Forum: New Media & Society

This article introduces the idea of ‘risk societies’ to highlight how conventional views of the information economy are confounded by the productivity paradox, uncertain demand for new information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the heterogenous qualities of information. Confronting these realities, the communication industries are using monopolization strategies, surveillance, and technological design in their, often elusive, attempts to manage risk and turn the scarce resources of the media economy – time, money and attention – into economic value. These strategies erode the ‘soft factors’ of trust, confidence, social networks and privacy that are vital to people’s willingness to embrace new ICTs and the legitimacy of the information society. Although these trends have created space for new privacy enhancing technologies and trust-brokers, the translation of sociocultural norms into technology and market-based solutions renders communicative spaces more opaque than ever.

This article examines the common computer-mediated communication (CMC) phenomenon of ‘flaming’ from a rhetorical perspective, situating the phenomenon diachronically in the histories of invective in art and society. An examination of the notorious alt.flame newsgroup draws connections between the political and sexual content of the flames and the rants and dozens genres of invective. The article concludes with an argument against the still prevalent media-determinant view that holds that flaming is somehow caused by the medium of CMC itself. Given the strategic nature of the different kinds of flames, it makes more sense to view them as performative enactments of identity which stress either group or individual identity depending on the genre of invective utilized by the flamer. This article demonstrates that the more historical approach offered by rhetorical criticism gives a vital perspective to an area of study from which rhetorical critics have for too long been absent.

Despite extensive popular press coverage of the dark side of the internet, apparently no social scientific research has yet been published on the topic of cyberstalking. This report summarizes three pilot studies conducted in the process of developing a satisfactory factorially complex measure of cyberstalking victimization, and then investigates the incidence of such victimization, and its interrelationships to obsessive relational intrusion. Findings indicate that cyberstalking is experienced by a nontrivial proportion of the sample, and that there are small but generally consistent relationships between facets of cyberstalking and spatially based stalking. In addition, the results suggested that only interactional forms of coping were related consistently with forms of cyberstalking.

The internet and its surrounding technologies hold the promise of reviving the public sphere; however, several aspects of these new technologies simultaneously curtail and augment that potential. First, the data storage and retrieval capabilities of internet-based technologies infuse political discussion with information otherwise unavailable. At the same time, information access inequalities and new media literacy compromise the representativeness of the virtual sphere. Second, internet-based technologies enable discussion between people on far sides of the globe, but also frequently fragmentize political discourse. Third, given the patterns of global capitalism, it is possible that internet-based technologies will adapt themselves to the current political culture, rather than create a new one. The internet and related technologies have created a new public space for politically oriented conversation; whether this public space transcends to a public sphere is not up to the technology itself.

To understand issues involved in designing entertainment technology for women, we conducted a preliminary study of the leisure practices of earlier adopting women. Fourteen women kept track of their leisure activities for one week and were interviewed about definitions of leisure, contexts of leisure activities, and the role of technology in their leisure. Four dimensions underlie the participants’ understandings and use of leisure: activities performed alone, versus with others; a primary versus secondary focus; integration versus segmentation; and stimulation versus recuperation. These women rarely used computer-based technologies for leisure. Findings suggest that women might make more use of computer-based technology for leisure if it was designed to fit into existing routines of leisure activity. We propose ways that these findings could inform the design and content of entertainment technologies for women.