Forum: New Media & Society

Digital technologies offer new opportunities in the everyday lives of people: with still expanding memory capacities, the computer is rapidly becoming a giant storage and processing facility for recording and retrieving ‘bits of life’. Software engineers and companies promise not only to expand the capacity of personal memory infinitely, but even revolutionize its nature. Both in the past and recent years, the idea of a universal memory machine has been conceptualized in fantasies and actual projects (e.g. Vannevar Bush’s ‘Memex’, 1945). Discussing the intentions of contemporary technical projects (Shoebox, Experience on Demand) as well as visionary projects (Lifestreams, Memories for Life, MyLifeBits), this article critically analyses how digital personal memory machines use the computer as a model for the way in which memory works. Rather than looking at computers as jukeboxes of memory, it proposes to pay attention to the performative nature of machines in the acts of remembering.

The aim of this article is to investigate how often adolescents engage in internet-based identity experiments, with what motives they engage in such experiments and which self-presentational strategies they use while experimenting with their identity. Six hundred nine to 18-year-olds completed a questionnaire in their classroom. Of the adolescents who used the internet for chat or Instant Messaging, 50 percent indicated that they had engaged in internet-based identity experiments. The most important motive for such experiments was self-exploration (to investigate how others react), followed by social compensation (to overcome shyness) and social facilitation (to facilitate relationship formation). Age, gender and introversion were significant predictors of the frequency with which adolescents engaged in internet-based identity experiments, their motives for such experiments, and their self-presentational strategies.

While many studies of the web and related technologies of communication have focused on its use, there has been little engagement with the structural properties of the web and related technologies from a broadly social theoretic point of view. This article analyses pressures on the technological development of the web from the perspective of the Habermasian concepts of colonization and juridification. On this analysis, legal and quasi-legal tendencies can be seen to restrict the uses and development of the structures of the world wide web, as I will show with the use of several case studies.

This article addresses the question of new media studies’ meta-theoretical premises. It is argued that the field’s exceptional openness towards theory and method is a valuable asset, which needs to be cultivated by means of a more explicit meta-theoretical debate. Drawing on critical theory, three meta-theoretical criteria concerning power, reason and closure are suggested and applied in a review of common theoretical perspectives at use in the field. A discussion of political economy and postmodern perspectives prepares the ground for an analysis of approaches inspired by Habermas and Foucault. The article concludes by advocating the theoretical concept of the dispositif or social apparatus, developed by Foucault and Deleuze. It is argued that the concept provides an effective tool to map the intricate relations of power and knowledge around the internet, as well as a possibility to analyse how processes of subjectification are fostered or circumscribed in specific settings.

An exploratory survey was undertaken about the appeal of playing video games at a Local Area Network (LAN) event where personal computers are linked in order to play both face-to-face and online. First, we wanted to know who the visitors of a LAN event were, because there is hardly any research available about this class of gamers. Second, we wanted to know why they participated in a LAN event. The survey showed that LAN gamers were almost exclusively male, with a mean age of 19.5 years. They devoted about 2.6 hours each day to gaming. They were motivated by social contact and a need to know more about games. The competition motive was third in the total sample. A subgroup of heavy gamers obtained a higher score on competition. This article emphasizes the importance of the social context of gaming and interprets its results as a nuance of the stereotype of the solitary, adolescent gamer.

This exploratory study examines the predictive power of lifestyle orientations, reliance on traditional news media, attributes of online news, traditional mass media use and demographics on online news adoption. Data was gathered from 453 internet users. The study found that experiencers, a lifestyle savouring the new, read more online international/China news. In contrast, survivors, who live narrowly focused lives, seldom do. Although lifestyles were not predictive as to whether internet users would adopt online news, they were the strongest predictors for the enjoyment of interactive capability of online news for adopters. Specifically, interactivity can satisfy the need for seeking fun among strivers, a desire for self-expression among makers and aspiration for new ideas on the part of innovators. Furthermore, as practical people, makers enjoy multimedia features for their functional purpose. In conclusion, some of the implications for news publishers in offering personalized editions of online news are discussed.