Introduction: Assessing the Social and Political Impact of the Internet and New Social Media in Asia

This paper introduces a special issue on the social and political impact of new information communications technologies (ICTs) in Asia, with specific attention paid to new social media. This paper provides some contextualisation of the broader questions that the principal literature on the subject raises, namely questions about the effectiveness of ICTs as tools for mobilisation and information exchange; mechanisms of censorship and control; and the nature of public discourse on the Internet. In doing so, the paper introduces and locates the articles that comprise this special issue within these debates.