Henry Farrell

New Problems, New Publics? Dewey and New Media

This is a response to the article by Ethan Zuckerman “New Media, New Civics?” published in this issue of Policy & Internet (2014: vol. 6, issue 2). Dissatisfaction with existing governments, a broad shift to “post-representative democracy” and the rise of participatory media are leading toward the visibility of different forms of civic participation. Zuckerman’s article offers a framework to describe participatory civics in terms of theories of change used and demands places on the participant, and examines some of the implications of the rise of participatory civics, including the challenges of deliberation in a diverse and competitive digital public sphere. Henry Farrell responds.

Henry Farrell (2014), “New Problems, New Publics? Dewey and New Media,” Policy & Internet, 6, 2:176-191.

Other Writing:

Academic Article

Regulating Information Flows: States, Private Actors and E-Commerce

June 1, 2006 Annual Review of Political Science globalization Governance
Growing interdependence between jurisdictions means that states are increasingly using private actors as proxies in order to achieve desired regulatory outcomes. International relations theory has had difficulty in understanding the exact circumstances under which they might wish to do this. Drawing on literatures in both international relations and legal scholarship, this article proposes a framework ...
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Essay

Silicon Valley’s Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions

February 21, 2025 Bloomberg featured pin
In 2008, Paul Graham mused about the cultural differences between great US cities. Three years earlier, Graham had co-founded Y Combinator, a “startup accelerator” that would come to epitomize Silicon Valley — and would move there in 2009. But at the time Graham was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which, as he saw it, sent a different message ...
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