Unconventional Politics Online: Internet and the Global Justice Movement

Abstract

As with other communication technologies, the Internet influences the behaviour of individuals and organizations, intervening on the mode of interaction at the individual and collective levels. Even more than with other means of communication — such as press, telegraph, radio, television, telephone, fax, and so on — it seems that social scientists expect such important changes from the electronic revolution as to require specific concepts. E-participation, e-governance, and e-voting are all specifications of a more general transformation brought about by the new technologies, to the point of promoting an e-democracy, defined by increased opportunities for citizens to participate in politics, thanks to the Internet (Rose 2005). As with other technologies, the debate on their advantages and disadvantages has long polarized observers between sceptics and enthusiasts. From this point of view, the debate and research on the Internet has been intertwined with that on the various qualities of democracy with which this volume is concerned.

A previous version of this chapter was presented as a paper at the symposium ‘Changing Politics through Digital Networks: The Role of ICTs in the Formation of New Social and Political Actors and Actions’, University of Florence, Italy, 5–6 October 2007. We are grateful to the conference’s participants for useful comments. Although the authors share responsibility for the whole article, Donatella della Porta wrote the sections ‘The Internet and social movements: An introduction’, ‘Web sites’ qualities’, and ‘Between virtual and real: Some conclusions’; while Lorenzo Mosca wrote the sections ‘Unconventional politics online’, and ‘Contextual characteristics, organizational features, and Web sites’ qualities’.