Abstract
This chapter explores, through the lenses of social theory, the interaction between Internet culture (the culture of openness) and the bureaucratic culture of secrecy. After a theoretical and conceptual discussion around the meaning of Internet culture, the chapter uses the case study of the “Open Government” policy of the Obama administration to explore its central research questions: Is the cultural code “openness/closeness” penetrating the core of the bureaucratic culture?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alexander, J. C. (2005). The meanings of social life: A cultural sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Alexander, J. C. (2008a). Clifford Geertz and the strong program: The human sciences and cultural sociology. Cultural Sociology, 2(2), 157–168.
Alexander, J. C. (2008b). The civil sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Newbury Park: Calif., Sage Publications.
Bergson, H. (1935). The two sources of morality and religion. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Castells, M. (2002). The internet galaxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Castells, M., & Ollé Sanz, E. (2004). E-Government in Catalonia. The Barcelona City Council in the Network Society. Research Report (Spanish, Catalan). UOC – Internet Interdisciplinary Institute: http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/272.
Coglianese, C. (2009). The transparency president? The obama administration and open government. Scholarship at Penn Law Paper 282.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.
Edelman, M. J. (1977). Political language: Words that succeed and policies that fail. New York: Academic Press.
Etzioni, A. (2010). Is transparency the best disinfectant? The Journal of Political Philosophy, 18, 389–404.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford: Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Hand, M. (2008). Making digital cultures: Access, interactivity, and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Hand, M., & Sandywell, B. (2002). E-topia as cosmopolis or citadel. On the democratizing and de-democratizing logics of the internet, or, toward a critique of the new technological fetishism. Theory, Culture and. Society,19(1–2), 197–225.
Held, D. (1999). Global transformations: Politics, economics and culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Himanen, P. (2001). The hacker ethic, and the spirit of the information age. New York: Random House.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.
Lazzarato, M. (2007). Machines to crystallize time: Bergson. Theory, Culture and Society, 24(6), 93–122.
Levy, S. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution. Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
Long, P. (2001). Openness, secrecy, authorship. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
Lyon, D. (1988). The information society: Issues and illusions. New York: Polity Press.
Nissenbaum, H. (2005). Where computer security meets national security. Ethics and Inf. Techno, 7(2), 61–73.
Noveck, B. S. (2009). Wiki government: How technology can make government better, democracy stronger, and citizens more powerful. Washington: Brookings Institution Press.
Obama, B. (2007). Candidates at Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo. Accessed Jan 2010.
Obama, B. (2009a). Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Freedom of Information Act. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct/. Accessed Jan 2010.
Obama, B. (2009b). Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and open government. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/memoranda/…/task_force_theft_memo.pdf. Accessed Jan 2010.
O’Neill, O. (2002). A question of trust. the bbc reith lectures 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Papacharissi, Z. (2004). The virtual sphere: The internet as the public sphere. In F. Webster (Ed.), Information society(re-issue). London: Routledge.
Pinch, T. (2008) Technology and institutions: Living in a material world. Theory and Society, 37, 461–483.
Popper, K. (1945). The open society and its enemies. Volume I: The spell of plato. London: Routledge.
Porter, D. (1997). Internet culture. New York: Routledge.
Roberts, A. (2006). Blacked out: Government secrecy in the information age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, J., & Steven, M. (2009). Social attutide differences between internet users and non-users. Information, Communication and Society, 12(4), 508–524.
Salter, L. (2005). Colonization tendencies in the development of the world wide web. New Media Society, 7(3), 291–309.
Sennett, R. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Smith, P. (1998). The new american cultural sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, D. (2002). Hacker culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Thompson, J. B. (2000). Political scandal: Power and visibility in the media age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Weber, S. (2004). The success of open source. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Weber, M. (1922) Bureaucracy, in Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society).
Woolgar, S. (2002). Virtual society? Technology, cyberbole, reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zittrain, J. (2008). The future of the internet–and how to stop it. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sanz, E. (2014). Open Governments and Their Cultural Transitions. In: Gascó-Hernández, M. (eds) Open Government. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9563-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9563-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-9562-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9563-5
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)