Internet Studies: Past, Present And Future Directions [1st Edition] 1409446417, 9781409446415, 1409446425, 9781409446422, 1409473872, 9781409473879

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Internet Studies

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Internet Studies

Past, Present and Future Directions

Panayiota Tsatsou University of Leicester, UK

© Panayiota Tsatsou 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Panayiota Tsatsou has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company 110 Cherry Street Wey Court East Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7PT USA England www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Tsatsou, Panayiota, 1976Internet studies : past, present and future directions / by Panayiota Tsatsou. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-4641-5 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-4642-2 (ebook) -- ISBN 9781-4094-7387-9 (epub) 1. Internet--Social aspects. I. Title. HM1017.T73 2014 302.23’1--dc23 2014005000 ISBN: 9781409446415 (hbk) ISBN: 9781409446422 (ebk – PDF) ISBN: 9781409473879 (ebk – ePUB)

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Contents 1

Introduction: Moving from Mass Media to Internet Studies?  

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2

Writing the Histories of the Internet and of its Study: Certainties and Enigmas  

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3

Theorising the Internet: Crafting an Internet Theory  

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4

Studying the Role of the Internet in a Real-Life Context: Opportunities versus Risks  

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Research and the Internet: Fast-Growing Internet Research  

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Conclusion: The Unexpected Future of the Internet and its Study   215

165

Bibliography  

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Index  

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Moving from Mass Media to Internet Studies? In considering the angles from which this book will inform the reader on the study of the Internet, I regarded it inevitable to commence with a rather generic but nevertheless informative introduction to the Internet and its social positioning. The Internet emerged in the 1960s as an experimental network to connect remote computers and from the 1990s onwards evolved into a medium of global, multi-layered and multi-media communication. Since its astonishing degree of appropriation (which is still ongoing) at the local, regional, national and international levels, the Internet has complemented, challenged, enriched and, in some cases, undermined mass-media production and the content of communication, while introducing new discourses and understandings of the characteristics, magnitude and quality of media audiences and their role(s) in shaping communication. According to the latest world figures, Internet penetration (i.e. Internet use) has achieved a massive increase since the year 2000, even in the world’s poorest places. Internet use grew by 3,606.7 per cent in Africa, 2,639.9 per cent in the Middle East and 1,310.8 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean over the period 2000–2012. Internet use rates have also increased significantly in the more developed areas of the world, although at a less spectacular pace than in developing countries. In the period 2000–2012, Internet use grew by 393.4 per cent in Europe, 218.7 per cent in Oceania and Australia and 153.3 per cent in North Africa. Regardless of this extensive growth, gaps in Internet penetration are still in place and only about a third of the world’s population (34.3 per cent) were Internet users in 2012. The picture becomes even more complex when the persistent discrepancies in Internet penetration between the West and the rest of the world are considered. In 2012, 78.6 per cent of the North American population, 67.6 per cent of the Australian population and 63.2 per cent of the European population used the Internet. In contrast, only 42.9 per cent of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean, 40.2 per cent of the population in the Middle East, 27.5 per cent of the Asian population and 15.6 per cent of the population in Africa were Internet users in 2012 (www.internetworldstats.com).1 Does this challenging picture of enormous growth, on the one hand, and persistent gaps and inequalities, on the other, justify the hyperbole typical of what 1 The Internet-use statistics are for June 2012 and rely on data published by Nielsen Online, the International Telecommunications Union, GfK, local ICT regulators and other sources.

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is contended about the present of the Internet and of what is foreseen for its future role in mediated communication, exchange and collaboration? Probably not, and this invites us to seek a better understanding of what the Internet is (and what it is not) and how it has been approached, studied and researched over the past two decades and more. The Internet: Technology, People and Communication What is the Internet and how has it evolved over time? How can one make sense of its elements and functions alongside its usages and the role it plays in individual and social-life settings? Although the term ‘Internet’ is more or less known to all scholars and to most ordinary people, from its outset it was comprehended as fluid, hardly definable and largely controversial. According to Allen, the term ‘Internet’ is ‘seductively totalising, gathering together many diverse developments in ways that make sense now’ and, thus, ‘the simplicity of the term occludes the multiple pathways of technological and social development that preceded our capacity to speak of this network’ (2012: 101). The fact that the term ‘Internet’ refers to a range of technologies – as well as to diverse forms, services and content of information dissemination, communication exchange and even collaboration, all resulting in a plethora of usage experiences – is what makes the singularity of the term problematic (Livingstone 2005: 3). In addition, rapid technological development and barely predictable shifts in the development and appropriation of the Internet make any precise definition of it subject to criticism or even dismissal: ‘the Internet cannot be captured in an individual “picture” … The pictures are stagnant, but the Internet is in a constant state of flux … the Internet is often experienced but difficult to translate and express’ (Costigan 1999: xviii). Numerous attempts have been made to define the Internet, aiming mainly to describe its technical features and usage affordances. From a rather technical perspective, the Internet has been defined as ‘a network of computer networks that works based on the TCP/IP protocol’ (Fuchs 2008: 121), and as ‘a decentralised, global communications network mediated by the conjunction of computers and telecommunications’ (Livingstone 2005: 1). Its technical design consists of a top thick layer, which includes application protocols required for running a vast, everchanging and ever-developing range of Internet applications; a bottom thick layer, which includes protocols and standards required for the traffic of Internet data through telecommunications media; and a middle thin layer, which constitutes the vital core infrastructure of the Internet and features domain names, routing of data packets and assignment of addresses (Dutton and Peltu 2007: 65–66). This technical design makes the Internet an open system of networked computer networks, where control of information, communication and collaboration activities is decentralised and transferred to the user. In addition, the power to control is assigned to the user at the software level, since software is traded and

Introduction: Moving from Mass Media to Internet Studies?

