Platforms Protests And The Challenge Of Networked Democracy

This book examines the recent evolution of online spaces and their impact on networked democracy. Through an illuminating mix of theoretical and methodological analysis, contributors provide an understanding of how a range of individuals and groups, including activists and NGOs, governments and griefers, are using digital technologies to influence public debates. Contributions consider these phenomena in a global contemporary context, providing within the same volume rigorous examinations of the design of digital platforms for deliberation, users’ attempts to manipulate those platforms, and the ways activists and governments are responding to emerging threats to democratic discourse. Providing diverse, global case studies, this collection is a valuable tool for academics within and beyond the fields of new media, communication, and information policy and governance.

The rise of far-right communities on digital platforms is a global crisis. Digital Islamophobia tracks far-right groups where they are a virtual and vicious threat, exploring how these networks grow, develop, and circulate Islamophobic hate-speech on Twitter. Reconstructing this media ecosystem, Digital Islamophobia traces the reactionary political ideologies animating these groups through feminist data analytic techniques in a transnational study of German and American far-right, digitally networked users. This work illustrates far-right communities using data visualization techniques, identifies a taxonomy of user-types, analyzes themes and stories that motivate far-right users, and tracks the spread of linked forms of anti-Muslim sentiment, reactionary ideologies, and (mis)information. In doing so, Digital Islamophobia details how far-right discourse is not merely national, or even transatlantic, but increasingly transnationalized among American, German, as well as Indian and Nigerian digital networks. By tracking and tracing the contours of these far-right digital communities on Twitter and analyzing the content of their conversations, Digital Islamophobia provides policy-makers, researchers, and scholars with a potential road-map to stop them.

This insightful text rigorously examines and accounts for contemporary developments – and crucially a reversal of ‘democraticness’ - in democratic polities and related political processes comparing 38 democracies across the world. The focus is on contemporary developments and recent volatile levels of democraticness. Democracies in Peril introduces theoretical backgrounds of what makes democracy tick and scrutinizes empirical trends and development in ‘democraticness’ in an accessible manner. It explores what ‘democracy’ as a political regime implies and how the liberal democratic model developed, as well as examining the present state of affairs in democracies, the challenges democracies encounter and the perils of democracy as a legitimate system of governance in the 21st century. The book provides a ‘systemic’ approach to adjudicate the effects of this assumed reversal in democratization in terms of popular preferences, party behaviour, institutional architecture and policy performance. The effects of public policy formation and the role of the state on actual democratic performance are also analysed. Finally, case studies on the Covid pandemic and the development of social welfare demonstrate the complex relationship between government capacities – under pressure - and the quality of democracy, approaching the question: How do 38 democratic states cope with societal problems, populist tendencies and a fast-changing world without degrading their institutional quality and legitimacy? This text will be of key interest to students, scholars, journalists and interested readers of comparative politics, democratization, public administration, political economy, constitutional law, and the social sciences in general.

This book provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary digital data governance, highlighting the importance of cooperation across sectors and disciplines in order to adapt to a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Most of the theory around global digital data governance remains scattered and focused on specific actors, norms, processes, or disciplinary approaches. This book argues for a polycentric approach, allowing readers to consider the issue across multiple disciplines and scales. Polycentrism, this book argues, provides a set of lenses that tie together the variety of actors, issues, and processes intertwined in digital data governance at subnational, national, regional, and global levels. Firstly, this approach uncovers the complex array of power centers and connections in digital data governance. Secondly, polycentric perspectives bridge disciplinary divides, challenging assumptions and drawing together a growing range of insights about the complexities of digital data governance. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, this book draws out key insights and policy recommendations for how digital data governance occurs and how it might occur differently. Written by an international and interdisciplinary team, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of development studies, political science, international relations, global studies, science and technology studies, sociology, and media and communication studies.

We are living in a period of great uncertainty. The rise of extreme populists, economic shocks and rising international tensions is not only causing turmoil but is also a sign that many long-predicted tipping points in media and politics have now been reached. Such changes have worrying implications for democracies everywhere. This second edition of Political Communication bridges old and new to map the political and cultural shifts and analyse what they mean for our ageing democracies. With new sections and revisions to all chapters, the book continues both to introduce and challenge the established literature. It revisits key questions such as: Why are polarized electorates no longer prepared to support established political parties? Why are large parts of the legacy media either dying or dismissed as 'fake news'? And why do some democratic leaders look more like dictators? In this fully updated edition, there is greater focus on digital developments, and it is enriched with new global comparisons and useful ancillary material. Political Communication: An Introduction for Crisis Times will appeal to advanced students and scholars of political communication, as well as anyone trying to understand the precarious state of today's media and political landscape.

Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures: Critical Narratives of Technology and Imagination in Higher Education explores the implications of artificial intelligence’s adoption in higher education and the challenges to building sustainable instead of dystopic schooling. As AI becomes integral to both pedagogy and profitability in today’s colleges and universities, a critical discourse on these systems and algorithms is urgently needed to push back against their potential to enable surveillance, control, and oppression. This book examines the development, risks, and opportunities inherent to AI in education and curriculum design, the problematic ideological assumptions of intelligence and technology, and the evidence base and ethical imagination required to responsibly implement these learning technologies in a way that ensures quality and sustainability. Leaders, administrators, and faculty as well as technologists and designers will find these provocative and accessible ideas profoundly applicable to their research, decision-making, and concerns.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Mind Engineering is a comprehensive work that delves into the complex interplay between language, culture, politics, and media in shaping the human mind. The book is divided into five main sections, each exploring different aspects of mind engineering: I. Political Mind Engineering; II. Commercial Mind Engineering; III. Media, Culture, and Mind Engineering; IV. Linguistic and Semiotic Analysis of Mind Engineering; V. Mind Engineering in Educational Settings. The book provides a multi-dimensional perspective on how language, media, culture, and politics intersect to shape individuals' thoughts and beliefs. It highlights the diverse methods and contexts in which mind engineering occurs, making it a valuable resource for scholars, researchers, and policymakers interested in understanding the complexities of contemporary discourse and manipulation of human thought. The contents of this cutting-edge handbook will engage all undergraduate, postgraduate, PhD students and scholars, and researchers at all levels, in fields such as languages, linguistics, politics, communication studies, media studies, and psychology. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) International license. Chapter 17 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution‐Non Commercial‐No Derivatives (CC‐BY‐NC‐ND) 4.0 license. Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The editors of this volume have combined their expertise in discourse, contradiction, minority and diversity studies to suggest a change of perspective from categorisations into societal minorities and majorities towards an analysis of marginalising and centralising discourses. For this purpose, we have gathered interdisciplinary-minded authors from linguistics, literary and religious studies, political and historical sciences. Their contributions focus on contradictions of religious and national belonging as well as intersections of religion and nation in many different regions of the world from the 18th century until today. While illustrating the diversity and contradictions of religious and national belonging across time and space, the chapters of the book contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of questions of belonging and the associated constant renegotiations of power within these discursive processes.