Information Politics on the Web

Description:

Does the information on the Web offer many alternative accounts of reality, or does it subtly align with an official version? In Information Politics on the Web, Richard Rogers identifies the cultures, techniques, and devices that rank and recommend information on the Web, analyzing not only the political content of Web sites but the politics built into the Web's infrastructure. Addressing the larger question of what the Web is for, Rogers argues that the Web is still the best arena for unsettling the official and challenging the familiar.

Rogers describes the politics at work on the Web as either back-end -- the politics of search engine technology -- or front-end -- the diversity, inclusivity, and relative prominence of sites publicly accessible on the Web. To analyze this, he developed four "political instruments," or software tools that gather information about the Web by capturing dynamic linking practices, attention cycles for issues, and changing political party commitments. On the basis of his findings on how information politics works, Rogers argues that the Web should be, and can be, a "collision space" for official and unofficial accounts of reality. (One chapter, "The Viagra Files" offers an entertaining analysis of official and unofficial claims for the health benefits of Viagra.) The distinctiveness of the Web as a medium lies partly in the peculiar practices that grant different statuses to information sources. The tools developed by Rogers capture these practices and contribute to the development of a new information politics that takes into account and draws from the competition between the official, the non-governmental, and the underground.

Richard Rogers is Director of govcom.org, an Amsterdam-based foundation dedicated to creating and hosting political tools on the Web, and Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

 

Table of Contents:

Preface	vii
1	Introduction: Behind the Practice of Information Politics	1
2	The Viagra Files: The Web as Collision Space between Official and Unofficial Accounts of Reality	35
3	Mapping De-territorialization: Classic Politics in Tatters	59
4	After Genoa: Remedying Informational Politics and Augmenting Reality with the Web	93
5	Election Issue Tracker: Monitoring the Politics of Attention	137
6	The Practice of Information Politics on the Web	163
	Notes	177
	Bibliography	189
	Index	197

描述：
《網絡資訊政治》一書中，理查德·羅傑斯（Richard Rogers）探討了網絡上的資訊排名和推薦的文化、技術和工具，分析了網站的政治內容以及網絡基礎設施中內建的政治。羅傑斯討論了網絡的目的是什麼，並認為網絡仍然是挑戰官方版本和熟悉事物的最佳場所。他將網絡上的政治分為後端（搜索引擎技術的政治）和前端（公開訪問的網站的多樣性、包容性和相對重要性）。為了分析這一點，他開發了四種“政治工具”，即軟件工具，通過捕捉動態鏈接實踐、問題的關注週期和政黨承諾的變化來收集有關網絡的信息。基於他對資訊政治運作方式的研究結果，羅傑斯認為網絡應該成為官方和非官方現實描述的“碰撞空間”。（其中一章“威而鋼檔案”提供了對威而鋼健康益處的官方和非官方主張的有趣分析。）網絡作為一種媒介的獨特之處在於賦予不同信息來源不同地位的特殊實踐。羅傑斯開發的工具捕捉了這些實踐，並有助於發展一種新的資訊政治，考慮並借鑒官方、非政府和地下競爭之間的競爭。理查德·羅傑斯是govcom.org的主任，該組織是一個位於阿姆斯特丹的基金會，致力於在網絡上創建和托管政治工具，並在阿姆斯特丹大學擔任媒體研究助理教授。

目錄：
前言
第一章：引言：資訊政治實踐背後
第二章：威而鋼檔案：網絡作為官方和非官方現實描述的碰撞空間
第三章：解構地域化：經典政治的破碎
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