"This is a deeply thoughtful book that asks a genuinely important question Do the new

media empower us or do they trap us in our own cocoons, cutting us off from meaningful
contact with others? Papacharissi doesn't let the reader off easily. Insistently, beguilingly,
she brings up uncomfortable issues Why are blogs so narcissistic? What happens politically
when YouTube goes beyond the pale? and she never settles for easy answers. If you care
about politics, if you care about modernity, read this book."
Roderick P. Hart, University of Texas at Austin

"Papacharissi is a pioneer in the study of democracy and how it is 'practiced' in the digital age.
A Private Sphere is a deep, thoughtful exploration of citizenship, information, and technology
at a moment of great fluidity. Anyone with an interest in how media shape political culture
would do well to engage the arguments of this terrific book."
Susan Herbst, Georgia Tech

"A thoughtful and thought-provoking book. Papacharissi's argument that the convergence of
technology, practices and spaces is opening a private sphere as the locus for reworked modes
of citizenship is an intriguing and important one. Read this book!"
Charles Whitney, Northwestern University

Online technologies excite the public imagination with narratives of democratization.

The Internet is a political medium, born of democracy, but is it democratizing?

Late modern democracies are characterized by civic apathy, public skepticism, disillusionment
with politics, and general disinterest in conventional political process. And yet, public interest
in blogging, online news, net-based activism, collaborative news filtering, and online
networking reveal an electorate that is not disinterested but, rather, fatigued with political
conventions of the mainstream.

This book examines how online digital media shape and are shaped by contemporary
democracies, by addressing the following issues:

A How do online technologies remake how we function as citizens in contemporary

democracies?
A What happens to our understanding of public and private as digitalized democracies converge
technologies, spaces and practices?
A How do citizens of today understand and practice their civic responsibilities, and how do they
compare to citizens of the past?
A How do discourses of globalization, commercialization, and convergence inform
audience/producer, citizen/consumer, personal/political, public/private roles individuals must
take on? Are resulting political behaviors atomized or collective?
A Is there a public sphere anymore, and, if not, what model of civic engagement expresses
current tendencies and tensions best?

Students and scholars of media studies, political science, and critical theory will find this to
be a fresh engagement with some of the most important questions facing democracies today.

Zizi Papacharissi is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication at the University
of Illinois-Chicago.

Cover illustration: Ed Marshall

Cover design by: BuddhaMedia
Printed in Great Britain

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