Studying Internet-based politics is sometimes an odd field to be in. Many studies still maintain a starting point that you are either “for or against” the effects of the internet on politics; that you are either a cyber optimist or cyber pessimist; and that you will confirm that new citizens are mobilized by the Internet or that it simply reinforces the practices of the already mobilized. These simplistic binary positions within politics and Internet research have been holding the field back from new theoretical and empirical advances. It is refreshing to read a book that deliberately positions itself beyond the binary and problematizes the dilemmas that societies face in an everyday digital world where many have access to the Internet but where practice remains uneven and shaped by powerful corporate actors. At the same time, M. I. Franklin wants to make it clear that in many circumstances, citizens and social movements have had agency in shaping the political outcome of Internet use. Here, the Internet is no longer an independent variable effecting change (or not) in politics. As a field, it is a dependent variable worthy of complex understanding and is shaped by transnational flows of power across market, state, and society. This is a big-picture, ambitious, and ultimately rewarding book.

Digital Dilemmas has six chapters and provides three case studies that bring together the last 10 years or so of Franklin’s research agenda: 1) Microsoft antitrust trials and increasing corporate ownership of Internet-based media, 2) homelessness and the Internet, and 3) Internet governance through the United Nations.

Early on, Franklin argues that the Internet is now central for understanding politics and power as “ownership, and control of the internet by whom, for whom, and on whose terms, has moved from behind the scenes and from behind our screen into public arenas of big power politics, inter/national media scandals, and political revolutions” (p. 2). Decisions over Internet governance are largely in the hands of U.S.-based corporations, and Franklin asks whether “another internet is possible, and for whom” (p. 4).

The book unpacks scenarios of the intersection between incumbent powers, opposition and resistance over control, and ownership of the Internet. It demonstrates that actors with very different resources and power can make a difference in the way people experience and use Internet-based technologies. In taking this approach, the author explicitly critiques influential Marxist-flavored analyses that focus on the confluence of the expansion of the Internet and of neoliberal globalization. Instead, she argues that both micro and macro studies of power and resistance need to be brought together to further develop critical Internet studies.

The case studies inductively focus on how dynamics of technological, sociocultural, and political-economic change intersect though nation-states, public/private spheres, and governmentality. Franklin correctly points out that much of the existing Internet-studies scholarship is rarely cross-disciplinary or multiperspectival, and argues that her book counters “media centric, techno centric and state centric accounts of the interrelationship between the internet, politics and society” (p. 13). She is especially keen to move beyond Marxist dystopian accounts of the Internet that do not allow actors to have any agency in resisting power or creating change, and “presuppose a complete sell-out to global capitalism lock, stock and barrel” (p. 26).

I would also argue that this kind of analysis is important as digital politics research is increasingly dominated either by large-scale research that aggregates digital traces of what individuals do and say online, or by experimental survey research that models the political effects of online engagement. The methodological individualism inherent to these research approaches does not pay attention to the corporatized structures and organizations that constrain and enable individual online engagement, nor look at the particular and atypical experiences of some community members.

Chapter 3 focuses on the increasing predominance of a small group of U.S.-based corporations that own and control most of the world’s Web-based goods and services: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Amazon. In particular focus is the case brought against Microsoft’s monopoly over global consumer software and Web browsers. This chapter takes everyday things that we use, like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Explorer and also Google Search, to think through how powerful companies create and maintain a monopoly by means of their aggressive competiveness and lawsuits, making it nearly impossible for new entrants to obtain market share. Most ordinary citizens are unaware of the limited choice in provider that they face every day. This is irresistible macro-level power at work, shaping our experience of the Internet.

Chapter 4 provides a counterpoint to the bleakness for citizen agency in the previous chapter by looking at how access to Internet services helps homeless people. Franklin shows that micro practices of the most disadvantaged in society demonstrates agency, and sheds light on nuances within assumptions about the digital divide. Digital inclusion is produced by accessing online information, on cell phones and fixed lines in public institutions, for accommodation, services, and supportive community links via street media. She conducted ethnographic work with homeless street-media vendors in New York and Amsterdam and found that these networks have a strong online presence, enabling the voices and stories of those least likely to be heard in traditional media formats.

Chapter 5 uses a different macro power level of analysis by examining the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and its attempt to regulate and establish policy priorities for the future of the Internet. Franklin unpacks the ambivalence that many states have about UN-led attempts at global consensus building for Internet governance. From a more critical position, she focuses on how these high-level discussions provide meta-level narratives about attempts to govern and regulate the ostensibly ungovernable: the Internet. Following from Michel Foucault, she recognizes this as the “governmentality paradox”: Both big power and organized citizens want to shape the dominant narratives for regulating the Internet. This has implications for who has access, freedom, and security online. Franklin is particularly concerned about the protection of human rights, and how advocacy organizations were included in the IGF multistakeholder participation embedded into the process. She reveals the power dynamic at play where civil society advocacy organizations are one of three official stakeholder groups, but are themselves diverse in ideological makeup and priorities. They also have significantly less resources, lobbying experience, and traction within the international diplomatic space. The Internet Rights and Principles Coalition, a cross-stakeholder group (similar to a UN working group), devised an Internet Rights and Principles Charter to protect online human rights. The author notes that it has no chance of ever being ratified by the UN General Assembly.

Many were concerned by the attempt to enshrine new rights when “old” standard human rights were still being systematically abused by many states. Agreement for the governance of Internet freedoms is also not straightforward: “Freedom construed as ‘freedom from’ (e.g. censorship or prosecution under defamation laws) and ‘freedom of’ (e.g. markets, expression, choice)” (p. 175). Franklin writes that this tension of the governmentality paradox is near impossible to reconcile. The paradox of power/freedom, and resistance to power, ought to remain a central concern to all those who write on the politics inherent to our use of the Internet.