Forum: New Media & Society

Telephone users are teleological or future-oriented temporarily apart, anticipatory, they articulate and appropriate meaning. Often, gender and generational cultures are held to differ in their accessing of phone formats and functions (call, data download, email, internet, multimedia and short message services). Drawing upon hermeneutic theory of understanding, the article argues that despite this diversity, there are four underlying universal cognitive moments characterizing the process of receiving and responding to handphone content: (1) perceiving and simultaneously (2) projecting potential narrative; (3) producing a coherent call, message or text; and (4) positioning the significance of cellphone meaning for a life-world. Referring to this fourfold ludology of immersion and inferring content allows us to consider in conceptual detail Malaysian corporate and consumer narratives of employing handphone technology. Philosophically grounded theory shows how culturally concrete experiences of cellphone use during work and leisure instantiate abstract patterns of understanding in reception and response.

This article investigates media dependency among Chinese individuals during the SARS epidemic of 2003. While most media dependency research has examined dependency relations under circumstances when information was readily available, this study looks at a situation in which information was highly controlled and thus was not easily available from the mainstream media. As the socio-structural environment was not conducive to the free flow of information during a major public health crisis, audience members were not only actively engaged in information seeking from alternative resources such as short message services (SMS) and the internet, but they were also involved in creating alternative information channels by being information producers and disseminators. The internet was a particularly empowering tool to allow individuals to bypass official control and to challenge official claims during the crisis.

This article analyzes one of China’s most prominent working-class ICTs, Little Smart (xiaolingtong ), an inexpensive wireless technology which offers limited mobility service at the price of a landline. The case analysis examines how the technology works and diffuses, why it could emerge so rapidly amid structural transformations of China’s telecom reform and the subsequent co-evolution between market dynamics and state policy at the local, national and transnational levels. Drawing from interviews and focus groups, the article discusses usage patterns and the key problems facing Little Smart. Besides the particularities of the case, the emergence of Little Smart has broader implications for understanding the relationship between working-class ICTs and the `information have-nots’ in general. It shows that working-class ICTs may materialize through accidental accomplishments with little prior planning by state or corporate players. However, without appropriate policy support, the emergence may not be sustainable in the long run.

China’s telecommunications and information industry has seen unprecedented growth since the turn of the century, with the mobile telephony sector driving significant expansion. This article examines the Chinese government’s strategy for managing the complexities of socio-economic changes created by the widespread adoption of mobile telephony. The study found that the government’s adoption of subtler forms of power establishes a relational contract with Chinese telecommunications and information industry partners and citizenry as a foundation for implementing the strategy of controlled commodification. This contract acts to modify and clarify operational boundaries within private and public spheres in an attempt to manage often competing economic, social and political objectives.

During recent election campaigns non-partisan party profile websites (PPWs) have become hugely popular in various countries with multiparty systems, sometimes even attracting 25 percent of all voters. On these interactive websites, PPW users respond to policy questions, and their answers are used to calculate the distance between their own preferences and party agendas, resulting in an individualized `party profile’. PPWs can be seen as one of the few innovations in election campaigning that fully exploit the internet’s interactive opportunities. The analysis in this article of the log files of 2003 and 2004 Belgian PPWs demonstrate that PPW users tend to be highly educated, male and young. Party and policy preferences of late PPW users (the final days before the elections) are not more crystallized than those of early PPW users (40 days before the elections). The article concludes with speculation on what this finding might reveal about campaign dynamics.

This article reports on a study in which data on the number of unsolicited commercial emails (spam) promoting the purchase of the stocks of specific companies was compared to changes in the stock’s price in several ways. Spam created a short-term rise in the price of the average stock in the form of a short, damped oscillation, followed by significant downturn several days later. Models of message transmission strategies based on the frequency of sending isolated two possible marginally successful strategies.

This study focuses on three email lists — one used by a professional organization (Friends of the Earth) and two by grass roots, street-level participants (Direct Action Network and People’s Global Action) — in the Seattle World Trade Organization protests. Each list was examined in terms of how it contributed to the expression of collective identities online. Each group’s list employed at least one of three processes identified here as key to collective identity: the Friends of the Earth list emphasized cognitive framing of the event; Direct Action Network focused on emotional investments among list members; and People’s Global Action stressed setting boundaries among movement participants.Yet overall, none of the lists was entirely successful as a vehicle for expressing movement identities, suggesting that while the internet may facilitate certain organizational activities of social movements, it appears to have less impact on their symbolic ones.

