Digital Disconnect - How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

Celebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet's effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, these arguments are deeply flawed, since they fail to address the relationship between economic power and the Net. Capitalism, which has worryingly become practically synonymous with democracy in these discussions, is merely background scenery. McChesney's award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In New Media, Old Plutocracy McChesney returns to this provocative thesis in light of the advances of the digital age, arguing that capitalism must be acknowledged and incorporated into the heart of any analysis if we wish to understand how the Internet is changing our world.
According to McChesney, the Internet is not naturally commercial. Policies and massive indirect subsidies have made it this way and now a handful of monopolies dominate the global economy. Capitalism's colonization of the Internet has spurred the collapse of credible journalism, and made the Internet a place of numbing commercialism, an unparalleled apparatus for government and corporate surveillance, and a disturbingly anti-democratic force. In New Media, Old Plutocracy, Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking analysis and critique of the digital revolution, urging us to recognize that in order to democratize our economy and politics, the Internet must be reformed...