Forum: New Media & Society

‘Privacy’is an ambiguous notion, encompassing personal autonomy, democratic participation, identity management, and social coordination. Each of these privacy ideals reflect different sets of social concerns. Laws operationalize privacy in terms of ‘personally identifiable information’. Technologies reify that definition. This has implications for the constitution of identity and social life. It may empower data holders to rationalize populations and create selfserving social categories, while permitting individuals to negotiate these categories outside of panoptic vision. It may facilitate public awareness of, and resistance to, these created social categories. A more expansive understanding of identification and privacy should inform policy discourse.

The internet has tremendous potential to achieve greater social equity and empowerment and improve everyday life for those on the margins of society. This article presents the findings from three digital divide studies, each of which represents a different group of marginalized society members. Low-income families, sexual minorities and African-American women are represented in the three studies that employ different research approaches towards a common aim of contextualizing internet use in the everyday social practice of society’s ‘have-nots’. The aim is to step outside simple digital divide categories to understand how marginalized members of society incorporate computers and the internet into their daily lives in ways that are meaningful to them. An important goal is also to learn about how internet researchers can contribute to closing the digital divide in ways that converge with the goals, meanings and practices of people living on society’s margins.

This article analyzes the evolution of the internet, with special emphasis on its impact on older media in their struggle to survive. The analysis is based on a 6-stage, natural life cycle model of new media evolution, comprising birth (technical invention), penetration, growth, maturity, self-defense, and adaptation, convergence or obsolescence. Our universal model melds several elements of previous theories and analyses from disparate fields such as media history, marketing, technological diffusion and convergence, while adding a few new aspects as well. The model’s three contributions lie in expanding the scope –quantitatively and qualitatively –of new media’s development stages (beyond the three or four stages noted by others); emphasizing the interaction and struggle between old and new media; and analyzing ‘functional-life after appliance-death’of media transformed/co-opted into something old/new. Applying this model to the internet enables us to better understand its future evolution and the survival chances of older mass media.

The computer represents a new resource in developing social capital that previously did not exist among migrants. The relationship between physical space and cyberspace is discussed using the experience of migrants from Newfoundland who, although dispersed from their homeland, use the computer to maintain ties with both their homeland and others in diaspora. Three phases in the migration cycle are identified (pre-migrant, post-migrant, settled migrant) and four categories of computer usage are linked to each phase. Three types of online relationships can be identified among diasporic peoples that result in developing new ties, nourishing old ties and rediscovering lost ties. The processes of verification, telepresence, hyperreality and attribution are discovered and illustrated from online data and interviews which indicate how computermediated communication is related to both social networking and identity among migrants.

The increased attention to environmentalism in western societies has been accompanied by a rise in ecotourism, i.e. ecologically sensitive travel to remote areas to learn about ecosystems, as well as in cultural tourism, focusing on the people who are a part of ecosystems. Increasingly, the internet has partnered with ecotourism companies to provide information about destinations and facilitate travel arrangements. This study reviews the literature linking ecotourism and sustainable development, as well as prior research showing that cultures have been historically commodified in tourism advertising for developing countries destinations. We examine seven websites advertising ecotourism and cultural tourism and conclude that: (1) advertisements for natural and cultural spaces are not always consistent with the discourse of sustainability; and (2) earlier critiques of the commodification of culture in print advertising extend to internet advertising also.

Abstract Based on survey data gathered before and after September 11, 2001 (‘9/11’), this study examines the relationship between ‘internet connectedness’ and communicative actions after September 11 2001. The study found that: (1) people heightened their dependency relations with traditional mass media after September 11, regardless of whether or not they had an internet connection; (2) ‘internet high-connectors’ intensified their internet connections, while ‘internet low-connectors’ decreased the intensity of their internet connections; and (3) internet high-connectors participated in a broader range of civic activities in response to September 11 than did internet low-and non-connectors.

The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11 2001 inspired an outpouring of electronic folklore, particularly ‘photoshops’ (humorous digitally-altered photographs). This material is of two types. One, the newslore of vengeance, consists of fantasies of annihilation or humiliation aimed at Osama bin Laden or Afghanistan. The other, the newslore of victimization, expresses bewilderment at the role of fate or chance in who lived and died on that terrible day. This article analyzes the newslore of September 11 in light of Elliott Oring’s ‘unspeakability’ hypothesis: the material expresses emotions that were too raw to be covered in the news media and thus functions as both an outlet for those emotions and a protest against the decorousness of the press.