What does the US public believe about the credibility of institutional actors when it comes to protecting information privacy online? Drawing on perspectives of environmental risk, this article addresses the question through a nationally representative telephone survey of 1200 adults who go online at home. A key result is that a substantial percentage of internet users believes that major corporate or government institutions will both help them to protect information privacy and take that privacy away by disclosing information to other parties without permission. This finding and others raise questions about the dynamics of risk-perception and institutional trust on the web.

Community technology centers (CTCs) are potentially a critical component in the communication environment of urban communities. They have been investigated extensively as instruments of technology-based public policy and social service capacity-building, yet they have not been subject to research that posits these centers as integral components of larger communication systems essential to civic participation and empowerment. This article describes how communication theory, communication infrastructure theory and community technology centers contribute to solving the inequalities addressed in previous studies of the `digital divide’. The article presents the communication infrastructure theory perspective as a way to reconcile alternative prescriptions for the way in which community technology interventions can lead to positive outcomes for local community-building and social mobility enhancement. This project re-situates the CTC as a communication-centric phenomenon, focusing on the linkages between the community-building capacity of CTCs and their role as an integral component of a community’s communication infrastructure.

Data from 574 participants were used to assess perceptions of message, site, and sponsor credibility across four genres of websites; to explore the extent and effects of verifying web-based information; and to measure the relative influence of sponsor familiarity and site attributes on perceived credibility.The results show that perceptions of credibility differed, such that news organization websites were rated highest and personal websites lowest, in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, with e-commerce and special interest sites rated between these, for the most part.The results also indicated that credibility assessments appear to be primarily due to website attributes (e.g. design features, depth of content, site complexity) rather than to familiarity with website sponsors. Finally, there was a negative relationship between self-reported and observed information verification behavior and a positive relationship between self-reported verification and internet/web experience.The findings are used to inform the theoretical development of perceived web credibility.

This article focuses on which variables predict instant messenger (IM) use. A model was tested with a sample of 329 undergraduate participants. Results indicated a strong link between internet self-efficacy and perceived usefulness of IM. Subsequently, one’s attitude toward using IM was impacted by the perceived usefulness of IM. Also, a peer groups’ subjective norm about IM accurately predicted their intention to use IM. However, intention did not predict IM use for users, and attitude toward using IM did not predict intention to use IM for either group. Finally, the data were judged to be inconsistent with the model.

Within democratic theory, the deliberative variant has assumed pre-eminence. It represents for many the ideal of democracy, and in pursuit of this ideal, online discussion forums have been proposed as solutions to the practical limits to mass deliberation. Critics have pointed to evidence which suggests that online discussion has tended to undermine deliberation. This article argues that this claim, which generates a stand-off between the two camps, misses a key issue: the role played by design in facilitating or thwarting deliberation. It argues that political choices are made both about the format and operation of the online discussion, and that this affects the possibility of deliberation. Evidence for the impact of design (and the choices behind it) is drawn from analysis of European Union and UK discussion forums. This evidence suggests that we should view deliberation as dependent on design and choice, rather than a predetermined product of the technology.

This study analyzed individual perceptions of various situations involving actions likely to be considered unethical by most people. It explored perceptions of the acceptability of parallel technology-based and non-technology-based vignettes, self-rated behavior regarding the survey scenarios and consistency between self-rated behavior and the level of acceptance of the vignettes.The responses from 453 participants were analyzed by age, gender, ethnicity and amount of weekly access to computers at home.The participants were more accepting of the technology-based survey items and were also more likely to engage in those behaviors than the non-technology items; however, the participant responses indicated a low level of acceptance for the scenarios and only a minimal likelihood that they would participate in them. Additional findings across the comparison groups are reported and discussed.

This article considers a neglected but crucial aspect of the new business of mobile interactivity: the premium rate data services industry. It provides an international anatomy of this industry model and the ways in which it has been used to capitalize upon the surprising success of short message service (SMS) to provide a basis for the development of consumer markets for mobile data services. It situates this analysis within a wider consideration of the role of premium rate culture in the social shaping of interactivity in convergent media. Specifically, it looks at how premium rate services are being constructed in relation to telecommunications, television and the internet. The article concludes that although premium rate culture has rejuvenated innovation in broadcast television, potentially it may constrain the interactive potential of the mobile internet.

