Forum: New Media & Society

This article describes and evaluates civic networks in Europe and the USA. These are seen as attempts to use new media technology, particularly the internet, to improve participation in local democratic processes. Various aspects of democratic communication are examined, including information access, preference measurement, deliberation and group mobilization. A wide variety of city-based experiments are described, which have all faced problems of low take-up and problems of inequality of access. It is argued that new media will have a significant and positive impact upon the processes of democratic communication within the appropriate regulatory and economic context, particularly regarding access to communications technologies.

This paper is based on an empirical study of users of an internet café in South east England. It picks out some of the key distinctions between internet use within domestic spaces and as a technology accessed in a public economy of consumption. The research findings are contextualized and tested against existing work on public internet access. The material derived from interviews with customers is used to explore the ways in which the internet is differently perceived, used and gendered in the public spaces of an internet café. The paper argues that public use of the internet is not just a transitional phenomenon which precedes home internet adoption. The research revealed that the internet café provided a distinct and dedicated use space which was intimately bound up in the domestic and work routines of its users.

This essay argues that the process of digitization has farreaching implications for the broadcasting field and claims that the most suitable theoretical framework to comprehend the full scope of these changes is provided by Ulrich Beck’s theories on risk society. Despite predictable developments, digitization increases the sources of uncertainties and the level of risks for the expanding number of players involved in broadcasting. Several sources of uncertainties are identified: market demand for digital services, intensified competition, regulations, the pace of technological progress and the phenomenon of convergence.The second section argues that the process of digitization is challenging public service broadcasters and may contribute to weaken their presence in the public sphere. Technological mastery increasingly tends to rest in the hands of commercial firms and digital broadcasting furthers the commercialism of television. In addition, fuelling the growth of conditional access, digitization threatens universal access, one of the key principles of public broadcasting.The last section argues that when digital broadcasting will be fully operational, watching television will cease to be a common experience, to become a shared activity that individuals experience separately.

One particular toy, the Tamagotchi, is analyzed as a cultural artifact which incorporates the latest in computer and video technology and virtually engages players in the most basic of nurturing relationships. Here one day, and gone the next, the Tamagotchi is seen as a symbol of its times in which even the most intense connections are disposable. The essay examines how this object relates to popular culture and to other children’s playthings in particular, and what it signifies in terms of relationships, gender identity, and existential predicaments. As a consequence, it raises a number of questions concerning the role that these and similar toys perform in the socialization of children and of society in general.