Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice

Digital Democracy offers an invaluable in-depth explanation of what issues of theory and application are most important to the emergence and development of computer-mediated communication systems for political purposes. It addresses how the Internet, and computer-mediated political communication are affecting democracy and focuses on the various theoretical and practical issues involved in digital democracy.

Jan A.G.M. van Dijk (1952) is emeritus professor of communication science and sociology of the information society and still working at the University of Twente, the Netherlands.

His main domains of research are the social aspects of the digital media, digital democracy and the digital divide. His best known English books are The Network Society (Four Editions, Sage Publications), Digital Democracy (2000, Sage Publications), The Deepening Divide (2005, Sage Publications), Digital Skills (2014, Palgrave Macmillan), Internet and Democracy (2018, Routledge) and The Digital Divide (2020, Polity Press). Since the year 2020 he is working on an overall work called Power & Technology, combining theories of social and natural power explaining the use of technology in human history. During his long career he was an advisory of many governments and departments as well as the European Commission.