Several surveys attest to growing public concerns regarding privacy, aggravated by the diffusion of information technologies. A policy of self-regulation that allows individual companies to implement self-designed privacy statements is prevalent in the United States. These statements rarely provide specific privacy guarantees that personal information will be kept confidential. This study provides a discourse analysis of such privacy statements to determine their overall efficacy as a policy measure. The in-depth analysis of privacy statements revealed that they offer little protection to the consumer, instead serving to authorize business practices which allow companies to profit from consumer data. Using public good theory as a foundation, policy implications are discussed.

This study examined the relationship among personal network characteristics, gratification-utilities and the frequency of use of three interactive communication technologies (landline telephone, email and instant messaging). A conceptual framework is presented, providing a rationale for three hypotheses predicting positive relationships between personal network characteristics (size, intimacy and physical proximity), gratification-utilities and frequency of use.The participants were 286 college students, whom research shows are primary users of interactive media. Hypotheses 1 and 2, proposing a link between network characteristics and gratification-utilities with frequency of use, were supported, while Hypothesis 3, predicting a link between the prior two variables, was only partially supported. Frequency of use was associated more strongly with network characteristics than with gratification-utilities across the three technologies. Of the network characteristics, network size was significantly associated with gratification-utilities. Directions for future research are discussed.

This exploratory study examines the use of online citations, focusing on five leading journals in journalism and communication. It analyzes 1126 URL reference addresses in citations of articles published between 2000 and 2003. The results show that only 61 percent of the online citations remain accessible in 2004 and 39 percent do not. The content analysis also shows that .org and .gov are the most stable domains. Error messages for `dead’ URL addresses are explored. The instability of online citations raises concerns for researchers, editors and associations.

Recently there has been some debate between deliberative democrats about whether the internet is leading to the fragmentation of communication into `like-minded’ groups.This article is concerned with what is held in common by both sides of the debate: a public sphere model that aims for all-inclusive, consensus seeking rational deliberation that eliminates inter-group `polarizing’ politics. It argues that this understanding of deliberative democracy fails to adequately consider the asymmetries of power through which deliberation and consensus are achieved, the inter-subjective basis of meaning, the centrality of respect for difference in democracy, and the democratic role of `like-minded’ deliberative groups.The deliberative public sphere must be rethought to account more fully for these four aspects. The article draws on post-Marxist discourse theory and reconceptualizes the public sphere as a space constituted through discursive contestation.Taking this radicalized norm, it considers what research is needed to understand the democratic implications of the formation of `like-minded’ groups online.

This study examines the relationship between relational quality and media use in relationships. In addition, the impacts of other potentially important variables such as the sex and relationship type of the participants and their partners are explored. College student participants focused on interaction experiences with an acquaintance, friend, romantic partner or family member. The results indicated that participant sex and partner sex did not affect reported media use, whereas relationship type had significant effects on the extent to which face-to-face and telephone communication were used. Relationships with acquaintances had the lowest relational quality and romantic relationships, while closer, were less satisfying than either family or friendship relationships. Same-sex relationships were perceived as more satisfying than cross-sex relationships. Finally, media use did not predict relational closeness or satisfaction.

This study examined the way in which television genres in the Netherlands make use of additional communication channels in terms of interactivity and genre modification and whether the availability of additional communication channels in genres corresponds to audience age. Expert interviews were held with representatives of Dutch broadcasting organizations and a secondary analysis of Audience Research data was conducted. It was found that compared to other genres, short message service (SMS) is added most frequently to reality programmes, email and websites to the information genre, teletext to sports programmes and merchandizing to children’s programmes. In addition, it was found that only SMS is added more often to programmes attracting a younger audience. The extent to which the additional communication channels represented real innovation varied from maintenance to the elaboration and modification of genres.

This study examines how individual differences in the consumption of computer games intersect with gender and how games and gender mutually constitute each other. The study focused on adult women with particular attention to differences in level of play, as well as genre preferences. Three levels of game consumption were identified. For power gamers, technology and gender are most highly integrated. These women enjoy multiple pleasures from the gaming experience, including mastery of game-based skills and competition. Moderate gamers play games in order to cope with their real lives. These women reported taking pleasure in controlling the gaming environment, or alternately that games provide a needed distraction from the pressures of their daily lives. Finally, the non-gamers who participated in the study expressed strong criticisms about game-playing and gaming culture. For these women, games are a waste of time, a limited commodity better spent on other activities.