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promoted as a service rather than a product, essentially requiring usage and user co-production instead of pure one-way trade and consumption (O’Reilly 2005). The Internet is far more than technology, though. It is essentially a technosocial system, ‘a global decentralized technological structure consisting of networked computer networks that store objectified human knowledge’ while human actors ‘permanently re-create this global knowledge storage mechanism by producing new informational content, communicating, and consuming existing informational content in the system’ (Fuchs 2008: 122). The word ‘Internet’ itself alludes to the idea of inter-networks and the fact that it constitutes ‘a “network of networks”, each with their own design and unique structure, yet they all follow some basic rules that allow them to interconnect’, while ‘social structures of the Internet mimic this design’ (Costigan 1999: xviii). As ‘a global network of computer networks’ (Castells 2001: 10), the Internet consists of both technical elements (i.e. design) and social structures, with the latter giving meaning and importance to the former and with design-grounded networks going hand in hand with social networks and networks of Internet users. Given this network logic2, the Internet is considered pioneering and revolutionary because of the complex interrelationships and flows of influence it facilitates between the technical and social subsystems and among networked technologies, content, services, actors and even entire phenomena and broader social settings: ‘the technological structure is a structural mass medium that produces and reproduces networked communicative and cooperative actions and is itself produced and reproduced by such practices’ (Fuchs 2008: 123). From a broader sociological perspective, the Internet has been conceived as strengthening pre-existing debates on the ‘Information Society’ that mass and electronic media first sparked (Webster 2004a: 1). Or, as put forward by Lievrouw and Livingstone (2006: 7), ‘new media research and scholarship have moved away from a dependence on theories of mass society and toward postindustrial or post-modern theories of society’. So where do the complexity and appeal of the Internet lie? The Internet is a complex and multifaceted example of new media, and the artefacts, activities and arrangements it encompasses differ from those found in mass media ‘in terms of the recombinant and networked ways they develop, and their ubiquitous and interactive consequences’ (Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006: 11). ‘Recombination’ points to the continuous hybridisation of old and new technologies and innovations within Internet settings and platforms. It was first flagged up in Bolter and Grusin’s (1999) notion of ‘remediation’, according to which new media remediate – in other words, translate, refashion and reform – other, older media, in terms of both content and form: ‘What is new about new media is therefore also old and familiar: that they promise the new by remediating what has gone before’ (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 270). Bolter and Grusin (1999: 31) present recombination as ‘hypermediacy’, with new-media raw ingredients (e.g., images, sound, text, animation and video) borrowing from old forms of 2 A detailed discussion of the ‘Network Society’ theory is offered in Chapter 3.

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media (e.g., television, film, photography and print). According to these authors, remediation has two other elements worthy of attention: ‘immediacy’, namely the user’s sense of immediate contact with the content or activity she/he engages with through new media, and ‘transparency’, which suggests an interface that is transparent and the user can ignore or even be unaware of when confronting a medium. In addition, the ‘network’ metaphor (very briefly introduced above) suggests Internet-enabled one-to-one and many-to-many communication added to one-tomany forms of mass communication. Finally, the Internet demonstrates ubiquity of presence, as well as a new scale, new means and a new scope of interactivity. These technologically and culturally defined characteristics of the Internet result in certain usage affordances, such as multimedia content and forms of communication (i.e. integration of text, sound, images, animation, video etc.); hypertextuality, namely the presence of a fluid and ever-expanding network of interlinked texts; spatiotemporal disembeddedness of communication; manyto-many communication modes; cooperative production of digital content; decontextualisation of information and content (i.e. removal of authorship and of the time and place of production); and derealisation in cyberspace (i.e. blurred boundaries between reality, fiction and virtual reality) (Fuchs 2008: 139). These features and affordances of the Internet are of interest to broader discussions of its history, present status and potential future development. They are also of interest to those contributing multi-disciplinary theoretical, methodological, empirical or policy accounts of the Internet and the effects of its presence and appropriation. In a way, they oblige those who study the Internet to move beyond the sorts of celebratory or warning accounts that experts and scholars (e.g., De Sola Pool 1983, Negroponte 1995) put forward when the first debates on its role and effects arose. Today, phenomena such as ‘e-democracy’, on the one hand, and ‘digital divides’, on the other,3 invite scholars to produce balanced portrayals of what the Internet is and what it means for individuals and for society. Essentially, those who study the Internet are invited to challenge monolithic and uncritical concepts, explanations and evidence that have long resided in the field of Internet studies: ‘We must continue to be sceptical of claims for change, weighing evidence, clarifying concepts, acknowledging the limits of research’ (Livingstone 2005: 13). The Internet and its Study The previous introductory remarks on the Internet bring us to the subject of its study. In actual fact, the ‘new media studies’ pathway within media studies has developed as a result of the innovation that has marked the Internet and other media and communication technologies (e.g., mobile telephony) for the past couple of decades and the increasing interest of experts, decision-makers, industry 3 Both phenomena are discussed in detail in Chapter 4.

Introduction: Moving from Mass Media to Internet Studies?

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players and the community of users (and that of non-users) in the effects of new media technologies on how individuals and societies organise themselves and their lives. Internet studies can be considered a major part of new media studies and its agenda is largely in accordance with what the study of new media consists of, namely: ‘the artefacts or devices used to communicate or convey information; the activities and practices in which people engage to communicate or share information; and the social arrangements or organizational forms that develop around those devices and practices’ (Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006: 2, italics in original). In this respect, the field of Internet studies mostly addresses questions that fall into one or more of the following broader themes: • Design, structure and development of artefacts or technologies used in communication. As regards the Internet, for instance, the hyperlinked and dynamic self-organising structure of the World Wide Web (Fuchs 2008: 123) generates a multitude of questions around cross-border decentralised design and technical structure and the implications for information and communication production, dissemination and consumption. • Cultural dissemination and social context within which mediated communication emerges and develops, and examination of people’s practices through mediated communication. Here we encounter research evidence and scholarly debates around the everyday embeddedness of the Internet (e.g., Bakardjieva 2005, Silverstone 1996, Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002)4 and the political economy of its structures and organisational patterns (e.g., McChesney 2007, Murdock and Golding 2004, Schiller D. 2007).5 Questions are posed around the ways in which the Internet is appropriated in people’s lives, as well as the role it plays in forming opportunities for and creating risks in how people go about their lives in individual, domestic and public settings (e.g., Kavanaugh and Patterson 2001, Livingstone 2009, Papacharissi 2009, Rheingold 1993, van de Donk et al. 2004, van Dijk 2005, Warschauer 2003, Wilhelm 2000).6 • Institutional organisation and governance that determine the function of media devices and people’s activities in contemporary mediated communication. Internet governance in particular involves a range of issues, such as management and development of Internet infrastructure; Internet usage and associated benefits and risks; Internet market and economic development; and matters concerning Internet communication rights, conflict of interest, business models, and stakeholder roles and relationships. Internet governance is as complex and shifting an area as are the Internet, its actors and its effects. Suggestions for light regulation, transparent multi-stakeholder processes, multiple governance models, 4 Read the relevant section in Chapter 3. 5 Read the relevant section in Chapter 3. 6 For more, read Chapter 4, where Internet opportunities and risks are discussed.

