation into whether and how networked technologies influence political power structures.
The debate on whether internet and mobile technologies are transforming traditional power structures is dominated by three divergent narratives.
According to the first, utopian, narrative, internet and mobile technologies enable individuals to publish and distribute content, self-organize into communities of interest and participate in collective action. As a result, they can create new types of media outlets, build new types of civil society organizations, and monitor, protest against and even bring down governments. Even though these new degrees of freedom are far from universal, they are fundamentally changing political power structures. The future has already arrived, this narrative insists, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.