How did Americans respond to the crisis posed by the terrorist attacks of September 11 (‘9/11’) in their communicative choices? Proposing the theory of channel complementarity, this article argues that users of a medium who satisfy a particular functional need also use other media types to fulfill that need. Based on an analysis of the data gathered by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press immediately after the 9/11 attacks, it demonstrates that the individuals who communicated via telephone with family and friends about the 9/11 attacks were also more likely to communicate with family and friends on the internet.

National Public Radio’s Sonic Memorial project leveraged the opportunities of digital multimedia convergence to create a national aural memorial of the September 11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Not only did the ubiquity of digital technology empower listeners to act as producers in submitting texts to the Memorial, but it also allowed the Sonic Memorial to bridge radio and new media environments through the creation of a lasting memorial website at www.sonicmemorial.com. While unique in its focus on participatory vernacular aural remembrance, the Sonic Memorial nevertheless shares many attributes of traditional national memorials in its focus on making sense of national tragedy. Despite its uniqueness, the Sonic Memorial privileges certain stories, leaving others unvoiced in its montage of remembrance.

The author analyzes the official national websites of small developing countries for content and function. The surveyed websites are found to emphasize geographical, tourism and identifying information about the small states but contain little in terms of investment information, suggesting that the web is seen as a tool of self-promotion but is not equally perceived as a tool for attracting investment. A positive relationship is observed between literacy and the range of national websites published for each surveyed state. The study considers the content of national websites of small developing nations in the context of the new technologies and traditional geopolitical and information flow issues facing small states.

Journalism has been slow to develop distinctive forms in response to the new contexts provided by the internet. One rapidly developing form, unique to the world wide web, is the weblog. This article reviews the claims made by proponents of the form and explores, through the case study of a weblog produced by the British Guardian newspaper, epistemological differences to the dominant Anglo-American news form. The article argues that the rearticulation in this institutional product of the relation between journalists and users, of the claim to authority made in the news text and of the news text as product, provides historians of both journalism and new media with a case study of the adaptation of journalism to new contexts.

The article reviews the literatures on e-government and governance reform, and engages in detailed analysis of e-government initiatives and parallel policy changes undertaken in Hong Kong, which is currently an acknowledged leader in the field. It finds that the Hong Kong government has made considerable progress in developing online service delivery, notably for the business sector, but that wider governance changes are limited. The article holds that to succeed in addressing the challenges of the information age, the Hong Kong government needs to adopt a broader strategy that goes beyond service delivery to encompass citizen engagement and participation.

Earlier research on online communication has observed how its distinctive characteristics (such as limited cues and potential asynchronicity) facilitate online communication, notably ‘hyperpersonal communication’. Yet these distinctive characteristics do not explain the development of trust in online communication. This article uses qualitative interviews with 17 internet users to explore the foundations of trust in online friendships, drawing on Piotr Sztompka’s theoretical framework. It concludes that there are four main sources of online trust. First, reputation, whether grounded in a pseudonym or offline identity. Second, performance, due to the scope for enhanced performance in online communication. More than this, performance plays an especially important role in the building of online friendship, following Giddens’ model of the pure relationship (1991). Third, pre-commitment, through self-disclosure, which in turn encourages a ‘leap of faith’ and reciprocal self-disclosure. Finally, situational factors, especially the premium placed upon intimacy and the pure relationship in contemporary societies.

While recent analyses have helped to challenge commonly-held stereotypes of fans of popular cultural texts as freakish individuals ‘without a life’, few studies have focused on texts produced and/or consumed outside the United States and Europe. Even fewer have considered the particular significance of the advent of the internet as a tool for intercultural fan activity. This is what this study attempts to accomplish through an ethnographic and textual analysis of an online community of fans of Kimura Takuya – one of the most popular Japanese male celebrities of the moment – dispersed across 14 countries. It explores, in particular, how participants defined their fan, gendered and cultural/global identities through their involvement with each other and with their favorite star, and negotiated as a group the complex process of virtual cross-cultural identity formation.

Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, this article examines the discursive structure of the digital divide debate as it is articulated among contemporary online users and non-users in the United States. The article argues that the discourse of individualism serves as a filter that shapes and distorts all private and public conversations about the digital divide and thus limits public debate on the subject. Some challenges to the dominance of individualism emerge when people discuss the digital divide in relation to the specific, lived situations of economic disadvantage. Yet we conclude that the potential political power of this critique is muted as it echoes rather than challenges the contradictions inherent to the promise of the digital era that are found at the heart of both corporate advertising and current social policies.

This article presents a theoretical examination of the digital divide, tracing its origins in the centre–Left social inclusion policy agenda of the 1980s and 1990s to its current status of political ‘hot topic’. It then moves on to outline four conceptual limitations to conventional dichotomous notions of the digital divide and individuals’‘access’ to information and communications technology (ICT): what is meant by ICT; what is meant by ‘access’; the relationship between ‘access to ICT’ and ‘use of ICT’; and a lack of consideration of the consequences of engagement with ICT. The article outlines a more sophisticated, hierarchical model of the digital divide based around these conceptual ‘stages’ while recognizing the mediating role of economic, cultural and social forms of capital in shaping individuals’ engagements with ICT. It concludes by developing a set of research themes and questions for future examination of inequalities in individuals’ use of ICT.

This article examines the current structure of the sociocommunication network among Korean political parties and politicians on the world wide web and how the structure has changed over the last two years. The communication network is defined by the existence of hyperlinks among websites. The data were obtained from the homepages of Korea’s parties and national assemblymen for 2000 and 2001. The results indicated that the network has become denser, more highly integrated, centralized and interactive over time. This suggests increased use of the world wide web for political discourse in Korea.

The spread of mobile communication among Finnish teenagers has been markedly rapid during the latter half of the 1990s. Young people have created and developed a communication culture that incorporates many special features, such as a rise in the use of text-based communication channels. Teenagers’ intersecting and selective use of communication channels has generated multimedial communication. From the theoretical standpoint provided by symbolic interactionism, we can ask whether communication through new media technologies generates new forms of social interaction. If this is the case, how could we describe and analyse these new forms of interaction? The media landscapes created by teenagers serve to articulate their personal space, as well as enabling their presentation of self and defining their relationships to others. This article is based on thematic interview material, and its purpose is to analyse the meanings and use contexts of mobile communication and other multimedial communication culture among Finnish youth.

The article examines the interactive uses of journalism, focusing on the changes brought by new communication technology in the everyday news media uses of young Finns. The study is based on a survey and in-depth interviews. The results indicate that even though young Finns have easy access to new communication technology, journalism is still predominantly used via television and printed newspapers. While nearly all subjects followed news regularly, a fifth of the respondents had taken advantage of participatory activities offered by the news media. Consequently, technology alone does not seem to alter news practices. The interactive usage of journalism thus seems to be individualized entertainment for the majority of the young people that were studied, and only for few was it a platform for active citizenship. The everyday practices of using journalism via new media point towards heterogeneous activity and the conflicting meanings given to them.

How readers consume and recall news presented in online and print versions of two newspapersin the Netherlands are investigated in this experimental study. Few differences are found between the online and print versions in terms of news supply. Reader attention to the news stories varies, depending on the newspaper and news category. No consistent reading pattern is evident and the print version readers do not read more than the online version readers. News Consumption seems to be more dependent on the news category, reader gender and interest in a particular topic than on whether the news appears in print or online. Finally, on the basis of cued and free recall questions, no consistent pattern differentiates readers of the print newspapers from the online versions. In conclusion, evidence has not been found that online readers consume and retain news differently from readers of the print versions examined in this study.

Two studies compared college students’ interpersonal interaction online, face-to-face, and on the telephone. A communication diary assessed the relative amount of social interactions college students conducted online compared to face-to-face conversation and telephone calls. Results indicated that while the internet was integrated into college students’ social lives, face-to-face communication remained the dominant mode of interaction. Participants reported using the internet as often as the telephone. A survey compared reported use of the internet within local and long distance social circles to the use of other media within those circles, and examined participants’ most recent significant social interactions conducted across media in terms of purposes, contexts, and quality. Internet interaction was perceived as high in quality, but slightly lower than other media. Results were compared to previous conceptualizations of the roles of internet in one’s social life.

