Cyberspace: The Gated Public Sphere

• Main Author: Alaeddini, Mohammadreza
• Other Authors: Austin, Lisa M.
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: 0398
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/30151

Cyberspace, as a notional environment, is a reality that comes into existence only through the proprietary technologies, platforms, and infrastructures of private industry. This has given “Internet companies”, as the non-substitutable pathways to the virtual world, a truly unique and tremendously powerful role in exercising their discretion in regulating citizens’ behavior online. Consequently, citizen’s fundamental rights and liberties in the virtual world, such as freedom of speech, thought, assembly and association, access to information and dissemination, are at the mercy of a handful profit seeking enterprises. With the ever-increasing role of the Internet in our social life, it seems that the time is ripe for revisiting some of the foundational questions in cyberspace in order to preserve the cornerstones of our liberal societies in the information era.