<b>Online technologies excite the public imagination with narratives of democratization. The Internet is a political medium, borne of democracy, but is it democratizing?</b><p>Late modern democracies are characterized by civic apathy, public skepticism, disillusionment with politics, and general disinterest in conventional political process. And yet, public interest in blogging, online news, net-based activism, collaborative news filtering, and online networking reveal an electorate that is not disinterested, but rather, fatigued with political conventions of the mainstream.<p>This book examines how online digital media shape and are shaped by contemporary democracies, by addressing the following issues:<ul><li>How do online technologies remake how we function as citizens in contemporary democracies?<li>What happens to our understanding of public and private as digitalized democracies converge technologies, spaces and practices?<li>How do citizens of today understand and practice their civic responsibilities, and how do they compare to citizens of the past?<li>How do discourses of globalization, commercialization and convergence inform audience/producer, citizen/consumer, personal/political, public/private roles individuals must take on?<li>Are resulting political behaviors atomized or collective?<li>Is there a public sphere anymore, and if not, what model of civic engagement expresses current tendencies and tensions best?</ul><p>Students and scholars of media studies, political science, and critical theory will find this to be a fresh engagement with some of the most important questions facing democracies today.