The Internet has changed the nature of the public sphere in Western democracies. It's revitalized traditional grass-roots political involvement, for example (as with the ultimately unsuccessful Howard Dean presidential campaign in the USA in 2003–2004). But more than this, it's become part of an important rethinking of what actually constitutes politics. The emerging ‘anti-globalization’ movement brings together the medium of the Internet with a primarily young demographic, and a rethinking of the nature of activism — through ‘culture jamming’ — to create a new version of politics.

Culture jamming attempts to change the way that people think about the world by playing with existing culture, and thus introducing new ideas into the public sphere (Kerr, 2002: 1). It's been most visibly applied in campaigns against globalization and big-business capitalism. In 2000, Andrew Boyd, a ‘grass roots publicist from New York’, designed the ‘Billionaires for Bush’ campaign, to draw attention to the fact that mainstream politicians were being bought off by massive campaign donations from corporations: