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Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) was perhaps the most prominent pundit of the late-industrial era. His place in the annals of journalism is secure, but his legacy should not stop there. The article argues for a fresh interpretation of Lippmann as an early theorist of the information society. This thesis rests on three propositions. First, in Public Opinion and other less famous books, Lippmann focused productively on the empirical and normative aspects of information's role in a democratic polity. Second, Lippmann's comments upon the nature of social morality, especially his defence of the idea of a universal natural law, are shown to be serviceable for coming to terms with some of the profound challenges and dilemmas of the information age. Third, and decisively, a little-known manuscript, one of Lippmann's final essays, faced directly the issue of technocracy, arguably the paramount threat of the cyber century. The Lippmann corpus, both published and archival, is therefore highly relevant to post-industrial times.

The digital divide has been, at least until very recently, a major theme in policy as well as interdisciplinary academic circles across the world, as well as at a collective global level, as attested by the World Summit on the Information Society. Numerous research papers and volumes have attempted to conceptualise the digital divide and to offer reasoned prescriptive and normative responses. What has been lacking in many of these studies, it is submitted, is a rigorous negotiation of moral and political philosophy, the result being a failure to situate the digital divide - or rather, more widely, information imbalances - in a holistic understanding of social structures of power and wealth. In practice, prescriptive offerings have been little more than philanthropic in tendency, whether private or corporate philanthropy. Instead, a theory of distributive justice is required, one that recovers the tradition of emancipatory, democratic struggle. This much has been said before. What is new here, however, is that the paper suggests a specific formula, the Rawls-Tawney theorem, as a solution at the level of analytical moral-political philosophy. Building on the work of John Rawls and R. H. Tawney, this avoids both the Charybdis of Marxism and the Scylla of liberalism. It delineates some of the details of the meaning of social justice in the information age. Promulgating a conception of isonomia, which while egalitarian eschews arithmetic equality (the equality of misery), the paper hopes to contribute to the emerging ideal of communicative justice in the media-saturated, post-industrial epoch.

The information society thesis, as a set of sociological propositions pertaining to a range of advanced nations, is now widely accepted. Attention, therefore, should increasingly be focused upon the normative dimensions of that thesis. The article claims that the information society is subject to multiplied, acute modes of confusion amounting to nothing less than a normative crisis. Symptoms of the crisis can be observed in such areas as: copyright, whose foundations are breaking down; privacy, under unprecedented threat in cyberspace; and the woefully-misunderstood phenomenon of the digital divide. The article argues that what is required is a new normativity to orientate the social and political framework of the information society. What should be its content? A good answer would be an updated theory of distributive justice anchored in progressive thought. While difficult to prove philosophically, such a normative theory of the information society seems more attractive than its chief rivals, critical theory and neo-liberalism. Normative thinking at any rate provides an antidote to the pervasive influence of technological determinism.

The expansion of opinion is one of the key developments in the British press, as elsewhere. The article analyses the role of one of the most important types of commentator, newspaper political columnists, examining their credentials, sources, information society prospects, and putative impact. Using data from interviews with some of Britain's leading journalists, the study is able to corroborate findings from a wide-ranging literature review. In addition, it formulates some preliminary hypotheses: that the effectiveness of a so-called pundit is a function of his or her willingness to remain focused upon a theme; that there is a positive correlation between a columnist's political impact and the factual or informational content of the columns; and that a columnist is most powerful when complying with a broader newspaper campaign.

The information society thesis, as a set of sociological propositions pertaining to a range of advanced nations, is now widely accepted. Attention, therefore, should increasingly be focused upon the normative dimensions of that thesis. The article claims that the information society is subject to multiplied, acute modes of confusion amounting to nothing less than a normative crisis. Symptoms of the crisis can be observed in such areas as: copyright, whose foundations are breaking down; privacy, under unprecedented threat in cyberspace; and the woefully-misunderstood phenomenon of the digital divide. The article argues that what is required is a new normativity to orientate the social and political framework of the information society. What should be its content? A good answer would be an updated theory of distributive justice anchored in progressive thought. While difficult to prove philosophically, such a normative theory of the information society seems more attractive than its chief rivals, critical theory and neo-liberalism. Normative thinking at any rate provides an antidote to the pervasive influence of technological determinism.

