The Fifth Estate: The Power Shift of the Digital Age (OXFORD STUDIES DIGITAL POLITICS SERIES)

In the eighteenth century, the printing press enabled the rise of an independent press--the Fourth Estate--that helped check the power of governments, business, and industry. In similar ways, the internet is forming a more independent collectivity of networked individuals, which William H. Dutton identifies as the Fifth Estate. Their network power is contributing to a more pluralist role of individuals in democratic political processes and society, which is not only shaping political accountability but nearly every sector of society. Yet a chorus of critics have dismissed the internet's more democratic potentials, demonizing social media and user-generated-content as simply sources of fake news and populism. So, is the internet a tool for democracy or anarchy? In The Fifth Estate , Dutton uses estate theory to illuminate the most important power shift of the digital age. He argues that this network power shift is not only enabling greater democratic accountability in politics and governance but is also empowering networked individuals in their everyday life and work, from checking facts to making civic-minded social interventions. By marshalling world leading research and case studies in a wide range of contexts, Dutton demonstrates that the internet and related digital media are enabling ordinary individuals to search, create, network, collaborate, and leak information in such independent and strategic ways that they enhance their informational and communicative power vis-à-vis other actors and institutions. Dutton also makes the case that internet policy interventions across the globe have increased censorship of users and introduced levels of surveillance that will challenge the vitality of the internet and the Fifth Estate, along with its more pluralist distribution of power. Ambitious and timely, Dutton provides an understanding of the Fifth Estate and its democratic potential so that networked individuals and institutions around the world can maintain and enhance its role in our digital age. "The rise of the press led to the development of an independent institution: the Fourth Estate, central to pluralist democratic processes. In the digital age, the internet and related information and communication technologies are enabling a network power shift - empowering a Fifth Estate. Networked individuals are becoming an independent and highly distributed force for accountability in politics and society. By connecting diverse strands of decades of research with a wide range of case studies, this book explains how this emerging Fifth Estate has been empowered by the ability of ordinary people to search, originate, network, collaborate, and leak information in ways that enhance their informational and communicative power. The Fifth Estate compliments the existing distribution of power in pluralistic societies. It is not a substitute for other estates and more established bases of institutional authority, such as the press and governments, which the Fifth Estate can hold more accountable. However, threats to freedom of expression and privacy online could undermine the promise of the Fifth Estate power shift. To meet this challenge, the book concludes by discussing approaches to the governance and security of the internet and social media that that take advantage of the empowerment of networked individuals and help ensure the vitality the internet can bring to pluralistic processes in democratic politics and across all sectors of society"-- Provided by publisher