Title screen

[References: p. 171 (2 tit.)]

In Public Spheres and Mediated Social Networks in the Western Context and Beyond, Iosifidis and Wheeler’s discussion takes many directions. However, the central question that defines the entire book is this: Do social media ‘provide new forms of participatory democracy … and result in an enhanced public sphere?’ (p. 287). Each of the book’s components contributes to the authors’ assessment of the complex relation between the ‘unstoppable democratizing’ (p. 6) of online networks and the Internet being ‘an object of new policies and panoptic state regulations’ (p. 6). Overall, this assessment includes an investigation of the theoretical and conceptual framework used to negotiate digital phenomena and reviews of a vast number of facts relating to online users’ e-participation around the world.