Online journalism has developed in several directions and rhythms, taking different shapes in different online news projects. Scholars have offered empirical evidence that these directions are, in many occasions, far from the utopias envisioned in the 90s. We are still inventing online journalism. A comparative research focused on four case studies of Catalan online newsrooms traces the materia...

Envisioning real utopias is a central component of a broader intellectual enterprise that can be called emancipatory social science. Emancipatory social science seeks to generate scientifi c knowledge relevant to the collective project of challenging various forms of human oppression. To call this a form of social science, rather than simply social criticism or social philosophy, recognizes the...

In this chapter and the next we will explore a range of real utopian proposals that try to satisfy three main criteria: First, the institutional designs involved are desirable in terms of radical democratic egalitarian emancipatory ideals. Second, they constitute viable alternatives to existing arrangements (i.e. they are consistent with what we know about how institutions work and, if implemen...

In the absence of a comprehensive institutional design for a radical democratic egalitarian alternative to capitalism what we need to work out are principles of institutional innovation and change which will tell us whether we are at least moving in the right direction. In this chapter we will explore one way of doing this. I will begin by interrogating the meaning of the word “social” in socia...

There was a time, not so long ago, when both critics and defenders of capitalism believed that “another world was possible.” It was generally called “socialism.” While the right condemned socialism as violating individual rights to private property and unleashing monstrous forms of state oppression, and the left saw socialism as opening up new vistas of social equality, genuine freedom and the ...