Network Politics and the Arab Spring

2. Network Politics

The authors have coined the term network politics, which refers to politics and networks (Solo & Bishop, 2011). These networks include the Internet, private networks, cellular networks, telephone networks, radio networks, television networks, etc. Network politics includes applications of networks to enable one or more individuals or organizations to engage in political communication including expression, organization, or voting. Furthermore, network politics includes government regulation of networks. Finally, network politics includes the accompanying issues that arise when networks are used for political communication or when there is government regulation of networks.

The term e-politics (Romm-Livermore, 2011) just refers to politics and the Internet. Therefore, e-politics is a subset of network politics. The term e-government refers to the use of information and communication technologies in government operations, access to government data, interactions between government agencies, interactions between government and citizens, and interactions between government and external organizations (Reddick, 2010). Only those e-government applications in the realm of politics, such as e-voting, are in the domain of network politics.