The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam

ISBN-13: 9780199736416 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 304 str.

Assoc Philip N. Howard

Opis

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing political identities online, and digital technologies are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites.

With unique data on patterns of media ownership and technology use, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy demonstrates how, since the mid-1990s, information technologies have had a role in political transformation. Democratic revolutions are not caused by new information technologies. But in the Muslim world, democratization is no longer possible without them.

Recenzje

In contests between dictatorship and democracy, new media exert increasingly determinative influence. Philip Howard provides a detailed, thoughtful analysis of how the flow of information and tools of communication are reshaping global politics.

O autorze

Philip N. Howard is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. His previous authored book, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen (Cambridge, 2006), won the American Sociological Association's Communication Technology and Society Section Best Book Award and the International Communication Association's Outstanding Book Award.