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Introducing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Our Online World xi just well-educated, middle- or upper-class individuals—contemporary online communities can act collectively to perform a “watchdog” role and operate as “a source of salient observations regarding matters of public concern,” and provide “a platform for discussing the alternatives open to a polity.” 11 A further reason for optimistic analyses of a networked public sphere is the Internet’s distributed communications architecture combined with the low costs for producing and distributing information (all you need is a smart- phone, tablet, or computer and an Internet connection). Both Benkler and Castells believe these low barriers to entry enable anyone with Internet access to shape (or reshape) the social, cultural, or political dimensions of everyday life. This “mass self-communication” 12 transforms the traditional power and infl uence of the mass media—typifi ed as “more centralized, homo- geneous and less pluralistic” 13 —into a decentralized, heterogeneous “social communication process” 14 characterized by a diverse and pluralistic range of participants. 15 As a result, it offers “avenues for citizen independence from mainstream news media and larger social forces.” 16 In addition to the social, political, and cultural diversity offered by the Internet, some scholars also argue that it provides a greater resilience to con- trol by governments, states, or corporations. For example, the Internet is a communication network technically organized without any control or man- agement by any central individual or organization. Thus, it crucially lacks any single central point of control, making it diffi cult to censor contentious or sensitive information. This inevitably leads to “the emergence of multiple axes of information [that] provide new opportunities for citizens to challenge elite control of po- litical issues” 17 and enhances “the potential for the media to exercise account- ability over power.” 18 Tewksbury and Rittenberg see this as a “democratization of the creation, dissemination, and consumption of news and information” 19 and Castells goes further by asserting that “mass self-communication” em- powers individuals to “challenge and eventually change the power relations institutionalized in society.” 20 Such individual and collective efforts to challenge and transform social and cultural relations have been identifi ed across a range of fi elds that use the Internet to share information and organize protests, 21 as well as in demo- cratic politics for which networked communications have been used to fa- cilitate increased engagement with and participation in democratic institutions. 22 THE BAD AND THE UGLY Although most scholars agree that the Internet is “bringing together indi- vidual citizens and informal networks through interconnected global webs of