Politics and technology

Politics and technology encompasses concepts, mechanisms, personalities, efforts, and social movements that include, but are not necessarily limited to, the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs). Scholars have begun to explore how internet technologies influence political communication and participation, especially in terms of what is known as the public sphere.

The smartphone is a transformational communication technology that has features that include talk, text messaging, Internet access, electronic mail, faxing, pictures, video, and a wide variety of applications. Mobile devices are one of the important reasons for the rise of political participation and are now portrayed as a voting agent in the least developed countries. Increased availability of mobile phones, and subsequent access to the public sphere, has enhanced individuals' and groups' ability to bring attention to and organize around specialized issues.

More recently, social media has emerged as one of the main platforms for politics. Millions of users can learn about politicians' policies and statements, interact with political leaders, organize, and voice their own opinions on political matters. Political campaigns are also using social media sites to reach voters using political advertising.

There is also a wide variety of online tools meant to promote political participation and combat the spread of misinformation. A comparison of civic technology platforms can be useful in differentiating the different services offered by each platform.

The idea of the public sphere has generally come to be understood as the open social spaces and public spaces in which private citizens interact and share information and ideas relevant to society. These can include, for example, town halls, public squares, markets, coffee shops, or what ancient Greeks called agoras. Scholars have argued that these spaces are vital for creating and maintaining an active, informed public in a democratic society.

In Jürgen Habermas' book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, he defines the public sphere as "a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed." In principle, the public sphere should be open to all citizens and free from influence from governments or private businesses. Habermas goes on to argue that:

"A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obey. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely."

Howard Rheingold states that "There is an intimate connection between informal conversations, the kind that takes place in communities... and the ability of large social groups to govern themselves without monarchs or dictators." Rheingold and others have gone on to argue that virtual spaces created through the Internet and related information and communications technologies have led to the emergence of a new type of digital public sphere. Some scholars have conceptualized this alternately as a virtual public sphere or a networked public sphere, while still others have similarly described what they call a networked society or networked publics. Essentially, these new virtual spaces can be used in much the same way as traditional, offline spaces: that is, as a "free space" to discuss and debate ideas of public importance. Just as the public sphere is a combination of "every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public", the digital public sphere also comprises all forms of new media—such as chat rooms, website comment sections, and social media—in which private citizens engage in discourse as a public. Virtual spaces may overlap or interact with offline spaces as well, forming what has been called "hybrid networks".