A curated collection of readings that have informed the research, writing and thinking of the Digital Civil Society Lab team and fellows.

Democracy and publics

• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2006). “The Civil Sphere.” Oxford:Oxford University Press
• Calhoun, C. (1998). “The public good as a social and cultural project. In W.W. Powell and E. Clemens (Eds.), Private action and the public good (pp. 20-35).” New Haven: Yale University Press
• De Tocqueville, A. (1838). “Democracy in America.”
• Dewey, J. (1927). “The public and its problems.” NY: Henry Holt and Company
• Habermas, J. (1962). “The Structural Transformation of the Public Square: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society.” MA: MIT Press
• Varneliz, K. (2012).  “Networked Publics.” MA: MIT Press
• Marres, N. (2012). “The Invention of Material Publics: Returns to American Pragmatism. Material Participation (pp. 28-59).” London: Palgrave Macmillan
• Mouffe, C. (2000). “The Democratic Paradox.” NY: Verso Books
• Nussbaum, Martha C. (2010). “Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the humanities.” Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
• Persily, N. (2017). “Can Democracy Survive the Internet? Journal of Democracy. 28, 63-76.”
• Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2004). “Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.” New York, NY: Penguin
• Rousseau, J-J. (1997). “Of The Social Contract.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Warner, M. (2002). “Publics and counterpublics (abbreviated version).” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 413-425

Theories of civil society, nonprofits, and foundations

• Craig, C. “Civil Society and Public Sphere.” Public Culture 5(3), 267-280
• Olaf, C. & Taylor, R. (2010). “Defining and Theorizing the Third Sector.” Springer Science+Business Media
• Hansmann, H & Powell W.W. (1987). “Economic Theories of Nonprofit Organizations: The Nonprofit Sector.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
• Molz, R.K. & Dain, P. (2001). “Civic Space/Cyberspace: The American Public Library in the Information Age.” MA: MIT Press
• Reich, R. (2016). “On the role of foundations in democracies. “ Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• Sievers, B (2010). “Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Fate of the Commons.” Medford, MA: Tufts University Press
• Young, D (1989). “Government Failure Theory.” International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration
• Young, D (1989). “Contract Failure Theory.” International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration

Digital networks and society

• Barlow, JP (1996). “A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.” Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Benkler, Y. (2006). “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
• Berners Lee, T. (2000). “Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web.” HarperBusiness
• Lessig, L. (2006). “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2nd ed.).”
• McKinnon, R. (2013). “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.” Basic Boooks
• Morozov, E. (2012). “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.” New York, NY: Public Affairs
• Turner, F. (2008). “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whold Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.” Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
• Weiner, N. (1984). “Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Winner, L. (1986). “The Whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology.” Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
• Wu, T. (2010). “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.” Knopf

Liberties and rights

• Balkin, J.M. (2004). “Digital speech and democratic culture: A theory of freedom of expression for the information society.” New York University Law Review
• Brunton, F. Nissernbaum, H. (2016). “Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Crawford K. & Shultz, J (2014). “Big Data and Due Process: Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms.” Boston College Law Review
• Garton, Ash T. (2016).  “Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
• Klonick, K. “The New Governors: The People, Rules and Processes Governing Online Speech.” Harvard Law Review, 131
• Nissenbaum, H. (2011). “A Contextual Approach to Privacy.” Dawdalus, 140(4)
• Postigo, H (2012). “The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Richards, N. “(2016). Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age.” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Schudson, M. (2015). “The Rise of the RIght to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945-1975.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Ownership

• Boyle, J. (2003). “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain.” Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network
• Doctorow, C. (2014). “Information doesn’t want to be free: Laws for the Internet Age.” San Francisco, CA: McSweeneys
• Lanier, J. (2014). “Who owns the Future?” New York, NY: Simon and Schuster
• Perzanowski, A. & Shultz J. “The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Schneier, B. (2016). “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect your Data and Control the World.” New York, NY: W.W. Norton

Governance

• Braman, S (2009). “Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Castells, M. (2008). “The New Public Sphere: global civil society, communications networks and global governance.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 6161(1), 78-93
• Castells, M. (2009). “Communication Power (2nd ed.).” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Etzioni, O. (2017). “How to regulate Al.” The New York Times
• Gillespie, T. (2017). “Governance of and by platforms.” London: Sage
• Goldsmith, J & Wu. T (2008). “Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World.” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Hess, C. & Ostrom E (2011). “Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Reider, B. Becker, K. & Stalder F. (2009). “Democratizing Search? From Critique to Society-Oriented Design.” Innsbruck: Studien Verlag
• Stallman, R (2002). “Free Software, Free Society: Selected essays of Richard M Stallman.” Boston, MA: Free Software Foundation
• Zittrain, J. (2009). “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press

Activism and organizational forms

• Coleman, G (2012). “Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking.” Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
• Han, H (2014). “How organizations develop activists: civic associatioins and leadership in the 21st century.” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Karpf D (2012). “The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy.” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Karpf D (2016). “Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy.” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Lievrow, L (2011). “Alternative and Activist New Media.” Polity
• Lih, A (2009). “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.” New York, NY: Hyperion
• Shirky, C (2008). “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations.” Penguin
• Tily, C & Tarrow GS (2015). “Contentious Politics.” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Tufecki, Z (2017). “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and fragility of networked protest.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Valentine, MA Retenly D, To A, Rahmati, N. , Doshi, T. & Bernstein MS (2017). “Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work By Structuring Crowds As Organizations.” Denver, CO: CHI.
• Barassi, V. (2015). “Activism on the web: Everyday struggles against digital capitalism.” Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis
• Castells, M (2012). “Networks of outrage and hope. Social movements in the internet age.” Cambridge: Polity Press
• Gerbaudo, P (2017). “Social media teams as digital vanguards: the question of leadership in the management of key Facebook and Twitter accounts of Occupy Wall Street, Indignados and UK Uncut.” Information Communication and Society, 20(2), 185-202
• Juris Jeffrey (2012). “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation.” American Ethnologist, 39(2), 259-279
• Lovink, G & Rossiter N (2015).“Network Cultures and the architecture of decision in L. Denik & O. Leistert (Eds.).” London: Rowman and Littlefield
• Lovink, G. (2011). “Network without a cause: a critique of social media.” London: Polity Press
• Zuckerman, E. “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism.”

Internet freedom, democracy, civil society

• Barabas, C. Narula N. & Zuckerman, E (2017). “Defending Internet Freedom through Decentralization: Back to the Future?.” Cambridge, MA: MIT Media Lab
• Dean, J (2003). “Why the Net is Not a Public Sphere.” Wiley Online Library
• Deibert, R. (2016). “Cyberspace under siege.” Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Rutzen, D (2016). “Civil Society Under Assault.” Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press