The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere Knowledge, Politics, Identity [Paperback]

This book explores how new media technologies such as e-mails, online forums, blogs and social networking sites have helped shape new forms of public spheres. Offering new readings of J?rgen Habermass notion of the public sphere, scholars from diverse disciplines interrogate the power and possibilities of new media in creating and disseminating public information; changing human communication at the interpersonal, institutional and societal levels; and affecting our self-fashioning as private and public individuals. Beginning with philosophical approaches to the subject, the book goes on to explore the innovative deployment of new media in areas as diverse as politics, social activism, piracy, sexuality, ethnic identity and education. The book will immensely interest those in media, culture and gender studies, philosophy, political science, sociology and anthropology.

Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere Gaurav Desai. 1.The Right to Look Nicholas Mirzoeff2.Democracy, the Public Sphere, and Problems of Self-reflexivity R. Radhakrishnan3.On the Market Colonization of the Virtual Public Sphere Lewis R. Gordon4. Cyberspace and Post-modern Democracy: A Critique of the Habermasian Notion of the Public Sphere K. M. Johnson5.Cybernecology: Liberation Aesthetics and the Public Sphere Timothy Allen Jackson6.The Ever-expanding Sphere of Cybercommunities Sukhdeep Ghuman7.The Public Sphere: Restitution for the Internet James J. Winchester8.Piracy as Tactics: Re-imagining Creativity as Forms of Access Aruni Mahapatra9.The Internet as a Public Sphere: The Emergence of New Forms of Politics in India Esha Sen Madhavan 10.Virtual Activism, Real Repercusl-