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sufficient coordination, and policies and regulations that foster sustainable Internet operations (Dutton and Peltu 2007: 71) are subject to ongoing deliberation and debate and are far from being addressed in full.7 Similarly, Dutton (2013a: 2–3) recently suggested that Internet studies can examine technology (including its design and development), use (including patterns of use and non-use in the various socio-cultural and institutional settings) and policy (including law and policy as well as institutions and processes of Internet governance). For Dutton, these three areas of study are relevant to the following questions surrounding the Internet, its dynamics and its effects: ‘Who shapes the Internet?’, ‘Why do people seek to shape the Internet?’, ‘What structures, cultures, aims and objectives are shaping choices?’ and ‘With what implications and for whom?’ However, similar questions have long been posed in communication studies and have greatly concerned theorists, analysts, researchers and students since the inception of mediated communication. Rather, the way these questions are posed, the rhetoric that surrounds them and the circumstances under which they are brought up as far as the Internet is concerned are largely new. In a way, Internet scholars pose these questions so as to come to terms with and enhance their own and others’ understanding of the Internet amidst rapid and largely unforeseen technological, cultural, socio-economic and political changes in an arguably globalised and cosmopolitan, but still deeply disparate, world. The roots of the systematic study of Internet phenomena and their effects can be found in the early 1990s, for example in Rheingold’s (1993) work on virtual communities, Turkle’s (1995) work on identity in cyberspace and Castells’ (1996) work on conceptualising and analysing the network society. Also in the mid-1990s, the scholarly community started to draw its attention to the use of the Internet as an object or tool for research and to associated ethical, methodological and other challenges (e.g., virtual vs. real research settings) (e.g., Allen 1996, Boehlefeld 1996, Jacobson 1999, Markham 1998, Reid 1996). However, there is no consensus on when the field of Internet studies was launched and obtained its initial shape. For some, the conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in 2000 was the first milestone in the course of Internet studies, whereas for others such milestones can be found in various disciplines and Internet research undertakings that predate the 2000 AoIR conference (Dutton 2013a). One scholar who engaged in the systematic study of the Internet shortly after it started to become a personalised medium of mass communication was Steve Jones. Jones noted in 1999 that the fluidity of the Internet (in terms of structures, relationships, and content, services and applications) should disallow Internet studies to become an institutionalised and structured discipline (Jones 1999a: 12). He also suggested that we should not be confined to the study of the entity of the Internet itself but should instead place the Internet within a socio-historical context 7 For a discussion of trends and developments in Internet governance, read the relevant section in Chapter 4.

Introduction: Moving from Mass Media to Internet Studies?

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of development – that is, within a broader context of ideologies, cultures, ways of living and important individuals and historical figures, all of which have, in one or more ways, affected and simultaneously moved alongside the development of the Internet (Jones 1999a). Today large edited volumes on media and communication are dedicated to the Internet, aiming to present the scope and directions of Internet studies and to address some of Jones’ claims while exploring emerging theoretical, methodological and empirical questions around the Internet and the course of its study (Burnett, Consalvo and Ess 2010a, Consalvo and Ess 2011, Dutton 2013b, Hunsinger, Klastrup and Allen 2010). One of the issues Jones raised and one that is still highly debated is whether Internet studies comprises a standalone and self-contained discipline. In 2005, Baym gave the same answer that Jones did six years before. In reflecting on her active involvement in the AoIR and introducing the edited special issue of The Information Society on Internet research and its disciplinary status, Baym (2005) categorically refused the ‘discipline’ status of Internet research and contended that Internet study should be seen as a ‘field’ with global reach rather than a discipline. At that point, scholars could not boast any long history or rich records of attainment in the study of the Internet. Baym essentially based her position on the institutional structures (e.g., organisational forms, scholarly associations, regular face-to-face conferences, flagship journals, study programmes and pedagogy) and the intellectual cores (e.g., theories, methodologies, evaluative criteria) that enable an area of study to constitute a discipline. In the same special issue, Sterne discussed the intellectual armoury available to those who study the Internet and noted that ‘we are more likely to apply the methods and theories of other fields to our objects than to make a unique contribution to the humanities and social sciences’ (2005: 251). In this sense, Internet research was perceived as having a ‘status betwixt and between disciplines, approaches, traditions, nations, and so many other forces’ (Baym 2005: 231). The 2005 special issue also questioned not only the infeasibility of assigning a specific disciplinary identity to Internet studies but also the rightness of such an undertaking, essentially echoing Jones’ (1999a) early warning. According to this scepticism, such disciplinary specification runs the risk of arbitrariness, narrowness, rigidity and inflexibility in thematic, methodological and theoretical terms, thus undercutting the legitimacy and value of Internet studies as a whole (Baym 2005). Most of the recent accounts of Internet study suggest that the foundations of the field and the ongoing research within it rely on interdisciplinarity (Burnett, Consalvo and Ess 2010b: 3, Dutton 2013a, Livingstone 2005, Wellman 2011). Dutton (2013a) has emphasised the difficulty in considering Internet studies a single discipline and the importance of inter-disciplinarity for the advancement of this field. Specifically, he suggests that studies of the Internet ‘often draw from more than one disciplinary perspective, and are often anchored in multidisciplinary teams. In fact, many problems in Internet studies require an interdisciplinary approach’ (2013a: 8). Hunsinger in turn suggested the concept of ‘transdisciplinarity’, according to which Internet studies is a transdisciplinary field

