Postcolonial Politics, The Internet and Everyday Life: Pacific Traversals Online (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics)

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The dotcom boom may well have come and gone but information and communication technologies (ICTs) are now an inescapable part of both everyday life and world politics. In this close-up study of several longstanding Internet discussion forums, M.I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online. The author traces how non-Western diasporas use the Internet to talk productively about local and global politics, cultural issues, and identity in an era dominated by neoliberal globalization. The openings for intercultural and intracultural empowerment, online and also on the ground, that emerge through ordinary people's uses of the Internet are being squeezed out, however, by powerful political economic and sociocultural interests from above and below. Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these Pacific traversals online suggest other Internet futures; more hospitable, culturally inclusive and economically equitable than the one currently being put in place by vested economic interests and political power elites. This book will be of interest to students of international relations, social sciences, cultural studies, science and technology studies.

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M. I. Franklin Reader and Director of the Global Media & Transnational Communications program at the Department of Media & Communications, Goldsmiths (University of London, UK). Postcolonial Politics, the Internet, and Everyday Life: Pacific Traversals Online(Routledge, 2004/2007) is one of the first full studies of how non-western communities and their diasporas use the web for community building, mobilization, andsupport. Other books include Resounding International Relations: On Music, Culture and Politics (Ed., Palgrave MacMillan, 2005) and Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet (due out in 2013). A Steering Group member of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition at the UN Internet Governance Forum, she has received research funding from the Ford Foundation and Social Science Research Council (USA).