"There is a clear need for a systematic, integrative, and rigorous normative theory of the information society. In this book, Duff offers a prescriptive theory to help to guide the academic and policy communities as they debate the future shape of emerging post-industrial, information-based societies. He argues that information policy needs to become anchored in a left-liberal philosophy which foregrounds a feasible permutation of the core ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood. The information society, if it is to be worth having at all, cannot be allowed to be largely the outcome of the free play of market forces and technological determinism. The social structure, including the information economy, must be subjected to a regulatory axiological system as explicated by some leading proponents of social democracy"--

Daniel Bell (1919–2011) and Manuel Castells (1942–) are the grand theorists of the information age. The article provides a detailed, up-to-date, comparative analysis of their writings. It begins with their methodologies, identifying numerous commonalities in their post-Marxian frameworks. The substance of their theories is then examined, where it is shown that both plausibly explain contemporary social reality in terms of the interplay of three forces: the information technology revolution, the restructuring of capitalism and the innovational role of culture. There are found to be major similarities in their accounts (the Kantian interpretation, social stratification) but also significant divergences (role of science, the fourth world, the normative content of culture). Suitably combined, Bell's and Castells's thought goes a long way towards delivering a persuasive sociological theory of the global information society. However, the article concludes by suggesting that extensive further work is needed to clarify the precise relationships between the three factors and their relative weightings in the equations required to explain recent social change.

The article develops the concept of ePunditry, a putative new lens through which to view the work of political blogging and associated digital modes. It starts by describing three conceptual frameworks which appear highly relevant: the information society thesis, the idea of the fifth estate and its relationship with the fourth, and the Habermasian ideal of deliberative democracy. The empirical content of the inquiry comprises interviews with twenty-seven political bloggers, ranging from celebrated figures such as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale to lesser-known, arguably heroic practitioners working as far afield as Lebanon and Trinidad. The article evaluates their responses, where possible mapping these onto the conceptual frameworks, for example by showing their contribution to an activist form of democratic politics. It is concluded that ePunditry represents a useful new construct for journalism studies.

Silicon Valley, California – home of Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and so on – is widely regarded as the epicentre of the information revolution. However, it is not just a technical or economic phenomenon; it has also made a social revolution. The article evaluates Silicon Valley from a normative perspective, seeking toidentify its real societal impact, negative as well as positive. A select review of significant literature is followed by exposition of primary data, based on in situ face-to-face interviews with Valley occupants; these range from the chief technology officer of a global brand to a homeless, unemployed Vietnam War veteran.The article organises its findings under three headings: the nature of information revolution; iCapitalism as a new technoeconomic synthesis; and the normative crisis of the information society. It concludes with a warning about ongoing attempts to clone Silicon Valley around the world.

PurposeThis paper retrieves relevant aspects of the work of idealist thinker T.H. Green in order to improve comprehension of, and policy responses to, various dilemmas facing contemporary 'information societies'.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is an exercise in interdisciplinary conceptual research, seeking a new synthesis that draws upon a range of ethical, metaphysical, empirical and policy texts and ideas. It is an application of moral and political principles to post-industrial problems, part of an ongoing international effort to develop viable normative approaches to the emergent information society. The background research included in situ study of archival papers.FindingsGreen's version of idealism illuminates current, technologically-induced shifts in our understandings of important categories such as self, substance and space. The paper finds that Green's doctrine of the common good, his alternative to the (still prevalent) school of utilitarian welfarism, combined with his famously 'positive' theory of the state, is highly relevant as a normative template for applied philosophy and policy. The article demonstrates its applicability to three vital contemporary issues: freedom of information, intellectual property and personal privacy. It concludes that Green's work provides exceptional resources for an original, anti-technocratic, theory of the information society as good society. Practical implicationsIt is hoped that, as part of the wider rediscovery of the work of Green and other idealists, the paper will have some impact on public policy.Originality/valueThe paper contains a new scholarly interpretation of Green's theories of the common good and of the state. In addition, it is believed to be the first major attempt to apply idealism to the information society and its problems

The paper addresses one of the main paradoxes of post-industrial society: information poverty. While digital divides of various types have been extensively theorized and researched, the actual condition of the information poor – those at the wrong end of socioeconomic information-divides – has not received sufficient attention. Yet if advanced nations have 'informatized' and thus become, at least in some measure, information societies, the plight of those lacking the definitive resource ought surely to be high on academic and political agendas. The article reviews the scattered multidisciplinary literature on the condition, confirming the iron link between economic poverty and information poverty, while also registering cultural and behavioural dimensions. Building on such work, a focused, up-to-date and, it is believed, original conception is able to be introduced, namely, information poverty as a deficiency in certain taken-for-granted categories of political and cognate information, or normal democratic information (NoDI). The new construct is then trialled in the field, among a sample of severely disadvantaged men in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. The informants are indeed found to be, by and large, wanting in these key categories of information, an epistemic pathology that reflects and reinforces their material malaise. The article concludes that the 'option for the poor' – the political duty of care for the worst off – in the twenty-first century demands new modes of State action to combat an acute and increasingly salient social problem.