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in which the object of study (i.e. the Internet) must be approached ‘beyond and across disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives’ (2005: 277). Hunsinger’s proposition for approaching Internet studies as a field that combines a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary initiatives relies on the hope that knowledge of the Internet will stop being fragmentary or unintelligible and inaccessible to nonexperts. Hunsinger claims that transdisciplinarity can foster dialogue between the various disciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavours for the study of the Internet, creating a common ground on which an audience and an understanding (and relevant discourses) of the Internet can be built (2005: 278–279). Such a proposition for transdisciplinarity may appear relatively premature and insufficiently supported even by today’s standards, while the disciplinary status of Internet studies continues to be an area of discussion and concern, with most scholars and researchers continuing to favour the idea of interdisciplinarity for the future development of Internet studies: ‘The most likely scenario is for internet researchers to continue to collaborate within and across the existing academic disciplines and structures of universities’ (Dutton 2013a: 13). As regards its current status, Internet studies constitutes a rapidly expanding field of study (Ess and Dutton 2013) that offers to researchers, no matter their disciplinary origins and research agendas, the opportunity to test their theories, methods and practices and to increasingly ‘fill the gaps between disciplines’ (Baym 2005: 231). Scholarship on the Internet has been mushrooming over the past few years, ripening the entire field and making Internet studies ‘a distinct field – one represented both by research and reflection manifest in diverse disciplines and by the (usually) interdisciplinary scholarship and research focused specifically on the Internet per se’ (Burnett, Consalvo and Ess 2010b: 3). Concrete evidence of the rapid growth of the field and its distinct traits was offered in 2013 by Peng et al., who analysed over 27,000 refereed articles published in journals in the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index in the period 2000–2009. In their analysis Peng et al. provided a comprehensive map of the prominent research themes, theorisations and methodologies of the entire Internet studies field. First, they confirmed that Internet studies is one of the most rapidly growing domains of study and research and that it draws together a diversity of disciplines and academic approaches. In their attempt to identify the boundaries, major divisions and basic elements of the field, they concluded that there are four primary research themes: e-health, e-business, e-society and human-technology interactions. They also found two or three sub-themes within each theme, each with various research foci and methodologies. Finally, their research highlighted the following main clusters of issues studied in the field: interaction, networking, communication and regulation. In this way they confirmed the framework of topics that earlier attempts to map out the field have suggested (see Dutton 2013a, Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006). In terms of methodology, they found that wellestablished conventional research methods (e.g., survey) still prevail in Internet studies.

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Internet Studies and Binary Tensions Moving beyond the general mapping of Internet studies, it is worth briefly pointing to the binary tensions that have marked the development of the field. Binary intellectual and methodological tensions have been prominent in Internet studies. Dualisms and binary tensions make up what Jensen (2011) has aptly called ‘the Great Divides’. Two of the most prominent are those of ‘optimism vs. pessimism’ and ‘technological determinism vs. social determinism’.8 Within the fast-developing and still-malleable field of Internet studies, these tensions have driven many of the approaches to the study of the Internet and their conclusions. Their fundamental claims have spanned deliberations, arguments and evidence around the concept of the Internet as well as the traits and effects of Internetenabled communication. One of the first questions posed regarding the study of the Internet was: ‘Is the Internet an important study area?’ On the one hand, scholars have barely questioned the need to study and research the Internet: ‘Whether or not one believes the hyperbolic claims about the Internet being the biggest thing since the invention of the wheel, the Internet is a medium with great consequences for social and economic life … one’s life will be, in some way, for better or worse, touched by the Internet’ (Jones 1999b: xii). On the other hand, the answers to this question have ranged from highly utopian to deeply dystopian. In the former view, the Internet is a revolutionary and rather ‘a-historic’ information, communication, networking and collaboration technology and there is an ‘emphasis on the Internet as utterly novel and thereby revolutionary – hence making all previous history and insight irrelevant’ (Ess 2011: 11). The latter view understands the role and importance of the Internet contemptuously, disparagingly or, at best, sceptically and cautiously. More specifically, in the early phase of development of Internet studies in the 1990s, the acknowledgement of the significance of the Internet led to strongly argumentative, normative and even emotional approaches. In such early accounts, the Internet was either glorified or cursed for driving a fast-changing and increasingly challenging and globalising mode of living: ‘the internet cast as angel or villain in the moves towards global understanding, loss of tradition, rise in surveillance, loss of privacy, new forms of creativity, or new levels of risk’ (Livingstone 2005: 13). Such hyperbolic claims clearly indicated the dominance of a technologically deterministic perspective in the early study of the Internet. Techno-determinism clearly emphasised the effects of the Internet on users and society and essentially reproduced ‘impact’ discourses that dominated much of the study of mass media and communication (Burnett, Consalvo and Ess 2010b: 2, Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006). 8 Other remarkable dichotomies in the field have been those separating ‘online’ from ‘offline’ and ‘virtual’ from ‘real’. These dichotomies and their real-life implications are discussed in the section ‘Virtual vs. Real’ in Chapter 4.

