Public space and representative democracy are experiencing important challenges relating to the development of technological communication and the expansion of forms of participation. The concept and the practice itself of citizenship are undergoing changes, as this book perceptively explains. Through his use of the concept of monitory democracy, the author helps the reader understand what it means to be a citizen of a globalized world in the age of the Internet.

Luigi Ceccarini teaches Political Science at the University of Urbino and co-ordinates the research activities of its Political and Social Studies Laboratory (LaPolis).

Contents:

Introduction

I. Background issues

1. Re-thinking the citizenship. - 2. Citizens’ inclusion process. -  3. The political party parabola. 4. Citizens as audience. - 5. New values and the political culture. -  6. Technology and «hyper-democracy». - 7. Disintermediation and individualization. - 8. Populism and anti-politics. - 9. Pervading Web 2.0. - 10. Web and democracy: utopia and dystopia. - 11. Public sphere and citizenship. - 12. Power, counter-power and distrust. - 13. Online and offline. 

II. Citizenship, culture and political community

1. Citizenship: an open and complex concept . - 2. Citizenship and democratization. - 3. Democratic citizenship . - 4. Behind the formal dimension. - 5. Civic culture and citizenship. - 6. Building social and political identity. - 7. Socialization and political generations . - 8. Citizens between state and civil society. - 9. Citizens and the political process. - 10. Routes of political integration. 

III. De-aligned and critical citizens

1. Declining ties. - 2. Belonging and de-freezing. - 3. Cognitive mobilization and public opinion. -  4. «Bowling alone»?. - 5. «Single» and «post». -  6. The critical citizen. - 7. The (good) monitoring citizen.

 IV. Citizenship, participation and (post)democracy

1. Behind democratic representation. - 2. Parties, voting and democracy. - 3. Mistrust as a political resource. - 4. (Post)democratic parabola and «positive citizenship». - 5. Intermittent, «single» and dis-intermediated participation. - 6. Spaces of participation. - 7. Media, Internet and citizenship.

V. «Monitoria» and responsibility

1. Democracy, distrust and surveillance. - 2. Dimensions of the «counter-democracy». - 3. Surveillance and the Web. -  4. New political actors and monitoring engagement. - 5. Post-representative democracy and the monitorial citizens. - 6. The political geography of the monitoring action. - 7. Political responsibility and creative participation. - 8. Political responsibility and post-modern citizenship. - 9. Old and new logic of the collective action.

VI. Post-modern society and web-politics

1. The meaning of the online collective action. - 2. Citizens and the new medial system. 3. Democracy and social representations of the web-politics. 4. Internet: an engagement place?. 5. Politics and Web society. 6. Public sphere, territory and audiences. 7. Polarization of the attitudes. - 8. Offline and online intersection. - 9. Measuring online citizenship.