This book addresses the socio-technical constitution of civic communication in increasingly digital democracies. Despite problematic phenomena like hate speech in online commenting, it argues that citizens’ potential for resisting technological inscriptions in digital media remains a fundamental democratic right. While producers inscribe anticipations for how people should be discussing political issues into commenting interfaces, citizens still resist these technological inscriptions in their commenting practices. This dialectic interrelation between interfaces and practices highlights the inadequacy of purely technological solutions for undemocratic tendencies in digital media.

This volume contributes to the extant and prolific New Agendas in Communication Series from one of the most salient perspectives within the field of Communication: New Technologies and Civic Engagement. The impact of the Internet and other technological advances are constantly referred to at most junctures of today's Communication research agendas. The area of Political Communication is not immune to this trend. The effects of the Internet and digital media on today's political landscape, with a particular emphasis on enhancing individuals’ civic duties and engagement levels, are theme of concern at many of the most renowned journals in Communication and Political Science disciplines. First, this book pays attention to the overall impact of the Internet and people's use of digital media and new technologies to analyze civic life at large, reconceptualizing what citizenship is today. Secondly, and more specifically, participants shed light over the intersection of a number of current new agendas of research in regards to some of the most rapidly growing technological advances (i.e., new publics and citizenship), and the emergence of sprouting structures of citizenship. The volume shows the implications that new technological advances carry with respect the possibilities, patterns and mechanisms for citizen communication, citizen deliberation, public sphere and civic engagement.