Information and American Democracy (by B. Bimber)

This book is interesting, but I have an impression that Bimber is trying to include too many perspectives and issues in this book. It is understandable because politics is a very complicated topic, IT or information is also complicated, so the relationship between them must be even complicated. Anyhow, this first chapter does a good job laying out the whole book, and I expect to see more about the things that he mentions but does not explain explicitly at the beginning (for example, digital divide and citizen engagement). Another issue about this book is the author's position. At the beginning (p12-p15), he seems to be planning to seek a kind of causal relationship or machenism. It looks like information is at least an important causing factor (maybe one of the factors) of democracy. But later on, he seems to give up this piont. Instead, he claims himself to be neither technological determinism nor social constructionism, which makes me a little confused...