ABSTRACT
The current stage of the political Internet’s development in Ukraine is a truly remarkable example of the diversity of options this medium offers for democratic transformations. Challenging most of the current practices and uses of the medium elsewhere, the development of the Ukrainian Internet provided support for some of the earliest optimistic predictions of this new technology’s implications for democracy. The Internet in Ukraine sets a political agenda for the Ukrainian parliament, president and other mass media by running its own criminal, journalistic, legal and political investigations as well as by accusing top-level officials of illegalities and providing evidence to back up these accusations. The Internet in Ukraine appeals to international organisations and experts; serves as a watchdog in national elections; monitors the national media; and highlights plagiarism in the media. This new medium also has a literary side, making the whole country laugh-and sometimes cry-at its jokes, stories and poems. It has shocked the nation with the taped revelations from the President’s cabinet. Is this a miracle of democracy? No, it is just that an appropriate combination of necessary conditions appeared almost simultaneously in Ukraine.