This article analyzes representations of feminism and sexuality on Suicide Girls (www.suicidegirls.com), a commercial site which features the online journals, profiles and nude photographs of young, heavily tattooed, punk women. It highlights the ways in which this site attempts to subvert the male gaze by changing contemporary photographic practices. It also interrogates the way in which the feminist potential of this site remains constrained by its inclusion of only a limited number of women of colour and only as a marketing `strategy’ of diversity. It argues that rather than a critical race feminist commitment to inclusivity and structural change, this strategy of `diversity’ is reflective of the internet tenet which holds that `content diversity is good business’. Thus, it concludes that rather than a feminist site which operates in the hope of broadening understandings of female sexuality, this site prioritizes profit to the detriment of feminist content.

Little academic and policy attention has addressed the `digital divide’ among children and young people. This article analyses findings from a national survey of UK 9—19-year-olds that reveal inequalities by age, gender and socioeconomic status in relation to their quality of access to and use of the internet. Since both the extent of use and the reasons for low- and non-use of the internet vary by age, a different explanation for the digital divide is required for children compared with adults. Looking beyond the idea of a binary divide, we propose instead a continuum of digital inclusion. Gradations in frequency of internet use (from non and low users through to weekly and daily users) are found to map onto a progression in the take-up of online opportunities among young people (from basic through moderate to broad and then all-round users), thus beginning to explain why differences in internet use matter, contributing to inclusion and exclusion. Demographic, use and expertise variables are all shown to play a role in accounting for variations in the breadth and depth of internet use.

This article explores the use of mediated communication among Norwegian children aged between 10 and 12 years. The analysis is based on a survey and 88 qualitative interviews with 130 children about their use of different types of communication technologies. This allowed a sketch of connections between the nature of the childrens’ social relationships, mediated content and various means of communication employed. Six main content categories of mediated communication were identified. The study points out that new media technologies offer the children new ways of communicating content and meaning which were not easily communicated by children before; both aggressive and emotionally positive content are exchanged more easily through digital technologies than face-to-face. Above all, the children use communication technologies to build and strengthen relationships for the benefit of their schoolmates and friends. Whether the use of new communication technologies, Short Message Service (SMS) in particular, is accelerating the ongoing process of individualization of the family, is discussed.

Suggestions that the internet has facilitated existing trends towards the increasing disconnection of individuals from substantive communities have been balanced by a variety of empirical case studies demonstrating significant communal features on some online discussion forums. While recognizing the role of discussion forums in facilitating community, this article seeks to shift the focus of debate towards the rapidly increasing use of online journal style web logs (`blogs’) as a form of social interaction. Ostensibly centred upon the individual rather than the group, yet increasingly interactive and socially oriented, interactive online journals appear particularly consistent with the notion of individualistic rather than group-centred patterns of sociability. The article explores this possibility in relation to case study research focused on the recent take-up of online journals by a group of individuals who previously participated in discussion forums associated with a music and fashion subculture known as the `goth’ scene.

The proportion of North American gamblers who choose to gamble on the internet is increasing at a dramatic rate. Unfortunately, however, relatively little is known about the characteristics of these individuals or their propensity for problem gambling. Past studies predict that internet gamblers are especially at risk for developing gambling problems and that a substantial proportion of them already can be properly classified as problem gamblers. This article investigates this issue using data collected from an internet-based survey administered to 1920 American, Canadian and international internet gamblers. Confirming predictions of a relationship between internet gambling and problem gambling, it finds that 42.7 percent of the internet gamblers in the sample can be classified as problem gamblers. In light of the findings, and bearing in mind the recommendations made by other gambling researchers, it concludes with a discussion of issues and cautions for governments to heed when crafting internet gambling policies.

The nation-state of Sierra Leone crumbled during the 1990s. A decade-long civil war destroyed the state and brutalized the national imaginings. Despite the lack of institutional structure, some members of its society chose to keep the nation alive through discourse on a listserv, an email forum called Leonenet. Using a multi-methodological approach that incorporated content analysis, interviews with cultural informants, ethnography and participant observation, the findings of the study reported in this article indicate that list members had created a virtual nation, defined as any community that communicates in cyberspace, whose collective discourse and/or actions are aimed towards the building, binding, maintenance, rebuilding or rebinding of a nation. Leonenet was a diasporic communicative space where Sierra Leone’s state-related symbols were generated and then held in conceptual escrow, waiting for the institutional structure to return.

