From the Editor.

Abstract

The Web today is not top-down as it once was; it is also a means for ordinary people to have a voice, and, possibly, to bypass the traditional limitations of media, be these limitations cultural, social, or political in nature. The important thing in this issue is that it focuses on Asia. In North America and Europe, Web 2.0 is typically a technology for strong ties or, to quote Kenneth Gergen’s recent paper in the Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, “monadic clusters.” For example, I do follow one blog closely. It reports the first days of a baby of my former student who lives in California. I do read blogs by political journalists occasionally, but for me, Web 2.0 is primarily a way to keep in touch with friends. However, even though Web 2.0 surely functions like this in Asia as well, in countries where democracy and civil rights in the Western sense of the term cannot be taken for granted, it has political meanings too, as the papers by Katz and Lai and Thammo so clearly show. In particular, in dictatorships like Myanmar, the Internet functions much like rumor used to: It offers an important alternative channel of information and a way to maintain an alternative vision of society and politics. When there is no legitimate opposition, such alternativemay become the main check on political power. I cannot help thinking that had Web 2.0 existed in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Red Khmer massacres might have been avoided. However, when we descend from the politics proper to more subtle issues, we also see that Web 2.0 may play a role in shaping societies. As Yang argues, it may question existing cultural forms. As Hjort, focusing on gender, shows, it also gives people an opportunity to redraw the boundaries of their self. In societies more traditional than her home base, Melbourne, such an opportunity may be a matter of, if not outright, life and death, at least relevant in terms of identity and human dignity. The last two papers by Zhao show that even though the political context may be different, the Internet and Web 2.0 in Asia faces the same obstacles and also has a darker side, as elsewhere. In particular, I find Cheng’s case study of the Carrefour Boycott interesting. Know Techn Pol (2009) 22:87 DOI 10.1007/s12130-009-9075-y