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However, a gradual and ongoing shift from techno-deterministic to more socio-centric approaches has taken place and studies of the Internet have been marked in the past few years by an increasing inclination to understand Internet technologies and their importance in a broader socio-cultural, economic and political context (Webster 2006a: 3). As the Internet started to become a ‘daily’ technology in individual, domestic, work and broader social contexts – and, according to Wellman and Haythornthwaite (2002: 4), ‘embedded in everyday life’ – dualisms in its theoretical and empirical study have been greatly criticised and, to a significant extent, overcome (Consalvo and Ess 2011: 3–4). Hyperbolic claims about the ‘Internet revolution’ have lately been treated with particular caution, resulting in the amelioration of definitive predictions of the changes the Internet can provoke in individual and social living. This has gone hand in hand with the downplaying of the Internet as technology and the increasing emphasis of scholars on the importance of social contexts within which Internet technologies are placed, thus largely supporting theorisations of the social shaping of technology (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999a).9 Today, there is a broadly acknowledged need to eschew both technological and sociological determinism and to consider the interplay between society and technology as well as associated politics, power and representation battles in the field of Internet studies (Agre 2004, Fuchs 2008, Lievrouw 2006). This is in order to fight hyperbolic claims and overcome binary tensions that are still present in the field and, consequently, to yield more insightful, better tested and more prudently applied contentions about the Internet and its positioning in society.10 Internet Studies: The Perspective of this Book The gradual and ongoing shift from techno-deterministic to socio-centric approaches to the Internet signifies that the Information Society, which has been marked by the advent of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs), is defined along economic, technological, spatial, occupational and cultural lines of development (Webster 2006a: Chapter 2). However, the economic, technological and cultural lines of development (in conjunction with the broader social and political settings) inform us not only on the conditions in which the Internet and other ICTs have emerged but also on the parameters that have affected their study. What is of particular interest, therefore, is a review of Internet studies that positions the study of the Internet in a rich historical, sociocultural, political and economic context so as to identify its main contributions, dynamics, arguments, trends, strengths and weaknesses.

9 For a discussion, see Livingstone (2005). 10 Socio-centric and techno-centric theorisations of the Internet are discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

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This book aims to offer a wide scope and original examination of the field of Internet studies in order to address the following questions: How does Internet studies inform us about the multi-layered, complex and controversial role and significance of the Internet in the past, in the present and in the highly unpredictable future? What can one say, if anything, about the agendas emerging in Internet studies? What are the lessons for the study of the Internet in the future? This book answers these questions by providing a substantive, critical and forwardlooking account of some of the key contributions to Internet studies, which adopt theoretical, real-life or research perspectives on the Internet and its past, present and future. More specifically, this book addresses the abovementioned questions by doing the following: • First, it maps strands of theoretical work on the social embeddedness of the Internet, the political economy of the Internet and the network society. The aim here is to critically examine the way in which these areas of theorisation can contribute to the development of an Internet theory in the future. • Second, it examines what Internet studies reveals about the ‘dark’ and ‘bright’ sides of the Internet and its consequent effects on real-life phenomena. The aim here is to highlight the role of the Internet in two social-life areas that provoke optimism – civic engagement in politics/ democratisation and virtual communities – while highlighting two areas of pessimism concerning the role of the Internet in people’s lives: Internet exclusion and Internet governance. • Third, it considers literature on and actual initiatives in the development of Internet research, underscoring the research significance of the Internet and approaching the Internet as both the object of research and an increasingly important tool for methodologically innovative and interdisciplinary research. Past, present and future perspectives on some of the major themes, trends and developments of Internet studies inform this book and the above three areas of discussion. By critically discussing theoretical, real-life and research advances and using concrete case studies and examples, this book aims to provide an informative and critical, although far from exhaustive, scrutiny of Internet studies. Such a thread of theoretical, empirical and research reflections has the potential to provide the foundations of a synthesis-rich account of the study of the Internet in the understanding that everything said, discussed and argued is informed by a range of disciplines that shape Internet studies as a whole, such as new media studies, technology studies, information studies, computer science, sociology, cultural studies, political economy, social and community informatics, social psychology, economics and so on. In this way I also hope to contribute to a synthesis that accounts for the various disciplines integrated into Internet studies. The book closes with a conclusion on the agendas emerging in Internet studies and points out the lessons, challenges and possible risks Internet scholars must

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be prepared to encounter in the highly unpredictable future. In the concluding chapter, the question of whether or not Internet studies is today forming a new discipline is also addressed. However, let me provide two disclaimers at this point. First, the book takes a time-rich approach by intermingling past, present and future accounts, considering the development of the Internet and its study as running along a time continuum where the past matters for the present and the present matters for conclusions and hypotheses made about the future. Second, the separation of theoretical from empirical accounts, as exemplified in the field of Internet studies, does not imply by any means a clear-cut distinction between the two. Empirical accounts are much inspired by concrete theoretical frameworks and even abstract ideas, whilst there cannot be theory that is not informed by empirical findings or observations of and insights into segments of reality. As Fuchs argues in this regard: ‘There is no theory that isn’t grounded in empirical observations and no empirical research that doesn’t make some theoretical assumptions’ (2008: 5).

Chapter 2

Writing the Histories of the Internet and of its Study: Certainties and Enigmas At the dusk of the twentieth century and at the dawn of the new millennium, human history continued to undergo changes, evolutions and small or bigger ‘revolutions’ of various kinds, but at a faster pace than before and at a level of complexity never met before. At the turn of the century, many of the developments involved globalisation and capitalism and spanned all areas of individual and social life globally. Castells has summarised the transformations and movements of the past few decades: The diffusion and deepening of the information technology revolution, including genetic engineering; the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the consequent demise of the international Communist movement, and the end of the Cold War that had marked everything for the last half a century; the restructuring of capitalism; the process of globalization; emergence of the Pacific as the most dynamic area of the global economy; the paradoxical combination of a surge in nationalism and the crisis of the sovereign nation-state; the crisis of democratic politics, shaken by periodic scandals and a crisis of legitimacy; the rise of feminism and the crisis of patriachalism; the widespread diffusion of ecological consciousness; the rise of communalism as sources of resistance to globalisation, taking in many contexts the form of religious fundamentalism; last, but not least, the development of a global criminal economy that is having significant impacts in international economy, national politics, and local everyday life. (Castells 1997a: 6)

