Please join us for an examination of how people around the world form cooperative communities and shape major issues through social media. The Internet is not only a new communications technology, it is a medium for the exchange of favors and the building of trust that reshapes human interaction regardless of culture and in spite of repression. Case studies from China, the U.S., Taiwan, Russia, Great Britain and other nations demonstrate that governments and citizens alike wield social media to expand their power and that how people form “network communities reveals as much about their political identity as their socioeconomic class, ethnicity, or religion.” Is this new commons threatened by advocates of Internet sovereignty or proposals to reform Internet governance?

Forging Trust Communities: How Technology Changes Politics will be available for purchase.