Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (The MIT Press)

Government media-making, from official websites to whistleblowers' e-mail, and its sometimes unintended consequences. Today government agencies not only have official Web sites but also sponsor moderated chats, blogs, digital video clips, online tutorials, videogames, and virtual tours of national landmarks. Sophisticated online marketing campaigns target citizens with messages from the government--even as officials make news with digital gaffes involving embarrassing e-mails, instant messages, and videos. In Virtualpolitik , Elizabeth Losh closely examines the government's digital rhetoric in such cases and its dual role as mediamaker and regulator. Looking beyond the usual focus on interfaces, operations, and procedures, Losh analyzes the ideologies revealed in government's digital discourse, its anxieties about new online practices, and what happens when officially sanctioned material is parodied, remixed, or recontextualized by users. Losh reports on a video game that panicked the House Intelligence Committee, pedagogic and therapeutic digital products aimed at American soldiers, government Web sites in the weeks and months following 9/11, PowerPoint presentations by government officials and gadflies, e-mail as a channel for whistleblowing, digital satire of surveillance practices, national digital libraries, and computer-based training for health professionals. Losh concludes that the government's "virtualpolitik"--its digital realpolitik aimed at preserving its own power--is focused on regulation, casting as criminal such common online activities as file sharing, video-game play, and social networking. This policy approach, she warns, indefinitely postpones building effective institutions for electronic governance, ignores constituents' need to shape electronic identities to suit their personal politics, and misses an opportunity to learn how citizens can have meaningful interaction with the virtual manifestations of the state. Introduction: A Fable Of Politics, Community, And Virtuality -- Digital Monsters : Show And Tell On Capitol Hill -- Hacking Aristotle : What Is Digital Rhetoric? -- The Desert Of The Unreal : Democracy And Military-funded Videogames And Simulations -- The War From The Web : An Atlas Of Conflict, Government, And Citizenship -- Power Points : The Virtual State And Its Discontents -- Whistle-blowers : Traditional Epistolary Discourse And Electronic Communication -- Submit And Render : Digital Satires About Surveillance And Authentication -- Reading Room : The Nation-state And Digital Library Initiatives -- Waiting Room : Serious Games About National Security And Public Health -- The Past As Prologue : Cultural Politics And The Founding Narratives Of Information Science. Elizabeth Losh. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [333]-397) And Index. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: A Fable of Politics, Community, and Virtuality 14 1 Digital Monsters: Show and Tell on Capitol Hill 28 2 Hacking Aristotle: What Is Digital Rhetoric? 60 3 The Desert of the Unreal: Democracy and Military-Funded Videogames and Simulations 110 4 The War from the Web: An Atlas of Conflict, Government, and Citizenship 150 5 Power Points: The Virtual State and Its Discontents 178 6 Whistle-Blowers: Traditional Epistolary Discourse and Electronic Communication 196 7 Submit and Render: Digital Satires about Surveillance and Authentication 212 8 Reading Room: The Nation-State and Digital Library Initiatives 252 9 Waiting Room: Serious Games about National Security and Public Health 294 10 The Past as Prologue: Cultural Politics and the Founding Narratives of Information Science 324 Notes 346 Index 412 This title reveals government media making, from official websites to whistleblowers' e-mails, and its sometimes unintended consequences