The Politics of the Internet: Political Claims-making in Cyberspace and Its Effect on Modern Political Activism - Tapa dura

R. J. Maratea's book answers many significant questions about the nature, impact, and future of political claims-making in our mediated era of digital communication. This is the next step in understanding contested-and constructed-cyberspace from the vantage of citizen journalism to WikiLeaks to hybrid social movements (e.g., the Tea Party), and illuminates how political institutional players, such as the National Rifle Association, fire up their constituents. -- David L. Altheide, Arizona State University How does the Internet affect the ways social problems emerge and evolve? Cyber-optimists insist we're living in a completely new world, where all claims have a chance to be heard. But The Politics of the Internet takes a hard look at the evidence and finds that old media and established advocates remain key actors in determining which issues command public attention. -- Joel Best, The University of Delaware This thoughtful, accessible and engaging book examines the complex intersections of media technology, politics, power, and social action. Maratea's innovative conceptualization of the Internet as a cyber-arena provides important insights into how new media technologies may be changing the landscape of political activism by fundamentally restructuring how we create, receive, and act upon political communications in the digital age. -- Brian Monahan, Marywood University, author of The Shock of the News

In The Politics of the Internet: Political Claims-making in Cyberspace and Its Effect on Modern Political Activism, R.J. Maratea explores the practices of political claims-making and activism in online environments in order to better understand whether Internet technology is presently a democratizing force that changes the balance of social power in the public sphere and empowers average citizens to be more active participants in mass media.