Bog. interface-//Culture

reemphasized a classic issue within political and cultural theory – the relationship between individual human agency and social structure: to what extent do local actions reproduce or transform global structures? Several early accounts of the internet expressed high hopes, not least, regarding its participatory potential and transformative capacity. Could clicks cumulatively change the world? – This introduction first revisits questions of structure and agency in a discussion of the work of Anthony Giddens. The discussion proposes a combination of his structuration theory with the tradition of ‘medium theory,’ which seeks to account for the distinctive technological and cultural potentials of different media. Media always make a difference in the dialectic of agency and structure – a dialectic that is inherently political. This has been witnessed, in recent decades, as diverse social actors from politics as traditionally understood, business, as well as civil society have relied on media both as means of self-presentation and as mechanisms for monitoring competing interests. Next, a brief review is given of previous research specifically about the web as technology, text, and social institution. This leads into an overview, finally, of the present collection of studies that examine the web as a source of agency as well as structure, and as an interface with contemporary politics and culture.