Here is a review by Guy Redden of a recent book about Cyberactivism.
Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers (eds.). Routledge, New York and London, 2003, 310 pp. inc. index. ISBN 0-415-94319-1 (hardback), ISBN 0-415-94320-5 (paperback).
Trying to ascertain the social significance of new media is a task perhaps most successfully undertaken with the benefit of hindsight. Nonetheless, such speculation is inevitable in communities living through periods of rapid media change, even if the ?situated? critic is not always ideally located to see the wood for the trees. During its ascendancy, every medium of the modern age has been proclaimed a saviour of democratic communication (Benjamin?s contention that ?letters to the editor? could transform democracy springs to mind). The Internet is no different. A recent macroanalysis found that its democratic potential was the second most prevalent theoretical concern in the secondary literature (the first being general uses and gratifications).