[D66] Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

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http://thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1878 



    Digital Disconnect


      How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY 
<http://thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_catalog&task=author&author_id=P18434>

A PARADIGM-SHIFTING ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INTERNET 
AND THE ECONOMY FROM THE CELEBRATED SCHOLAR AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
Robert McChesney is one of the nation’s most important analysts of the 
media.
—Howard Zinn
Celebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the 
Internet’s effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss 
and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, arguments on 
both sides fail to address the relationship between economic power and 
the Internet.

McChesney’s award-winning/Rich Media, Poor Democracy/skewered the 
assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a 
democratic one. In/Digital //Disconnect/, McChesney returns to this 
provocative thesis in light of the advances of the digital age. He 
argues that the sharp decline in the enforcement of antitrust 
violations, the increase in patents on digital technology and 
proprietary systems and massive indirect subsidies and other policies 
have made the Internet a place of numbing commercialism. A handful of 
monopolies now dominate the political economy, from Google, which 
garners a 97 percent share of the mobile search market, to Microsoft, 
whose operating system is used by over 90 percent of the world’s computers.

Capitalism’s colonization of the Internet has spurred the collapse of 
credible journalism and made the internet an unparalleled apparatus for 
government and corporate surveillance and a disturbingly antidemocratic 
force.
In/Digital Disconnect/, Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking 
critique of the Internet, urging us to reclaim the democratizing 
potential of the digital revolution while we still can.

*Robert W. McChesney*is the Gutgsell endowed Professor in the Department 
of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He 
is the author of several books on the media, including the award-winning 
R/ich Media, Poor Democracy /and/Communication Revolution/, and a 
co-editor (with Victor Pickard) of/Will the Last //Reporter Please Turn 
Out the Lights/. He lives in Champaign, Illinois.
Pub Date:Spring 2013
Format:hardcover
Trim:6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 320 pages
ISBN:978-1-59558-867-8

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