Issues pertaining to the production and consumption of corporate websites and online games remain relatively unexplored. This study examines the cultural production of a free, downloadable rugby game and parallel website for Adidas’s sponsorship of the New Zealand All Blacks entitled `Beat Rugby’. Produced by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington to articulate the Adidas brand as globally cool, the promotional apparatus targeted a specific niche of Adidas’s company-wide target market known as the `jeeks’: male, sports-loving and computer literate 12—20-year-olds. More than 43,000 participants downloaded and played in the three-month tournament with the winners, the virtual 15 All Blacks, flown to New Zealand to meet their `real’ counterparts. The game and electronic community facilitated a range of consumption and communication experiences for a transnational audience of post-fans in a branded environment which was monitored by the cultural intermediaries at Saatchi & Saatchi on behalf of their client.

Research has dealt with the consequences of seeking casual partners online, but has been silent about its antecedents. To address this research gap, this study tested two hypotheses. The compensation hypothesis states that people high in dating anxiety and low in physical self-esteem seek casual dates online because the features of online communication (e.g. reduced cues, anonymity, controllability) allow them to compensate for the deficits experienced in offline dating. The recreation hypothesis proposes that sexually-permissive people and high sensation-seekers will look for casual partners online because they value the anonymity of the internet. Multivariate analyses of a survey of 729 Dutch adults supported the recreation hypothesis, but not the compensation hypothesis. Sexually-permissive people and high sensation-seekers looked for casual partners online more frequently than sexually-restrictive people and low sensation-seekers. Dating anxiety and physical self-esteem, in contrast, were unrelated to the seeking of casual partners online.

Media use has changed considerably during the past five years and earlier research has produced contradictory results on how media use links to children’s psychosocial factors. This study charts the access to and use of several media technologies among 825 Norwegian schoolchildren between 10 and 12 years of age. The questionnaire contained items concerning children’s self-concept, parental monitoring and social competence. It found that children engage with different kind of media activities and some of these are significantly related to psychosocial factors, however, these correlations were in general quite small. Entertainment usage was associated with low scholastic competence. Both utility usage and heavy advanced usage of new media were related to self-perceptions of athletic competence. Low social acceptance was linked to Gameboy usage and advanced usage of media. Finally, there was a relationship between experienced parental monitoring and utility usage of media technology. The possible implications for these empirical relations are discussed.

This research conceptualizes behaviors in online commercial transactions as communication acts intended to reduce uncertainty between interactants. Uncertainty reduction theory and predicted outcome value theory are used to contextualize individuals’ motivations and behaviors in the risky and uncertain environment of online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions. Data from 6477 randomly-selected auctions conducted over eBay.com indicate that more commodity information leads to more, and higher, final bids; higher seller reputation results in fewer bids for less money; and greater system security features result in fewer bids. Additionally, holding item type constant, much more variance in final bid price and bid activity can be explained by these factors as item value increases, although important differences in the direction of relations emerge as well. Based on these findings, current theoretical perspectives on uncertainty reduction are extended to the environment of computer-mediated communication and interpretations are offered to explain individuals’ behaviors in initial encounters in online auctions.

Communication studies pay little attention to futures research, while there is a lack of communication knowledge in futures research.This article discusses the function of futures research and ways to embed domain knowledge in predictions. First, it looks at futures research in relation to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in households in 2010. Second, it incorporates communication knowledge based on the vision of experts. It is interested in the ways in which the contextual factors of the adoption and use of ICT can be taken into account. Scenarios take social changes, political and regulatory trends into account and draw alternative, divergent pictures of a future context within which the adoption, domestication, use and effects of new technologies will take place.Through the use of scenarios different contexts can be described in which the impact of specific technologies can be analysed, making use of the know-how of communication scholars.

This article deals with ICT availability among ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands and Flanders. The rapid spread of ICT applications has affected various aspects of digital citizenship. The study results suggest that the world of ethnic minority youths in the Netherlands and Flanders, as with other western countries, is being digitized gradually. This is an irreversible evolution with tangible effects in new trends in communication and consumption. Ethnic minority youths orient themselves to the country where they live (bridging between cultures) as well as to their parents’ country of origin (bonding of social capital). This article examines whether differences in information and communication technology access and use can be explained by culture-specific characteristics such as ethnocultural position, religion and language proficiency, apart from the usual sociodemographic characteristics (age, sex and socio-economic status). Examining the online activities of ethnic minority

Drawing from the theoretical orientation of apparatgeist, this article explores the cultural similarities and differences in perceptions and uses of mobile telephony. A sample of college students from Hawaii, Japan, Sweden,Taiwan and the US mainland was surveyed to assess: (1) perceptions of the mobile phone as fashion;(2) attitudes about mobile phone use in public settings; (3) use of the mobile phone for safety/security; (4) use of the mobile phone for instrumental purposes; and (5) use of the mobile phone for expressive purposes.The results indicate some differences and several similarities among the cultural groupings and help to lay the groundwork for future research and theory-building.

