Research On Andrew Chadwick’s Thought Of Internet Politics

Internet has been playing an important role in contemporary public life,meanwhile, it imposes an more profound impact on politics. To some extent, internethas been shaping a brand new democratic political model, changing the way ofpolitical participation, providing a new political environment. The operationallimitations from direct democracy model, which have been existing for a long time,are being broken by internet. This makes the direct democracy and participatorydemocracy have more possibility to be achieved in reality. In certain countries,internet has also becomes an important factor in promoting political reform. Evenmore importantly, internet is not only a means for people to participate politics, butalso in some way a method that reshapes people’s political views and values. Thus,internet brings a unique and brand new political culture and changes the way peoplelook upon politics.The profound impact of internet also raises new questions for the research ofpolitics theory, thus brings about a new study field. Internet Politics, as a newInterdisciplinary research field, provides a variety of study possibilities. In the realmof Internet Politics, a series of fundamental theories have been constructed.Particularly, the e-democracy and e-mobilization have brought a widespread attentionby researchers all over the world. Under these circumstances, constructing “InternetPolitics” is of great significance.In this paper, literature analysis, logic analysis and comparative analysis areadopted to study Andrew Chadwick’s Internet Politics. The paper is organized as fourparts. In the first part, from the aspects of social background and ideologicalbackground, we study Chadwick’s two core concepts: technological determinism andsocial determinism as well as eight key themes of Internet Politics: decentralization,participation, community, global, post-industrial, rational, liberal governance. Parttwo analyzes the logic starting point of Internet Politics from the impact of internet oncore politics features and relations between contemporary political structure andsocial movement. In part three, E-Democracy, E-Mobilization and E-Campaigning arestudied, the impact of internet on community building, political consultation, political participation, interest groups, social movements, parties, candidates and elections arealso analyzed. In the final part, the evaluation and realistic implication of InternetPolitics are drawn.