<p>List of figures and tables</p> <p>About the author</p> <p>Acknowledgments</p> <p>Preface</p> <p>Chapter 1: Power, communication and the internet</p> <p>Communication and power</p> <p>The emergence of the internet</p> <p>The various faces of the digital divide</p> <p>The online knowledge/power nexus</p> <p>The emergence of the information society</p> <p>The power of interfaces</p> <p>‘Informational politics’ online</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Chapter 2: The structure and power of search engines</p> <p>A short history of information search</p> <p>The challenge of the deep web</p> <p>The challenge of the internet infrastructure</p> <p>Information protection and digital ‘islands’</p> <p>Interest/internet conflicts</p> <p>Control over informational commons</p> <p>The European answer</p> <p>The long tail of search engines</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Chapter 3: Google and the politics of online searching</p> <p>Google’s big idea</p> <p>Google’s search engine mechanism</p> <p>Google’s customised search</p> <p>Google’s additional services</p> <p>Google Scholar</p> <p>Google Translate</p> <p>Google’s global control by local use</p> <p>Reinforcing online allegiance</p> <p>Online manipulation and punishment</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Chapter 4: Users and uses of Google’s information</p> <p>Methodology</p> <p>Data sources</p> <p>A cross-national comparison</p> <p>Main classification system</p> <p>Reliability of coding: the hidden intention</p> <p>Economic and political value index</p> <p>Variety of uses</p> <p>Specificity of search index</p> <p>Extent of locality</p> <p>Initial predictions</p> <p>Results and analysis</p> <p>Summary and discussion</p> <p>Chapter 5: Mass media channels and the world of Google News</p> <p>Online transformation of media and news</p> <p>Commercial motives and their implications</p> <p>Google World News</p> <p>Dominant online states</p> <p>International concern</p> <p>International network</p> <p>The language dimension</p> <p>Summary and conclusion</p> <p>Chapter 6: Google’s global mapping</p> <p>Google Earth and Google Maps</p> <p>Biases in scope</p> <p>The national security dimension</p> <p>Summary and discussion</p> <p>Chapter 7: Conclusion</p> <p>The importance of information and communication</p> <p>The power of the search engine</p> <p>‘Googling’ and the politics of online search</p> <p>Information uses in Google and Yahoo!</p> <p>The world of Google News</p> <p>The bias of Google mapping</p> <p>The impact of popularisation mechanisms</p> <p>The future of search engines</p> <p>From personal advisers to global advertisers</p> <p>The future of the information society</p> <p>Chapter 8: Epilogue</p> <p>Appendix A: Search engines statistics</p> <p>Appendix B: Data for statistic analysis</p> <p>Bibliography</p> <p>Index</p>
