Forum: New Media & Society

This article explores how the development of information technology, especially interactive computers, changes the privacy environment as experienced by individuals and the policy implications of these changes. External entities, such as governments and commercial industries, that ‘invade’ people’s rights to be left alone are of less concern now than individuals who voluntarily give up their privacy by willingly providing personal information for other benefits on the internet. Also, in the interactive environment, intended and unintended activities of more diversified and less easily identifiable entities have become more of a threat to individual privacy. In this new environment, rather than ‘providing’ privacy for passive individuals, a more user-oriented, active approach is needed to help users to protect themselves from more diversified and unknown forces and potential loss of control. This article suggests that focusing on the right not to be identified on the network by allowing affirmative acts of secrecy and deception regarding identity and identification might be the most effective-and sometimes only practically viable-way of ensuring privacy in the interactive environment.

This study examines the relationships between the lifestyles of urban Chinese consumers and the adoption and use of pagers and mobile phones. Based on a probability sample of 7094 respondents from China’s seven most prosperous cities, results show that the respondents identified as yuppies tended to integrate pagers and mobile phones into their conspicuous, westernized and socially active lifestyle. Adopting a pager and mobile phone is found to be a means to achieve social differentiation and identity among this lifestyle segment. The study demonstrates the utility of segmentation analysis in delineating complex relationships among demographics, lifestyles and adoption and use of new media.

Many have studied the interrelations between online spaces and offline contexts, highlighting that internet spaces are fundamentally embedded within specific social, cultural and material contexts. Drawing upon a study of breast cancer patients’ computer-mediated communication (CMC), this article aims to contribute to our understanding of the role of cultural elements in shaping the participation in and design of, CMC environments. It uses an analysis of patients’ interviews and breast cancer websites as an exploratory site for identifying cultural dimensions that should be considered in studying online spaces. It shows how both the breast cancer sites and their participants emphasize a sense of global similarity and commonality, while at the same time this CMC context is shaped by specific linguistic, national, temporal, spatial, religious, ideological and discursive North-American dimensions. It concludes with a broader discussion of the importance of examining the cultural aspects of online contexts and by extension, how cultural elements shape the methodologies that researchers employ.

Privacy seals were developed to address concerns about online privacy. However, seals are widely misinterpreted by consumers as privacy protection. This research assessed how well privacy policies matched the standards promised by the seal authorities and compared the privacy protection practices of participating and non-participating sites. Privacy policy statements were interpreted as a form of persuasive communication that attempts to minimize the risks of providing personal information while emphasizing the benefits of personal disclosure. There were few differences in the privacy practices between seal authorities: TRUSTe and BBBOnLine participants offered about the same degree of privacy protection assurances and they were equal with regard to the amount or depth of personal information they requested. Notably, unsealed sites offered nearly equal privacy assurances and made fewer personal information requests than the sealed sites. However, seal program participants did provide superior access to information and assurances of data security.

This article draws on empirical research into internet use by minority ethnic women to consider whether anonymity remains a useful focus for sociocultural studies of internet identities. The central argument of the article is that the time has come for internet identity research to reposition itself conceptually, to move away from a preoccupation with the generalized, enduring claim that internet identities are anonymous, multiple and fragmented-not only because, in some cases, online identities are continuous with offline selves, but also, more importantly, because common uses of the concept of anonymity are limited as starting points for carrying out analyses of internet experiences. In short, it argues that the terms of internet identity research are problematic, that contexts matter, and that studies of internet identities need to engage with and learn from ongoing debates within cultural studies which call into question the usefulness of the very concept of identity.

Internet search engines function in a present which changes continuously. The search engines update their indices regularly, overwriting webpages with newer ones, adding new pages to the index and losing older ones. Some search engines can be used to search for information on the internet for specific periods of time. However, these ‘date stamps’ are not determined by the first occurrence of the pages in the web, but by the last date at which a page was updated or a new page was added and the search engine’s crawler updated this change in the database. This has major implications for the use of search engines in scholarly research as well as theoretical implications for the conceptions of time and temporality. This article examines the interplay between the different updating frequencies by using AltaVista and Google for searches at different moments of time. Both the retrieval of results and the structure of retrieved information erodes over time.

This article explores how online multiplayer digital games are used as a venue for the negotiation of intellectual property rights. Recent disputes between players and creators are contributing to both a shift in contemporary notions about the nature and limits of copyright and a growing relationship between virtual leisure and real-world economics. A brief overview of the debate as it has been portrayed in both academic literature and the popular press will provide the context for this analysis. The focus then shifts to the ways in which existing laws and understandings about intellectual property are transforming to accommodate the unique characteristics of online multiplayer games. The contentious issue of labor within online gaming is discussed through a consideration of shifting social conceptualizations of play and the confounding of leisure and labor. The underlying use value-exchange-value relationship is also explored within the theoretical framework of a political economic perspective.

