Tim Jordan, Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society

Abstract

In 2009, Tim Jordan wrote that “the possibilities for power and society in times of digital media and the Internet are still not well understood” (Jordan, 2009, p. 1). In Internet years, that may as well have been a lifetime ago. Six years on, such disparate and bewildering events as WikiLeaks (2010 and onward), the Arab Spring (2011), the Snowden revelations (2013), the hacking of Sony Pictures (2014), and most recently, the theft of unimaginable amounts of information on U.S. federal employees by (allegedly) Chinese hackers (2015) have given us a palpable sense of what is possible in this brave new digital world. Odds are there will be a new case to add to the list before this review is published. Meanwhile, governments, corporations, and civil society continue to spar, both publicly and behind the scenes, over tradeoffs between privacy, free expression, public safety, and national security. Individuals, too, are embroiled in these politics of information, grappling daily with the intrusion of the digital into daily life at home, at work, and at play.