Irrespective of whether one could make additions to this list of recent historical ‘events’ in individual and social life structures, none would disagree that many of these developments were marked by and chronically coincided with technological advancement in numerous realms of activity and particularly in information and communication. In this chapter, I briefly present some of the milestones in the rise and spread of the Internet and how its recent history has paved the way for the emergence of the vivid and fast-developing field of Internet studies. The history of Internet studies is also briefly presented, while the case of the ‘Web’ and its own history, standing and role in communication are discussed from within the field of Internet studies. This chapter closes with some reflections on the complexities of the history of the Internet and its study and on how both histories are to be understood in the context of the broader systemic environment. These concluding

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reflections about placing history into context link the past with the possible future course of the Internet and its study and pave the way for the next part of the book, where key theories of the Internet are discussed. Internet History: The History of Technology, People and Communication The history of the Internet has been told a number of times and often in various ways and with emphasis on different factors, actors, conditions and associated developments (Abbate 2000, Allen 2012, 2013, Campbell-Kelly and Aspray 1996, Rosenzweig 1998). Allen argues that the Internet made its appearance as a socially usable technology for information and communication a couple of decades ago in a milieu in which no collective memory of its origins existed:1 ‘the internet came to widespread social use without a past, arriving as if from the future and thus becoming a future-in-the-present’ (2012: 100). Most locate the origins of the Internet in the 1960s and the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the US.2 As early as 1958, the US government invested in applied science and created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) to support research and development projects that went beyond military applications. Essentially, ARPA was rooted in the effort of the US to react to the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, by the Soviet Union in 1957 (Elton and Carey 2013: 28). The memos written in 1962 by Licklider of MIT to discuss his ‘Galactic Network’ concept constitute the first recorded description of social interactions through computer networking (Leiner et al. 1997: 102). Kleinrock of MIT published a paper on packet-switching theory in 1961, while in 1965 MIT researcher Lawrence Roberts created the first ever small but wide-area computer network (i.e. connection between two remote computers via a low-speed dial-up telephone line). These were important steps for setting up and implementing ARPANET, and Roberts, who joined ARPA in 1966, developed the computer network concept and published a plan for ARPANET in 1967 (Leiner et al. 1997: 103). Hence, in the late 1960s, the US government funded work within ARPANET, the first packet-switching network that aimed to connect computers and implement the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). The sending of the first message on ARPANET in October 1969 and the completion of the initial ARPANET host-to-host protocol in 1970 are identified as 1 Namely not a history of it, if history is what is remembered of the past, not what happened in the past. 2 Allen remarks that the first technological developments that allowed the development of the Internet network took place as early as the 1960s with the involvement of people from computing (most acknowledged contributors) and telecommunications (less acknowledged contributors) and the independent activity of research, manufacturing and service economies (2012: 101–102).

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breakthrough moments (Leiner et al. 1997: 103). At the same time, the first voices of criticism were heard, mainly pointing out the top-down and military traits of the network, since ARPANET was being used by defence R&D and operational organisations. It was only in 1983 that it was split into two parts and began to support the research community, and thus slowly became used for the daily computer communications of several communities (Leiner et al. 1997: 105). As Elton and Carey (2013: 29) remark: ‘ARPANET was used initially by the military and computer scientists at several major universities … ARPANET was a network for sophisticated technologists, principally computer scientists … Further, it was funded by the [US] government’. Historians can boast of a series of critical events from the early 1970s onward that gave the Internet the necessary momentum and publicity to develop in ways barely predicted by most in the field. Specifically, in 1972 a large and successful demonstration of ARPANET was carried out (Leiner et al. 1997: 103), and electronic mail (email) was introduced and quickly took off ‘as the most popular network application and as a harbinger of the kind of people-to-people communication activity we see on the World-Wide Web today’ (Leiner et al. 1997: 103). Also, the invention of TCP/IP in the early 1970s by Vinton Cerf, Bob Kahn and colleagues made it possible to run a range of applications and programmes on the Internet, since computers with different operating systems were able to communicate over packet-switched networks (Elton and Carey 2013: 28). The development of Ethernet technology in 1973 and the development of local-area networks (LANs), PCs and workstations in the 1980s made the Internet thrive (Leiner et al. 1997: 104). All these technical developments went hand in hand with a series of other, early and later, breakthroughs. Usenet and bulletin-board services followed the introduction of email (Livingstone 2005: 2) and essentially showed early on the strong dynamics of computer networks, while the word ‘Internet’ (abbreviation for ‘internetworking’) was introduced in 1974 (Curran 2012a: 35). The open-source movement in the 1980s (e.g. the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project, which aimed to provide a complete operating system licensed as free software; and GSRC, the GNU’s Source Release Collection, which carried forward the Unix operating system) (Livingstone 2005: 2) showed the alternatives available for the democratic development and usage of networks of communication. It started to offer free and open software to members of the public, thus empowering the community of software engineers and technologists who believed in an inclusive and democratically functioning global network for communication. However, in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, very few households across the globe had computers and most office workers and students had no direct access to them (Elton and Carey 2013: 30). The development of hypertext language in 1989 and the release of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland, introduced to the world what is today the most widely used system of interlinked hypertext

