charlotte tong

Mark Poster discussed the political impact of the Internet on several issues: access, technological determinism, encryption, commodification, intellectual property, the public sphere, decentralization, anarchy, gender and ethnicity. While he did a very throughout research to address these issues from different standpoints. Although it focused on the implication of democracy in political point of view, certain notions are applicable to my discussion about Internet as a New Media and Democracy in team project. Mark Poster mentioned that Internet is a decentralized communication system, similar to telephone network, that everyone with internet connection can send and receive messages in anytime, anyplace. When he talked about virtual communities, he said Internet functioning as a public space fosters democracy and also transformed the nature of it:

...a space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs... is essential to democracy.[Nancy Fraser, Rethinking the Public Space]
The age of the public sphere as face-to-face talk is clearly over: the question of democracy must henceforth take into account new form of electronically mediated discourse.

Furthermore, Internet community breaks down hierarchies of race, class, age, status and gender, which works as democratic communication tool by enabling everyone to speak for themselves to anyone in cyber space.