Forum: New Media & Society

The study explores a concept defined as `internet anxiety’, and uses mass communication theories to help explain it. Findings suggest we believe `other people’ are responding to media messages about the internet, perpetuating beliefs that internet use is higher than it actually is, and that we are further behind other people than we actually are.Evidence of third-person perception and overestimation of internet use were found. An understanding of internet anxiety can help structure messages for mass audiences, and lead to more efficient and appropriate use of the internet by business.

Personal relationships are noted for intimacy, frequent interaction, the maintenance of multiple relations, face-to-face contact and a desire for proximity. What happens to such relationships when face-to-face contact is unavailable or severely limited? How do pairs maintain personal relationships at a distance and via computer-mediated communication, and what do their personal networks look like under these conditions? Social network data from four computer-supported distance learning classes are used to build a picture of the size and composition of students’ personal online networks. Individuals reported on their communications regarding instrumental and social relations with others in their class, and on which media they used to maintain these relations. In keeping with social network studies, those who communicate more frequently maintain more relations and more socially supportive relations, and report more positively about their desire for future work and social interaction. Individuals benefit from closer ties by feeling a stronger belonging to the class and perceiving greater social interaction among class mates. Unique to the online multi-media environment, strongly tied pairs use more media to communicate and appropriate both the technology and occasions for interaction to maintain their ties. Interview data from members of the same program reveal that pairs with closer ties used computer media to create virtual proximity, whispering to each other via Internet Relay Chat during synchronous classes, and seeking out others via email late at night.

In this article I identify specific historical trajectories that are directly contingent upon the deployment and use of new media, but that are actually hidden by a focus on the purely technological. They are: the increasingly abstract and alienated nature of economic value; the subsumption of all labour — material and intellectual — under systemic capital; and the convergence of formerly distinct spheres of analysis — the spheres of production, circulation and consumption. This article examines the implications of the knowledge economy from an historical materialist perspective. I synthesize the systemic views of Marx (1846 [1972], 1875 [1972], 1970, 1973, 1976, 1978, 1981), Adorno (1951 [1974], 1964 [1973], 1991), Horkheimer and Adorno (1947 [1998]), Jarvis (1998) and Bourdieu (1991, 1998) to argue for a language-focused approach to new media research and suggest aspects of Marxist thought which might be useful in researching emergent socio-technical domains. I also identify specific categories in the Marxist tradition which may no longer be analytically useful for researching the effects of new media.

Wired magazine is taken as a case-study of social engineering in action. The contributors all tried to elaborate a new consensus on the status of personal identity in relation to real and virtual communities of belonging. They did so through a conscious attempt at analysis of the means of production and reproduction in cyberspace. The position of the magazine, militantly activist and always optimistic, set the tone for the social acceptability of the so-called computer revolution. This optimism can be explained by the socio-economical origins of its founders and of the public that they sought. An analysis of their editorial agenda allows us to reconstruct the discourse held by these pioneers of digital interaction, and their attempts at legitimizing their utopia of a technological democracy into a reality yet-to-be-created.

The literature on interactivity includes many assumptions and some definitions but few tools for operationalizing the concept of interactivity in computer-mediated environments. This article takes an early step in filling that gap. In-depth interviews with 10 individuals who work and teach in the field of interactive communication led to a conceptual definition of interactivity based on six dimensions: direction of communication, time flexibility, sense of place, level of control, responsiveness, and perceived purpose of communication. Suggestions are made for applying these dimensions to multiple forms of computer-mediated communication. Future research should empirically test the existence and application of these dimensions.