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documents accessed via the Internet.3 The Web was demonstrated in 1991 and released by CERN for general use in 1993 (Elton and Carey 2013: 29). The Web constituted ‘a user interface that provided a convenient method of organising and accessing distributed data across computer networks’ (Curran 2012a: 35), and it significantly boosted the further development and global spread of the Internet. In 1993, a team at the University of Illinois-Urbana created the Mosaic browser – which introduced a graphical user interface (GUI) and allowed easy access to websites – and developed a decentralised model for sharing information across computers (Elton and Carey 2013: 29). By the early 1990s, the word ‘Internet’ was well known and widely used (Elton and Carey 2013: 29), but, as Allen (2012) remarks, up until the 1990s, when it entered public consciousness, the Internet was a rather ‘elitist’ network used by a few experts, professionals and hobbyists. What followed was the introduction of the Windows browser Microsoft Explorer in 1995 and the increasingly widespread appropriation of the Internet by businesses and public elites in the West (Livingstone 2005: 2). Recognising that the Internet should be of use beyond the technological elite of the country, US Senator Al Gore championed the ‘national information infrastructure’ (the NII) in the early 1990s. Although the industry initially treated the Internet with reluctance, it took over when the Internet became open to the market and commercial use in the 1990s and provided the popularisation, commercialisation, surveillance and commodification momentum the Internet has been exposed to in the past couple of decades: ‘commercialisation played an important role in popularising the internet and making it accessible to a wider public. However, commercialisation also introduced economic and metadata controls, and a new technology of surveillance that curtailed the diversity and freedom of the internet’ (Curran 2012a: 45). From the mid 1990s the commercialisation of the Internet was a reality and its rapid spread reached enormous numbers of users, first among businesses and elites in the West and then (by the late 1990s) across social actors and ordinary people too. Hence, the Internet had reached most parts of the world – even the least-developed ones – by the end of the 1990s. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, new applications and services were made available to (theoretically) everyone, allowing instant, synchronous and multimedia communication in parallel with the pre-existing asynchronous and text-based modes of communication. From 2005 onwards, Web 2.0 became the Internet ‘bible’, consisting of social and professional networking sites (e.g., MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn), so-called ‘virtual worlds’ (ranging from Second Life to World of Warcraft)and ‘prod-user’ sites such as YouTube (which allow the production and distribution of multi-media content by Internet users who are also the primary audience of such content). Also, accessibility was enhanced via mobile devices and broadband (Burnett, Consalvo and Ess 2010b: 1–2). However, as Livingstone remarks, the most fundamental advances from the mid 1990s onward 3 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed in 1995 and is in charge of evolving the protocols and standards associated with the Web (Leiner et al. 1997: 107).

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concerned the core position of the Internet as an everyday technology that has diffused through homes, schools and workplaces rather than the changes in speed, scale, content and complexity of Internet technologies (Livingstone 2005: 2). At the same time, the commercialisation wave has been challenged by the growth of scientific and community-driven initiatives in favour of public good, such as the free/open source movement, the rise of user-generated and user-sustained platforms and services, and user resistance to paid commercial Internet services. All these developments have shaped a multifarious and multi-force-driven history of the Internet that resembles ‘a chronicle of contradiction’ (Curran 2012a: 48). Internet Studies: A Field with a Short but Vivid History Attempts to make a history of communication studies have been favoured by some and criticised by others (Carey 1996, Robinson 1996, Wahl-Jorgensen 2000, Wartella 1996). Nevertheless, it is beyond doubt that ‘there has been considerable interest in writing and reconsidering the history of the field of communication study by both communication historians and other communication researchers’ (Wartella 1996: 169). Part of the field of communication studies is the study of the Internet, which has its own, though short, history. In general, the history of the Internet, the fast-moving developments around the Web and the concomitant debates concerning the origins, driving forces and possible future of the Internet have been unswervingly associated with the emergence of the field of Internet studies and its own historical standing (Livingstone 2005: 2). At the same time, in tracing the origins of the study of the Internet, one should not disregard broader media and technological advancements over the past century or the way they have driven the development of communication studies as a whole. Broader media and technological contexts are particularly important for determining the strength, subject matter, scope, methods and objectives of communication studies, while they also largely explain the emergence of Internet studies, especially from the 1990s onwards. In a chronological account of the history of Internet studies through the ages, Wellman (2011: 18) locates the origins of the study of the Internet at the moment when scientific attention was moved from computer applications to the sorts of influences that the deployment of such applications in the ‘open-ended, farflung, and seemingly infinite in scope’ Internet network can have on individuals and societies. Wellman identifies three stages in the history of the study of the Internet. The first, located in the mid 1990s, accommodated dystopian and utopian approaches to what appeared as a revolutionary but also threatening set of pioneer and network-enabling means of information dissemination and communication exchange (e.g., asynchronous email and discussion lists, and synchronous instant messaging and chat rooms). In that first ‘age’ of Internet studies, utopian approaches celebrated the new start the world could make via the Internet (‘presentism’), while dystopian accounts emphasised the adverse impact of Internet communication

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on user sociability and social living (‘parochialism’) (Wellman 2011: 18). In the mid 1990s, scholars from disciplines beyond computer science and technology studies (such as political science, arts, sociology, anthropology and photography) as well as from relatively new and interdisciplinary fields (such as information studies, media studies and cultural studies) were drawn to the study of the Internet (Livingstone 2005: 3). The second stage of the history of Internet studies occurred towards the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s and was marked by the scientific as well as policy- and industry-driven demand to systematically account for the Internet from a user perspective, thus moving beyond uncritical praise or dry critiques of the medium and closely following rapid technological developments in the field (e.g., the move from Web 1.0 text-based communication to the more interactive and multimedia communication tools and content of Web 2.0). In this second period, both utopian and dystopian approaches were problematised, as most Internet scholars reached the understanding that ongoing concerns in the field (e.g., digital divides) go hand in hand with new opportunities for the user (e.g., augmented experience of sociability and democratic communication in cyberspace). Concomitantly, the focus shifted toward developing systematic and empirically grounded research of usage and users of the Internet. Large-scale empirical research on the Internet made its appearance in this second phase, with the aim of systematically documenting usage and user experiences of recently emerged Internet services and applications (e.g., search engines, the World Wide Web) (Wellman 2011: 19–20). Also in this period, journals devoted to the publication of high-quality, international and interdisciplinary Internet research were launched (e.g., the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication in 1996; Information, Communication & Society in 1998; and New Media & Society in 1999), while research associations and conferences were set up to bring together a rich community of Internet scholars (e.g., the AoIR was set up in 1999 and its first conference was held in 2000). Finally, Wellman (2011: 20–22) contends that we are currently experiencing a third age in the study of the Internet that coincides with the development of Web 2.0 services and applications and particularly with the ground-breaking role that social-media platforms are playing in communication today.4 For Wellman, the increasing embeddedness of the Internet in people’s everyday lives is the key feature of this third phase and essentially makes the Internet and its range of new technical and communication affordances an integral element of the communication routine of the individual user. This ‘routinisation’ of the Internet arguably invites a sort of analysis that positions itself in relation to two opposing 4 However, based on the historicity of the Internet, one might ask whether the ongoing move to Web 3.0 and to associated collaborative mechanisms in online communication signals the outset of a new, fourth age in the study of the Internet. More on the Web and how its historical development has been chronicled by key Internet scholars can be found in the next section.

