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Politics Online: Blogs, Chatrooms, and Discussion Groups in Ameri |
Author: Richard Davis
Published: 2005-07-26 |
List price: $29.95
Our price: $29.95
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As of: December 03rd, 2008 10:40:55 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 If you're looking for a serious study of politics online, keep looking
This book's ambitions might have been noble, but it falls far short of its goal of providing an empirical look at online forums of political communication. One limitation is that, despite the implications of its subtitle, the book really only spends significant time discussing UseNet. It briefly mentions the role of chatrooms, and as for blogs, Davis claims they are "really a small niche" (pp. 19). Personally, between UseNet and blogs, I'd have to say that it's UseNet that is "really a small niche" today. This leads to the second problem--Davis' data is sorely outdated. The book was published in 2005, but he relies almost solely on data gathered in 1997 and 1999 - that was half the "Internet Age" ago! So much has changed on the Web since then (think about it - Google didn't exist yet), that it is impossible to make claims about the current state of online discussion using data from that period. Davis' points rely on this old data, and he seems to be writing from the perspective of someone who does not much like the Internet and wants to prove that it is a bad forum for public discourse. Sadly, I could not take any of his arguments seriously; it seems that if his points were truly worthwhile, he would have backed them up with some more recent evidence, including fulfilling the promise of the title by actually granting blogs and chatrooms some thoughtful and well-researched discussion.
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