The internet presents challenges to traditional journalism by being a platform for alternative practices of news production and dissemination. In response, traditional journalists are expected to engage in ‘news repair’ in order to reconfirm the authority of existing news institutions and the legitimacy of traditional models of journalism. This interaction between new media and journalistic practices must be contextualized within a media system. Built upon these premises, this study analyzes data from probability sample surveys of journalists in two Chinese cities. It finds that journalists regard mainstream media organizations’ websites as more credible than those run by commercial portals. The perceived credibility of these two types of news websites varies with journalists’ beliefs about journalism. While party journalism remains a dominant lens through which Chinese journalists evaluate the two types of websites, the sites of commercial portals are viewed by some to be embodying an alternative model of journalism.

This article addresses how young people are represented in popular discourses of mobile phone technology and what this representation implies for the local positioning of youth. After reviewing the ways in which representations of youth and technology have been discussed in previous studies, the research reported in this article analyzes different discursive constructions of young mobile phone users in South Korea between 1997 and 2002. The study finds that the different streams of discourse in government documents, the mass media and consumer culture appear to reflect widespread anxieties in Korea about becoming involved in ‘global’ material culture and seek to counter this tendency through rearticulating hegemonic social relations.

This article explores key US and European Union policy documents to identify the similarities and differences in the way that the digital divide has been defined in both contexts in recent years. To that purpose, a computer-assisted text analysis was conducted, which identified not only the most frequent relevant terms in each document, but also patterns of semantic association among them. While significant differences related to the political specificities of each context were found, both sets of documents revealed a tendency over time to frame access in economic and market-based terms. The article argues that these results provide useful insights into the study of the globalization and homogenization of telecommunications policymaking.

The mp3 lies at the center of important debates around intellectual property and file-sharing, but it is also a cultural artifact in its own right. This article examines the design of the mp3 from both industrial and psychoacoustic perspectives to explain better why mp3s are so easy to exchange and the auditory dimensions of that process of exchange. As a container technology for recorded sound, the mp3 shows that the quality of ‘portability’ is central to the history of auditory representation. As a psychoacoustic technology that literally plays its listeners, the mp3 shows that digital audio culture works according to logics somewhat distinct from digital visual culture.

Singapore was one of the early adopters of e-government initiatives in keeping with its status as one of the few developed Asian countries and has continued to be at the forefront of developing e-government structures. While crediting the city-state for the speed of its development, observers have critiqued that the republic limits pluralism, which directly affects e-governance initiatives. This article draws on two recent government initiatives, the notions of corporatism and communitarianism and the concept of symmetry and asymmetry in communication to present the e-government and e-governance structures in Singapore. Four factors are presented as critical for the creation of a successful e-government infrastructure: an educated citizenry; adequate technical infrastructures; offering e-services that citizens need; and commitment from top government officials to support the necessary changes with financial resources and leadership. However, to have meaningful e-governance there has to be political pluralism, which occurs only when permitted by the state.

This article reports a survey of 4531 users of Itiraf.com (‘Confession.com’), a confessional website based in Istanbul, Turkey, where people make personal confessions, tell stories and establish online and offline relationships with other users. Adopting a uses and gratifications approach to the web-based survey, to determine why the contributors to this website return so regularly and what uses they make of the site, the study adds to the limited information available on Turkish internet users. The major finding of the study is that diversion drives most reading on the site, but social interaction provides the largest gratification to those who participate through writing confessions, commenting on others’ confessions and meeting people offline. Some differences in use patterns were found among Turkish respondents who lived in other countries. A rapidly changing social environment in the country provides a partial explanation of website activity.

This article investigates the levels of consumer awareness and knowledge of digital television (DTV) in the USA. It also explores the consumer perceptions of DTV characteristics, benefits and importance. Various consumer characteristics and DTV perceptions were examined to assess their influence in the adoption of DTV. It was found that the consumers had many misconceptions of DTV and their DTV knowledge level was most related to personality traits and internet usage or tenure. While the desire for bigger screen size, digital video recorder ownership, income and broadband access were the best predictors of intention to adopt DTV sets, desire for better video quality and knowledge of DTV environment were the best predictors of intention to adopt DTV converters.

This article is, in part, a response to articles for this Journal by Sally McMillan and Spiro Kiousis. The article examines the analytical problems caused by the fact that interactivity is both a property and an activity. It asserts that interactivity is a contextualizing facility that mediates between environments and content and users. The article analyses the modes of operation both for the production of the properties of interactivity and usage/production in the activity of interactivity. The concept of ‘positioning’ is offered as a means of moving the debate on from the application of communication models or the practical development of ‘features’. The article proposes ‘succession mapping’ as a methodology that acknowledges the building up of the interactive offer and also the generative capabilities of packages. The concept of the active user engaged in ‘user production’ i.e. generation is introduced as being of value to academics, practitioners and those who practice, teach and research.