This article discusses how interactive media threaten informational privacy, especially in a legal environment that fails to protect individuals’ right to receive and use content without being scrutinized by private and government institutions.The article observes that as information about media consumption habits make up an increasingly large share of the stock of data that institutions can use in order to make inferences about individuals, it becomes increasingly more difficult for individuals to determine which types of behaviors would cause them to be assigned to a high-risk category. In the light of this observation, the article concludes by proposing that in order to address the uncertainty that individuals face in trying to figure out how institutions use personal information to categorize them into different risk groups, a privacy protection scheme that increases the accountability of these automated and manual interpretation processes is needed.

This study compares the roles of progressive online news services with those of mainstream newspapers in developing reactions to the deaths of two schoolgirls by a US military vehicle into massive anti-US protests during 2002 in South Korea. Clear differences were found between the online news services and the mainstream conservative newspapers’ coverage in terms of the number of articles, the composition of news sources, and the frames used to make sense of the issues. It reveals that the progressive media played an important role in escalating reactions to the deaths of the two schoolgirls into a broader anti-US sentiment. The results of the study suggest the limitations to the inter-media agenda-setting model in explicating the dynamics of issue development. Additionally, the potential of alternative online news media in agenda-building and the relationship between the news media and issue development are discussed.

Juxtaposing symbolic interactionist and postmodern interpretations of cyberself-ing, I bring data to bear on the tensions between these two theoretical stances. I argue that postmodernist accounts are no longer tenable; such studies were based on multi-user domains (MUDs), but generalized to cyberspace. I examine the evolving internet population, which has reached a critical mass of the American population, to demonstrate that MUD users no longer constitute the majority of users. After substantiating this shift in the user base, I elucidate evidence that corroborates the countervailing thesis of ‘socialized’ online selves. I argue that using a symbolic interactionist perspective to frame the cyberself-ing project allows us to understand the creation of the cyber ‘I,’‘me,’ and digital ‘generalized other,’ as well as the dynamics of interactional cuing online.

People who work, learn, or play in online social worlds must sometimes leave those social worlds. Such departures may happen for many reasons. Often they are anticipated departures because the social world was meant from the start to be temporary. Most people do not yet have much practice at leaving an online social world, nor do we have a good model of the process. Activities that people undertake while disengaging from transient online social worlds affect them personally, as well as their future personal and professional relationships with one another. For this research, 30 students near the time of graduating from an online learning master’s degree program participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their activities and emotions related to disengaging. The result is a model of the disengaging process encompassing 12 dimensions.

The study of cybercommunity is inevitably linked to the development of the internet amid other cultural phenomena, and cybercommunity as a cultural practice has clearly reached a point of critical mass. The concept of online community has become increasingly diluted as it evolves into a pastiche of elements that ostensibly ‘signify’ community. This study grapples with the concept of community in cyberspace and suggests alternative ways of characterizing online social relations that avoid the vagaries of ‘community’. Based on interviews and a theoretical consideration of online community, it finds that the metaphor of ‘community’ in cyberspace is one of convenient togetherness without real responsibility. This study suggests a symbolic interactionist approach to the examination of online social relationships that is free of the controversy and structural-functional baggage of the term ‘community’. It suggests that community is an evolving process, and that commitment is the truly desired social ideal in social interaction, whether online or offline.

‘New Digital Cartesianism’ investigates the socio-material power inequities embedded in text-based, computer-mediated communication (CMC). Is the body really transcended in text-based computer-mediated communication? This article summarizes software and hardware advertising ‘hypes’, cyber-enthusiast ‘hopes’, and the ‘actualities’ of CMC which contradict this virtual dream of pure minds communicating. Marketing hypes and cyberhopes mythologize disembodied CMC with promises of anonymity and fluid identities. However, the actualities of how users interpret and derive meaning from text-based communication often involve reductive bodily markers that re-invoke stereotypes of racialized, sexualized and gendered bodies. Ironically, despite claims that CMC achieves Descartes’ dream of ‘pure minds’ and the transcendence of body, users frequently rely on stereotyped images and descriptions of bodies in order to confer authenticity and signification to textual utterances. In digital Cartesianism, the body actually functions as a necessary arbiter of meaning and final signifier of what is accepted as ‘real’ and ‘true’.