This edited collection focuses on the first 25 years of experience with Internet and democracy. Involving scholars and perspectives from more than 20 countries across six continents, it offers a comprehensive longitudinal and cross-national study on the impact of the Internet on democracy.
The book starts with an overview of initial theoretical expectations about Internet and democracy, focusing on digital opportunities. The Internet was in its early beginnings by many seen as a new information highway giving citizens access to an unprecedented amount of information and as a new agora for democratic debate, a weathercock for public opinion.
25 years later, we have seen that such expectations were exaggerated. The Internet has not become the Shangri-La of democracy, enlightenment, and education. However, it has developed in other ways not expected and not explained in the original theories, changing information hierarchies, political ontologies, and daily political habits of citizens in unforeseen ways.
Jakob Linaa Jensen is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Internet Studies at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research is focused on the cross-field between online political participation and the algorithmic regimes of the platform economy. He has published 50 international journal articles and several books, the most recent being The Medieval Internet (2020).
Eli Skogerbø is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. She is Co-Director of POLKOM - Centre for the study of Political Communication, a hub for political communication research in Norway. Her research focus is on political communication and the constraints and opportunities that changing technologies and media structures represent for voice, participation and power. She has authored and edited about 100 articles, book chapters and books.