Books by Flemming Bjerke

Digital Governance://Networked Societies – Creating Authority, Community and Identity in a Globalized World explores the role of the Internet in the creation and reconfiguration of political authority, community and identity in a globalizing world.A string of case studies demonstrates how the Internet and connectivity facilitate the creation of political authorities ‘within’ and ‘beyond’ the nation state, and how it lies at the core of the formation of automated forms of power and the emergence of a plethora of communities with global reach and outlook, affecting identity formation processes and social dynamics.These developments have important repercussions for politics and democracy. Politics in the Information Age becomes a ‘politics of presence’ and a ‘politics of becoming’, as expressed through multiple practices, connections and organizational forms, as well as the complex formation of political identities. In such a set-up, democracy comes to depend more on ethics and less on procedures.

The public sphere is normally considered to be a forum for democratic deliberation. It can serve many other uses, however, such as an arena for strategic communication, a space for identity formation or a ‘showcase’ for celebrities. By bringing together researchers from political science, public administration, sociology and media studies, New Publics with/out Democracy presents a comprehensive perspective on the transformation of the public sphere in the emerging network society.The book presents a series of theoretical and empirical contributions concerning current changes in political communication, participation, identity and the role of the media and journalists.Within a common framework of analysis, the individual chapters in the book cover a wide range of issues concerning the way political institutions, citizens, NGOs, firms and not least the media and journalists engage the public sphere, such as post-ideological politics, governance by performance and evaluation, transnationalisation, branding, Internet use and journalistic praxis.Although the book clearly suggests that the public sphere is an increasingly important medium of politically active and informed agents, it also insists that is proceeds far beyond the democratic publics of parliament and citizens in modern society.