Forum: New Media & Society

This article explores how the development of information technology, especially interactive computers, changes the privacy environment as experienced by individuals and the policy implications of these changes. External entities, such as governments and commercial industries, that ‘invade’ people’s rights to be left alone are of less concern now than individuals who voluntarily give up their privacy by willingly providing personal information for other benefits on the internet. Also, in the interactive environment, intended and unintended activities of more diversified and less easily identifiable entities have become more of a threat to individual privacy. In this new environment, rather than ‘providing’ privacy for passive individuals, a more user-oriented, active approach is needed to help users to protect themselves from more diversified and unknown forces and potential loss of control. This article suggests that focusing on the right not to be identified on the network by allowing affirmative acts of secrecy and deception regarding identity and identification might be the most effective-and sometimes only practically viable-way of ensuring privacy in the interactive environment.

This study examines the relationships between the lifestyles of urban Chinese consumers and the adoption and use of pagers and mobile phones. Based on a probability sample of 7094 respondents from China’s seven most prosperous cities, results show that the respondents identified as yuppies tended to integrate pagers and mobile phones into their conspicuous, westernized and socially active lifestyle. Adopting a pager and mobile phone is found to be a means to achieve social differentiation and identity among this lifestyle segment. The study demonstrates the utility of segmentation analysis in delineating complex relationships among demographics, lifestyles and adoption and use of new media.

Many have studied the interrelations between online spaces and offline contexts, highlighting that internet spaces are fundamentally embedded within specific social, cultural and material contexts. Drawing upon a study of breast cancer patients’ computer-mediated communication (CMC), this article aims to contribute to our understanding of the role of cultural elements in shaping the participation in and design of, CMC environments. It uses an analysis of patients’ interviews and breast cancer websites as an exploratory site for identifying cultural dimensions that should be considered in studying online spaces. It shows how both the breast cancer sites and their participants emphasize a sense of global similarity and commonality, while at the same time this CMC context is shaped by specific linguistic, national, temporal, spatial, religious, ideological and discursive North-American dimensions. It concludes with a broader discussion of the importance of examining the cultural aspects of online contexts and by extension, how cultural elements shape the methodologies that researchers employ.

Privacy seals were developed to address concerns about online privacy. However, seals are widely misinterpreted by consumers as privacy protection. This research assessed how well privacy policies matched the standards promised by the seal authorities and compared the privacy protection practices of participating and non-participating sites. Privacy policy statements were interpreted as a form of persuasive communication that attempts to minimize the risks of providing personal information while emphasizing the benefits of personal disclosure. There were few differences in the privacy practices between seal authorities: TRUSTe and BBBOnLine participants offered about the same degree of privacy protection assurances and they were equal with regard to the amount or depth of personal information they requested. Notably, unsealed sites offered nearly equal privacy assurances and made fewer personal information requests than the sealed sites. However, seal program participants did provide superior access to information and assurances of data security.

This article draws on empirical research into internet use by minority ethnic women to consider whether anonymity remains a useful focus for sociocultural studies of internet identities. The central argument of the article is that the time has come for internet identity research to reposition itself conceptually, to move away from a preoccupation with the generalized, enduring claim that internet identities are anonymous, multiple and fragmented-not only because, in some cases, online identities are continuous with offline selves, but also, more importantly, because common uses of the concept of anonymity are limited as starting points for carrying out analyses of internet experiences. In short, it argues that the terms of internet identity research are problematic, that contexts matter, and that studies of internet identities need to engage with and learn from ongoing debates within cultural studies which call into question the usefulness of the very concept of identity.

Internet search engines function in a present which changes continuously. The search engines update their indices regularly, overwriting webpages with newer ones, adding new pages to the index and losing older ones. Some search engines can be used to search for information on the internet for specific periods of time. However, these ‘date stamps’ are not determined by the first occurrence of the pages in the web, but by the last date at which a page was updated or a new page was added and the search engine’s crawler updated this change in the database. This has major implications for the use of search engines in scholarly research as well as theoretical implications for the conceptions of time and temporality. This article examines the interplay between the different updating frequencies by using AltaVista and Google for searches at different moments of time. Both the retrieval of results and the structure of retrieved information erodes over time.

This article explores how online multiplayer digital games are used as a venue for the negotiation of intellectual property rights. Recent disputes between players and creators are contributing to both a shift in contemporary notions about the nature and limits of copyright and a growing relationship between virtual leisure and real-world economics. A brief overview of the debate as it has been portrayed in both academic literature and the popular press will provide the context for this analysis. The focus then shifts to the ways in which existing laws and understandings about intellectual property are transforming to accommodate the unique characteristics of online multiplayer games. The contentious issue of labor within online gaming is discussed through a consideration of shifting social conceptualizations of play and the confounding of leisure and labor. The underlying use value-exchange-value relationship is also explored within the theoretical framework of a political economic perspective.

The internet presents challenges to traditional journalism by being a platform for alternative practices of news production and dissemination. In response, traditional journalists are expected to engage in ‘news repair’ in order to reconfirm the authority of existing news institutions and the legitimacy of traditional models of journalism. This interaction between new media and journalistic practices must be contextualized within a media system. Built upon these premises, this study analyzes data from probability sample surveys of journalists in two Chinese cities. It finds that journalists regard mainstream media organizations’ websites as more credible than those run by commercial portals. The perceived credibility of these two types of news websites varies with journalists’ beliefs about journalism. While party journalism remains a dominant lens through which Chinese journalists evaluate the two types of websites, the sites of commercial portals are viewed by some to be embodying an alternative model of journalism.