Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 303 pp. $60 hbk., $20 pbk. Forecasts that the Internet heralds a world of more democracy and less poverty seem as inflated as dot.com stocks. This rosy view has electronic voting, political chat rooms, and email access re-engaging apathetic publics in politics. Digital technologies redress economic disparities, and the benefits of the Internet percolate down to transform poor societies. Equally exaggerated is the gloom of naysayers. The Internet Age has done little to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, the information haves and havenots, cyber-skeptics contend. Indeed, digital technologies could create new inequalities and reinforce the dominance of power elites. In her new book, Digital Divide, Pippa Norris, associate director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, steps into this fusillade of cyber-hyperbole, lowers the decibel with a well-written and thoughtful examination of Internet use and access in 179 countries and dissects the claims and counter-claims. Her research and findings place her on middle ground, somewhere between current reality and optimism. The Internet era seems to be changing "politics as usual" in a number of countries, expanding and loosening information about governments and politics, allowing the entrance of new political players, and fostering international movements on the environment, women's rights, and other issues across borders. The disappointment is that digital technologies are activating the already politically active and passing up the disengaged and uninterested. A major challenge to digital democracy is the gulf between the United States, Scandinavia, and other early Internet adopters and the rest of the world. That gap is now so wide that at the turn of the century, more than three-quarters of the online community lived in the developed world. Internet use tracks the path of economic and technological development. But that situation could begin to change, Norris says. The Internet is in its technological adolescence. Costs of access are falling. And governments can make a difference if policymakers take the initiative. We have the historical patterns of other communication technologies to study. Norris examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios. American dominance could recede as Internet access grows worldwide. Contrary to what officials of the Bush Administration contend, Norris finds that the digital divide between rich and poor within the United States remains substantial. Europe mirrors that trend. In the long run, the Internet could become more accessible to the excluded: lower income families, minorities, and women. …

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide

The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life

This book is arguably the most important book to be published recently in the area of the Journal's special issue, as it sets the agenda for the ongoing study of young people's civic and political engagement with and through the internet. It comprehensively includes many of the main theorists and empirical researchers currently working in this field of study. It also poses important research questions for the future on how to best understand contemporary forms of civic engagement that are now facilitated by the internet. Luckily for readers the book is also accompanied by a web based discussion where the contributors and other invited experts debate and discuss concepts and ideas that underpinned the development of this book project Lance Bennett in the introductory chapter 'Changing citizenship in the digital age' explains how the practice of citizenship itself has changed in the contemporary epoch and that the internet amplifies how we understand this. He identifies all age groups' increasing cynicism with formal, electoral based politics

Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth

* Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication, and Democracy. Peter Dahlgren. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 246 pp. $24.99 pbk. This book is more appropriate for graduate courses or seminars, but the content is relevant to any instructor or student who cares about the connections among the media, governments, political organizations, and the public. In the opinion of this reviewer, it is required reading. Peter Dahlgren correctly asserts that "[w]ithout a minimal level of involvement from its citizens, democracy loses legitimacy and may cease to function in a legitimate way." Flagging citizen interest is not the sole factor in charting democracy's decline, of course; Dahlgren adds that media must disseminate information important to the health of any democratic nation. When they skirt that responsibility in favor of "infotainment" or other second-rate presentations of political programming, they opt out of their commitment. "We are awash in media," observes Dahlgren, a media studies professor at Lund University in Sweden, "and most of it is obviously not overtly civicoriented." But Dahlgren also reminds us that society shouldn't expect the media to be the only mechanism for information about government and political agencies. The public needs to be engaged in formal and informal organizations that lead to increased attention to and knowledge of politics. There is one note of caution - opinion leaders typically generate the conversations necessary for an informed public through information they acquire from the media, creating in some cases an echo chamber that advances public discourse little. In his chapter 2, titled "Media Alterations," Dahlgren provides a complex, thorough review of the rise of corporate media and how governmental indifference to it - especially in the United States - allowed media organizations to push aside public-interest programming. One of the effects of this transformation to pop-culture content is that politicians now use the media to advance their policy stances but also to "market their personalities." Ironically, traditional media are falling out of favor as citizens use many delivery platforms for gathering information. (Of course, with the Internet, they also are able to distribute their own information, however inaccurate, opinionated, or inflammatory it might be.) At the same time, they attend to media that offer affirmation of their previously held beliefs. The public also can tune out, and Dahlgren warns this is the most toxic form of disengagement from the political process. One element of this book that instructors could spend considerable time discussing with students is Dahlgren's definitions of civic engagement and political engagement. He doesn't adequately connect these terms to the media, and this incomplete assessment provides another area for classroom conversation. …

Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication, and Democracy

successful application of direct mail, whilst 2008 would see the extensive use of the internet as a fundraising tool, information provider, and source of networking to generate people on the ground. The Obama team would prove adept at utilizing this new technology, as they are so far proving in 2012 with the complex use of social networking sites. Chapter 7 offers a very useful insight into the population changes that are occurring in the USA. The next 40 years will see more people speaking Spanish in the USA than English. One profound impact of this is the growing Latino vote – whoever succeeds in attracting this vote may find it the key to electoral success in the future, particularly as a significant percentage live in swing states. A serious student of American elections would find little that is new in this book. Indeed, if I have one criticism of the book it would be that it is too short at 147 pages and would benefit from a deeper level of analysis. But the thematic approach centred on Grant Park does allow a useful snapshot to be taken of how American elections have changed significantly since 1968. As such, it provides a helpful introduction to anyone new to the process. There is nothing in the world like an American presidential election, and this book reminds us again of how intriguing, and dumbfounding, they can be, combining both the best and the worst that democracy has to offer.

https://zizi.people.uic.edu/Site/Books_files/DemocratizationReviewofPrivateSphere.pdf

A private sphere: democracy in a digital age

Since the 1990s, the theme of participation has come to the fore in international debates regarding at least three critical issues: the relationship between representative democracy and deliberativ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305116662187

Public Engagement, Local Policies, and Citizens’ Participation: An Italian Case Study of Civic Collaboration

'Memory tourism' and commodification of nostalgia.

The article focuses on "public engagement" and recent modifications in citizen participation through a case study regarding the "collaborative governance" of urban commons in the city of Bologna (Italy). Civic collaboration is an experimental partnership which is being implemented between public administrations and citizens in order to develop, treat and reuse commons with a view to improving the quality of life in cities. The goal of the project is to understand whether, and how, civic collaboration is also transforming citizen participation in local public policies. This article presents the results of research which was performed by interviewing citizens who are involved in the collaborative governance of urban commons. This contribution aims to connect the literature regarding "open government" and its impact on participation with the consolidated debate regarding the role of culture in the conception of citizenship and civic engagement and, as a consequence, in the effectiveness of collaborative governance. Particular attention was paid to citizen engagement, and to the role performed by both public and private platforms and digital media.

Civic Collaboration and Urban Commons. Citizen's Voices on a Public Engagement Experience in an Italian City

Consumo e prosumerismo in rete: processi di creazione di valore

In the context of contemporary global climate and environmental change, both natural and social scientists have stressed the role green areas play in global warming adaptation strategies and in improving the healthiness of the urban environment. Indeed, in recent years these spaces have become central to institutional political debates and various policies have been designed for their valorization. However, little attention has been paid to rewilded urban spaces, recently defined as novel urban ecosystems, and to their socio-ecological complexity. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that links natural and social science perspectives, this article aims to highlight the role of novel urban ecosystems in the reconfiguration of urban policies. Indeed, this contribution analyzes ecosystem services coupled with the hybrid, contested socio-ecological nature of four case studies in Italy characterized by grassroots socio-environmental mobilization. Data were collected through comparative quantitative and qualitative methods. The evidence shows that the specific ecological features of novel urban ecosystems are strategic in terms of actual and potential ecosystem service provision for cities and suggests that citizens play a fundamental role in recognizing and valorizing them. In parallel, these spaces, reconceptualized as contested novel ecosystems, emerge as controversial hybrid urban socio-natures that enable community empowerment and produce a heterogeneous, grassroots political space oriented towards urban commons and environmental-climate justice.

Roberta Bartoletti

Papers

Public Engagement, Local Policies, and Citizens’ Participation: An Italian Case Study of Civic Collaboration

'Memory tourism' and commodification of nostalgia.

Civic Collaboration and Urban Commons. Citizen's Voices on a Public Engagement Experience in an Italian City

Consumo e prosumerismo in rete: processi di creazione di valore

Contested novel ecosystems: Socio-ecological processes and evidence from Italy