ABSTRACT
In the realm of politics, as elsewhere, the insights raise questions about network construction, about individual motivation and identity, about borders around identities, and about the structuration of social systems through communication. The theme of the public, and thus of publicness, is apparent in any discussion of global civil society (GCS) and the democratizing and transnationalizing dynamics of Internet politics. Like networks of financial traders and brokers, contemporary terrorist activity demonstrates pretty much all the features of the virtualization of organization. In what follows the author rehearse his argument about the mediatization of politics and the constitution of emergent globalities by examining the creation and functioning of digital political worlds in three analytical and empirical domains and by way of different exemplars. He then focuses the growing literature on the part played by Internet technologies in political mobilization. But new trends in political communication are noted and variously applauded or denigrated.
