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Information politics on the Web

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Does the information on the Web offer many alternative accounts of reality, or does it subtly align with an official version? In Information Politics on the Web, Richard Rogers identifies the cultures, techniques, and devices that rank and recommend information on the Web, analyzing not only the political content of Web sites but the politics built into the Web's infrastructure. Addressing the larger question of what the Web is for, Rogers argues that the Web is still the best arena for unsettling the official and challenging the familiar.Rogers describes the politics at work on the Web as either back-end--the politics of search engine technology--or front-end--the diversity, inclusivity, and relative prominence of sites publicly accessible on the Web. To analyze this, he developed four "political instruments," or software tools that gather information about the Web by capturing dynamic linking practices, attention cycles for issues, and changing political party commitments. On the basis of his findings on how information politics works, Rogers argues that the Web should be, and can be, a "collision space" for official and unofficial accounts of reality. (One chapter, "The Viagra Files" offers an entertaining analysis of official and unofficial claims for the health benefits of Viagra.) The distinctiveness of the Web as a medium lies partly in the peculiar practices that grant different statuses to information sources. The tools developed by Rogers capture these practices and contribute to the development of a new information politics that takes into account and draws from the competition between the official, the non-governmental, and the underground.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

001 ROG i

Publisher

Cambridge, Mass. : : MIT Press,., 2004

Collation

1 online resource (xi, 200 pages) : illustrations

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262256872

Classification

001

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Information technology
Knowledge, Sociology of.
Civil society.
Web search engines
Web portals

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Richard Rogers

Other Information

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Source

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Validator

maya

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3770.001.0001

Journal Volume

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Journal Issue

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