Bits and Atoms

Steven Livingston is Professor of Media and Public and International Affairs at the School of Public Affairs & Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, and he is the author of When The Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago, 2007), Clarifying the CNN Effect (Harvard, 1997), Terrorism Spectacle (Westview, 1994). Gregor Walter-Drop is the Managing Director of the Collaborative Research Center at the Freie Universitat Berlin.

This pathbreaking book brings an innovative group of scholars and practitioners together to explore ways in which information and communication technologies are addressing governance problems that occur when states fail to deliver basic services or provide acceptable levels of social order and public input. The diverse cases illustrate both the capacities and limits of communication technologies in building various forms of social and political organization. These studies cast a much needed light on the spectrum of political problems and creative possibilities that shape the lives of the majority of people living outside of functional democratic political regimes. The book adds significantly to how we think about governance, the role of technology in social and political organization, and the nature of political communication.

• Foreward ; Sina Odugbemi ; Chapter 1: Introduction ; Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop ; Part 1: Simulation, Consolidation, Opposition: ICT and Limited Statehood ; Chapter 2: Information Technology and the Limited States of the Arab Spring ; Muzammil M. Hussain and Philip N. Howard ; Chapter 3: The Kremlin's Cameras and Virtual Potemkin Villages: ICT and the Construction of Statehood ; Gregory Asmolov ; Chapter 4: E-government as a Means of Development in India ; J. P. Singh ; Chapter 5: ICT and Accountability in Areas of Limited Statehood ; Joseph Siegle ; Part 2: Substitution: ICT as a Tool for Non-State Governance ; Chapter 6: FrontlineSMS, Mobile-for-Development and the 'long tail' of governance ; Sharath Srinivasan ; Chapter 7: Natural Disasters and Alternative Modes of Governance: the Role of Social Networks and Crowdsourcing Platforms in Russia ; Gregory Asmolov ; Chapter 8: Mapping Kibera. Empowering Slum Residents by ICT ; Primoz Kova?i? and Jamie Lundine ; Chapter 9: Crisis Mapping in Areas of Limited Statehood ; Patrick Meier ; Chapter 10: From Crowdsourcing to Crowdseeding: The Cutting Edge of Empowerment? ; Peter van der Windt ; Chapter 11: Conclusions ; Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop ; Notes ; References ; Index