Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

McChesney, Robert W.

ISBN 10: 1595588671 / ISBN 13: 9781595588678

Published by The New Press, 2013

About this Item

Fast Free Shipping â Good condition. It may show normal signs of use, such as light writing, highlighting, or library markings, but all pages are intact and the book is fully readable. A solid, complete copy that's ready to enjoy.

Seller Inventory # GWV.1595588671.G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1595588671
• ISBN 13: 9781595588678
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

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 digital world.

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.

About the Author

Robert W. McChesney (1952–2025) was the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of some two dozen books on media and political economy, including Digital Disconnect, Communication Revolution, and the award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy; a co-author, with John Nichols, of Tragedy and Farce; and a co-editor, with Ben Scott, of Our Unfree Press, and, with Victor Pickard, of Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights (all published by The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are also the co-authors of the award-winning Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America. McChesney’s work has been translated into thirty-one languages.