From real to virtual (and back again): civil society, public sphere, and the internet in Indonesia

Abstract

The ability of the Internet to facilitate communication and distribution of information has caused many to identify it as the “new technology of democracy” – as the principal means to enable the expansion of a newly emerging public sphere of political discourse and decision-making actively involving civil society. Yet despite the utopian perspectives on the impact of the Internet upon global society, the Internet, as a technology originating in the U.S. but now existing all over the world, is always localized. Its democratic potential is thus indeterminate and must be worked out in the context of local constellations of power. As elsewhere, the Internet that has been developing in Indonesia has its own character and configuration as it is transformed in important ways by localized power structures.

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