Drawing upon a common conceptual framework - the Web sphere, and a shared methodological approach called Web feature analysis - in order to examine how the Internet is used by a variety of political actors during periods of electoral activity. Research teams around the world conducted analyses in technologically advanced nations, as well as those with low Internet diffusion, and a variety of countries in the middle range of network penetration, and...

In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that these technologies are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, looking at them instead as produced by and embedded in distinct social, cultural, and political practices. Communication and media scholars have increasingly taken theoretical perspectives originating in science and technology studies (STS), while some STS scholars interested in information technologies have linked their research to media studies inquiries into the symbolic dimensions of these tools. In this volume,...