The title of my doctoral dissertation is Citizens Go Online – Probing the Political Potential of the Internet Galaxy. It critically develops the proposition that the Internet, a global system of computer networks used nowadays by more than a billion people worldwide, provides a framework that offers unprecedented opportunities for individuals and groups to engage with the political process by challenging existing power holders.

Abstract.

Acknowledgements

Home Institution: Centre for the Study of Democracy, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, London, UK.

PhD supervisor Professor John Keane (University of Westminster and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung); Examiners: Professor Paul Ginsborg, Chair of Contemporary European History, University of Florence; Dr. Dibyesh Anand, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Westminster.

Thesis submitted: August 2009; Defended successfully without further amenedements: January 2010.

My research interests include the relationship between democracy and new media; the Internet; theories of power, civil society and the public sphere; group theory; social networks; empirical patterns of activism; China and the network society. Italy and Silvio Berlusconi's media empire.