Climate Change Politics: Communication and Public Engagement By ...

change that span several spatial scales and that in some ways can be considered global, a political space that can be especially difficult for citizens to access.

Jönsson’s study of Facebook and Second Life shows that citizens, both individually and in the context of NGOs, are developing alternative forms of governance in virtual spaces. These online communities can be viewed as bottom-up political spaces. Though they have little impact on politics “in real life” (IRL), these developments will likely influence political subjectivities and are therefore significant. New information and communication technologies, and especially the Internet, offer an important potential to remake the political. In fact, many have associated the Internet with a revival of democracy by highlighting its role in the mobilization of social movements and political activism (e.g., Atton, 2004; Dahlberg & Siapera, 2007). Yet we remain skeptical about the claim that the Internet alone will bring the world closer to Mouffe’s radical and plural democracy. Although it represents a potentially more open and more democratic alternative to traditional communication opportunities, the Internet also creates new divides along age, income, and country lines. This poses new questions. Whereas Jönsson convincingly makes the case for transnational deliberative politics, we evoke Mouffe’s critique and note that exclusionary processes are likely to be even more acute at this scale and consensuses are likely to be even more fraught with distortions. Still, as Jönsson points out, online spaces can enhance political expression beyond the constraints of national boundaries and can contribute to the development of new forms of civic debate.

Feldpausch-Parker, Parker, and Peterson examine 350.org, a campaign promoting a limit of 350 parts per million of CO₂ equivalent in the atmosphere, largely below the 450 ppm limit that is roughly associated with the 2 °C target proposed by the European Union and other players that are considered to be at the political forefront of climate policy.³ In itself the 350 parts per million goal is a radically different political target that would require substantive transformations at the levels of