"In this book, we use the case of China to examine how state actors can transform the Internet and online discourse into a key strategic element for maintaining the government and relieving domestic pressure on national institutions. While scholars have long known that the democratizing influence of the Internet can be blunted by autocratic states, in this book, we show that the online sphere can effectively be co-opted by states like China and transformed into a supporting institution. Our theory, Directed Digital Dissidence, explains how autocracies manage critical online information flows and the impact this management has on mass opinion and behavior. While the expansion of the Internet may stimulate dissidence, it also provides the central government an avenue to direct that dissent away and toward selected targets. Under the strategy of Directed Digital Dissidence, the Internet becomes a mechanism to dissipate threats by serving as a targeted relief valve rather than a building pressure cooker. We consider the process and impact of this evolving state led manipulation of the political Internet using data and examples from China. We use an original large-scale random survey of Chinese citizens to measure Internet use, social media use, and political attitudes. We also consider the impact of the state firewall. Beyond simply identifying the government strategy, we focus on testing the effectiveness of the strategy with empirical data. We also consider how the redirection of dissent can be done across a broader range of targets, including non-state actors and other nations"--

The Middle East's digital turn has renewed hopes of socio-economic development and political change across the region, but it is also marked by stark contradictions and historical tensions. In this book, Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil contend that the region is caught in a digital double bind in which the same conditions that drive the state, market, and public immersion in the digital also inhibit change and perpetuate stasis. The Digital Double Bind offers a path-breaking analysis of how the Middle East negotiates its relation to the digital and provides a roadmap for a critical engagement with technology and change in the Global South.

In Hacking Hybrid Media, Stephen R. Barnard examines how networked media capital is changing the fields of politics and journalism. With a focus on the messaging strategies employed by Donald Trump and his most vocal online supporters, Barnard provides a theoretically oriented and empirically grounded analysis of the ways today's media afford deceptive political communication. He reflects not only on the tools and techniques of manipulative media campaigns, but also on the implications they hold for the future of journalism, politics, and democracy in the US and beyond.

In The Politics of Platform Regulation, Robert Gorwa outlines how governments are shaping the emerging space of online safety. Through case studies from Germany, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, Gorwa explores the domestic and international politics that influence how, why, and when platform regulation comes into being. Going beyond existing work that explores the hidden private rules and practices increasingly shaping our online lives, The Politics of Platform Regulation is a measured empirical and theoretical account of how the state is pushing back.

The Internet was supposed to be an antidote to authoritarianism. It can enable citizens to express themselves freely and organize outside state control. Yet while online activity has helped challenge authoritarian rule in some cases, other regimes have endured: no movement comparable to the Arab Spring has arisen in China. In Contesting Cyberspace in China, Rongbin Han offers a powerful counterintuitive explanation for the survival of the world’s largest authoritarian regime in the digital age. Han reveals the complex internal dynamics of online expression in China, showing how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse. He finds that state censorship has conditioned online expression, yet has failed to bring it under control. However, Han also finds that freer expression may work to the advantage of the regime because its critics are not the only ones empowered: the Internet has proved less threatening than expected due to the multiplicity of beliefs, identities, and values online. State-sponsored and spontaneous pro-government commenters have turned out to be a major presence on the Chinese internet, denigrating dissenters and barraging oppositional voices. Han explores the recruitment, training, and behavior of hired commenters, the “fifty-cent army,” as well as group identity formation among nationalistic Internet posters who see themselves as patriots defending China against online saboteurs. Drawing on a rich set of data collected through interviews, participant observation, and long-term online ethnography, as well as official reports and state directives, Contesting Cyberspace in China interrogates our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the democratizing power of the Internet.

What are the ideal roles the mass media should play as an institution to strengthen democratic governance and thus bolster human development? Under what conditions do media systems succeed or fail to meet these objectives? And what strategic reforms would close the gap between the democratic promise and performance of media systems? Working within the notion of the democratic public sphere, 'Public Sentinel: News Media and Governance Reform' emphasizes the institutional or collective roles of the news media as watchdogs over the powerful, as agenda setters calling attention to social needs in natural and human-caused disasters and humanitarian crises, and as gatekeepers incorporating a diverse and balanced range of political perspectives and social actors. Each is vital to making democratic governance work in an effective, transparent, inclusive, and accountable manner. The capacity of media systems and thus individual reporters embedded within those institutions to fulfill these roles is constrained by the broader context of the journalistic profession, the market, and ultimately the state. Successive chapters apply these arguments to countries and regions worldwide. This study brought together a wide range of international experts under the auspices of the Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP) at the World Bank and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. The book is designed for policy makers and media professionals working within the international development community, national governments, and grassroots organizations, and for journalists, democratic activists, and scholars engaged in understanding mass communications, democratic governance, and development.

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing political identities online, and digital technologies are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites. With unique data on patterns of media ownership and technology use, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy demonstrates how, since the mid-1990s, information technologies have had a role in political transformation. Democratic revolutions are not caused by new information technologies. But in the Muslim world, democratization is no longer possible without them.