As the internet continues to expand globally, the understanding of the micro-level connections between culture and online interaction is vital from a scientific perspective. This article explores the effects of societal values of interpersonal trust on online interactions. Using data from the World Values Survey and Inglehart’s (1997) scores on interpersonal trust, the study compares the effect of seller feedback ratings on online auction participation in three economically similar but culturally distinct countries, Canada, France, and Germany. The results indicate a significant interaction between culture, interpersonal trust levels, and seller ratings on bidder participants. Cultures that exhibit high levels of interpersonal trust tend to participate in online auctions irrespective of the sellers’ feedback ratings. However, in low trust cultures, seller ratings have a significant effect on bidders. The extent of the effect seems to depend on the degree of trust and the variation in seller ratings.

The new media rhetoric, with its emphasis on radical breaks from old media, often masks the degree to which continuity goes hand-in-hand with change. Moreover, the industry’s vision of convergence ignores the competing versions of, and struggles over, the digital future. Against this background, this article focuses on an inter-media site, broadcasters’ websites, seeks to identify the changes and continuities in the notion of the audience, and interprets these in the light of inter-media competition. Using a variant of discourse analysis, which makes hyperlinks its unit of analysis, this study has identified six understandings of the audience online: spectators, fans, consumers, citizens, students, and cybernauts. These reveal that television has merely expanded online, but not really changed its understandings of audiences, suggesting that in its struggle for dominance, television has chosen to stamp the internet with the televisual, rather than making full use of the internet’s potential.

The proponents of cyberspace promise that online discourse will increase political participation and pave the road for a democratic utopia. This article explores the potential for civil discourse in cyberspace by examining the level of civility in 287 discussion threads in political newsgroups. While scholars often use civility and politeness interchangeably, this study argues that this conflation ignores the democratic merit of robust and heated discussion. Therefore, civility was defined in a broader sense, by identifying as civil behaviors that enhance democratic conversation. In support of this distinction, the study results revealed that most messages posted on political newsgroups were civil, and further suggested that because the absence of face-to-face communication fostered more heated discussion, cyberspace might actually promote Lyotard’s vision of democratic emancipation through disagreement and anarchy (Lyotard, 1984). Thus, this study supported the internet’s potential to revive the public sphere, provided that greater diversity and volume of discussion is present.

This article analyzes the transformation in our conception of hacking over the past few decades to the current point where hackers are conceived as miscreants, vandals, criminals, and even terrorists. It argues that this transformation is more a function of contextual shifts than of changes in hacking itself. In particular, the hacker ethic, which eschews centralized, restricted access to computers and information, is inimical to the interests of established corporate and government powers, including particularly intellectual property and order. Central to this article’s argument is that the transformation has been achieved not through direct public debate over conflicting ideals and interests, but through an ontological shift mediated by supportive agents of key societal institutions: legislative bodies, the courts, and the popular media.

Using Rogers’ diffusion of innovation model, this study attempts to compare the adoption of internet shopping with that of cable television shopping in Taiwan. Rogers’ diffusion model has been criticized for its pro-innovation bias, and thus this study expects that the adoption of internet shopping will be consistent with the predictions of Rogers’ model, while the adoption of cable television shopping will not. A telephone survey with 1227 valid interviews was used to collect data for this study. As expected, most findings regarding internet shopping follow the predictions of this model. However, the diffusion process in relation to cable television shopping digresses from the path predicted by Rogers’ model. The detailed findings of the study are discussed in the article.

This article uses the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) framework to analyze the case of a Canadian internet company called iCraveTV, which captured broadcast television signals off the air and retransmitted them over the internet. The case study identifies and discusses the social and legal mechanisms by which relevant social groups can exert substantial force on the development of the web. The example of iCraveTV directs attention to questions about the interactions of domestic and transnational forces in the shaping of internet and world wide web technologies. The article concludes that the path of development of the internet and the world wide web remains open to potential intervention and regulation.