The potential of online media generates a multitude of responses and reactions. Most are centered around the ability of digital and online media to simultaneously restrict and empower individuals as they interact with each other in public life. Thus, the use of the internet, the operative medium here, as it converges and sustains multiple technologies, becomes an asset or a detriment, depending on how it is put to use. The internet, from this point of view serves as a tool, and does not contain the agency to effect social change. Individuals, on the other hand, possess differing levels of agency, based on which they can employ the internet to varying ends, effects, and gratification. While it is important to avoid the deterministic viewpoint that online technologies are able to, on their own, ‘make or break’ a public sphere, it is also necessary to understand that technologies frequently embed assumptions about their potential uses, which can be traced back to the political, cultural, social and economic environment that brings them to life. Therefore,
CITATION STYLE
Papacharissi, Z. (2009). Handbook of Internet Politics. Handbook of Internet Politics, 1–35.
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