In 1989, years after the majority of Israeli city dwellers, the members of Kibbutz Y celebrated the installation of telephones in their apartments. We trace the cultural biography of the telephone in Kibbutz Y, with special emphasis upon the practical and symbolic transition from public to private telephones, in order to discuss the role of deliberation in the adoption of new technologies. The biographical approach permits us to discuss parallel developments in the technology, the kibbutz ideology, the society and the interrelationships between them. The article argues that even within a community where ideology is transparent, such as a kibbutz, contradictions and dilemmas inform users’ discourse.

The web is important for academic communication and publishing on an international scale, but it is difficult to assess the extent to which globalization actually has occurred. This article examines the connectivity structure of links between university websites in 25 Asian and European countries as a case study of an inter-regional and intra-regional web phenomenon. The five most linked-to universities in each nation-state were selected and network analysis techniques were used. The results suggested that the UK (and to a lesser extent some other European countries) has a high impact on the formation of link-xmediated academic networks in Asia and Europe. Universities’ websites in Asia are more heavily connected to European universities than linked to each other. The overall findings were indicative of globalization rather than regionalism, but a better characterization might be globalization with regional imbalances and individual high performing countries.

With 71 percent of its households owning computers and having internet access, Sweden is one of the world’s leading information and communication technology (ICT) nations. The prevalence of ICT has inspired the Swedish government to ascribe it as a civic tool, capable of cultivating more active citizenship and a stronger democracy. However, despite its lofty intentions, Sweden’s ICT policy has a significant shortcoming: it is uninformed about the everyday lives of citizens. This article aims to shed light on ICT policy through an analysis of the appropriation of the computer and the internet in Swedish working-class households. Specifically, by drawing on semi-structured interviews, observations and media diaries with household respondents, the article critically discusses civic visions in Swedish ICT policy. It concludes with a recontextualizion of the discussion within an international arena.

Recently, the major US music and movie companies have pursued a dramatic renovation in their approach to copyright enforcement. This shift, from the ‘code’ of law to the ‘code’ of software, looks to technologies themselves to regulate or make unavailable those uses of content traditionally handled through law. Critics worry about the ‘compliance’ rules built into such systems: design mandates for manufacturers indicating what users can and cannot do under particular conditions. But these are accompanied by a second set of limitations: ‘robustness’ rules. Robustness rules obligate manufacturers to build devices such that they prevent tinkering – not only must the technology regulate its users, it must be inscrutable to them. This article examines this aspect of technical copyright regulation, looking particularly at the Content Scramble System (CSS) encryption system for DVDs and the recent ‘broadcast flag’ proposed for digital television. In the name of preventing piracy, these arrangements threaten to undermine users’ sense of agency with their own technologies.

This study1 examines the factors that affect the intention to adopt the internet among non-users against the backdrop of an emerging internet plateau. Using data from a telephone survey with a representative national sample of non-users in Singapore, this study attempts to understand better what may facilitate or impede non-users to adopt the internet in light of the theory of planned behavior. Findings indicate that, in addition to demographic factors, attitudes toward the internet and perceived control of several internal and external factors are predictive of individuals’ intentions to get online in the future. Implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.

This study examines the discourse of the British National Party’s (BNP) website. It explores the site as a form of alternative media, focusing on how it involves members and supporters in its discursive construction of racism. It finds that the discourses and identities produced are played out through a radical reformation of the concepts of power, culture and oppression. Drawing on the post-colonial notion of the Other, the BNP seeks to present itself, its activities and its members as responses to racism and oppression that, it argues, are practised by the Other. While this discourse is constructed through the everyday experiences and attitudes of its members, the hierarchically-determined nature of the site prevents those members from sustained, active involvement in the construction of their own identities. For this reason, the study concludes, the BNP’s site is far from the more open, non-hierarchical practices of ‘progressive’ alternative media.

This article builds on a case study of the worldwide online dating site Match.com to develop a theoretical understanding of the place of communication and affect in the information economy. Drawing on theoretical debates, secondary sources, a qualitative survey of dating profiles and an analysis of the features and affordances of the Match.com site, the article argues that internet dating seeks to guide the technologically enhanced communicative and affective capacities of internet users to work in ways so that this produces economically valuable content. This is primarily achieved through branding, which as a technique of governance that seeks to work ‘from below’ and ‘empower’ users to deploy their freedom in certain particular, pre-programmed ways. The argument is that online dating provides a good illustration of how the information economy actively subsumes communicative action as a form of immaterial labour.