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and, at the same time, complementary trends: first, the development of Internet studies as a field in its own right that employs interdisciplinary concepts, tools and methods of research and introduces new objects, themes and techniques of study; and second, the incorporation of Internet studies into established and long-lived disciplines, enabling existing themes and areas of research to be perceived from a new angle and studied from an Internet perspective (e.g., democracy and politics, social inequality, community living, health care etc.). In this ongoing third age, we also find a plethora of publications and research projects on the Internet, while well-run academic curricula with a focus on the Internet exist in various study and training areas. It is precisely the prolific character of the field of Internet studies – and, within it, the upsurge of themes, perspectives and approaches that span a range of disciplines – that has made the field subject to ‘specialisation’ (Burnett, Consalvo and Ess 2010b: 2). Studies have blossomed at a spectacular pace in subfields such as Internet research ethics; Internet research methodology; online social networking; digital divides; virtual communities and virtual worlds; online identity; online gaming; Internet governance; political economy of the Internet; news and the Internet; Internet and democracy/cyberdemocracy; cyber-activism and online protesting; Internet and gender; Internet and children; and many more. In what follows I briefly discuss one of the major innovations in the development of today’s Internet: the Web. I present accounts of the Web and its own history and how Internet studies has approached the Web as both concept and technology. Although the focus of Internet studies goes far beyond the history of Internet-associated developments, historical accounts of such developments are an integral part of and greatly inform other areas of Internet study. The discussion that follows aims to explicate the core discourses within Internet studies about the major advancements in the field and their contribution to the development of the Internet as a whole. It also aims to illustrate, to an extent, how the Web’s own history has raised debates in the field of Internet studies. The Study of the Web and its own History As briefly noted in the overview of the history of the Internet, the World Wide Web, or simply the Web, has gone through its own phases of development and change: ‘Web 1.0 is a computer-based networked system of human cognition, Web 2.0 is a computer-based networked system of human communication, and Web 3.0 is a computer-based networked system of human cooperation’ (Fuchs 2011a: 202). But has the historical development of the Web through these three versions been as clear-cut as Fuchs suggests? Web 1.0 thrived in the 1990s as a cognition and text-based system (e.g., websites of various kinds). Web 2.0 emerged in the early 2000s and in the mid 2000s achieved full development as a communication system in which interactive multimedia platforms reached their peak (e.g., email, social networking, blogging,

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instant messaging, video calling, video conferencing etc.): ‘Web 2.0 represents a blurring of the boundaries between Web users and producers, consumption and participation, authority and amateurism, play and work, data and the network, reality and virtuality’ (Zimmer 2008). Bassett (2008) highlights the descriptive and performative powers of Web 2.0 in her critical reflection on 2.0 as a model that tends to ‘occlude certain characteristics of contemporary techno-cultural forms and practices whilst foregrounding others’ and ‘to produce a particular assessment of past and future convergence trajectories’. Historical accounts consider Web 2.0 a building stone of the historicity of the Internet, the marker of a discourse of historical interpretation of the Internet dependent on versions (e.g., Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and so on) (Allen 2012). Going a step further, such historical accounts view Web 2.0 as a discourse (rather than a technology) that drives the construction of a narrative of versions at the heart of the history and the possible future of the Internet: ‘The dominant popular history of the web is now told through versions … in a fight to define the future, through control over the meaning of the past and the referential present’ (Allen 2013: 270). Only after the invention and rapid popularisation of the term ‘Web 2.0’ (essentially from 2005 onwards) did ‘1.0’ emerged as a label to assign a sense of historicity and past reference to debates of the Internet. Web 2.0 also enabled the introduction of references to the future, thus discursively creating the three poles of historicity of the Internet: past/Web 1.0; present/Web 2.0; and future/Web 3.0 (Allen 2012: 105). This highlights the discursive interweaving of the history of the Internet and thus questions what Web 2.0 has actually contributed to the advancement of the Internet and whether it signifies something truly new or just labels the old differently, introducing itself as something new. A more direct critique of the Web 2.0 concept and its novelty has been put forward by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, who stated in an interview: Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along. And in fact, you know, this Web 2.0, quote, it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0. So Web 2.0, for some people, it means moving some of the thinking client side so making it more immediate, but the idea of the Web as interaction between people is really what the Web is. That was what it was designed to be as a collaborative space where people can interact. (Laningham 2006)

Beyond questions concerning its degree of novelty, the 2.0 version of the Web has also raised debates on its role in user empowerment. Tim O’Reilly (2005) has discussed various Web 2.0 applications, services and related developments and stressed the role of back-end design in determining user choices. Specifically, he emphasised the Web 2.0 ‘architecture of participation’ and its foundation in the following seven attributes: software packaged as services with cost-

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effective scalability; control over hard-to-recreate data sources that become richer as more people use them; users as co-developers of software, content and services; harnessing collective intelligence with applications such as Wikipedia and the blogosphere; leveraging the long tail through customer self-service; software deployed on more than a single device; and lightweight user interfaces, development models and business models. O’Reilly considered the ‘architecture of participation’ to be critical for Web 2.0 actors and for the successful employment of new business models online: ‘The competitive opportunity for new entrants is to fully embrace the potential of Web 2.0. Companies that succeed will create applications that learn from their users, using an architecture of participation to build a commanding advantage’ (2005: 5). On the other hand, in Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production, Schäfer (2011) examines the role of user practices and participation in the creation of Web 2.0 and puts forward the critical argument that Web 2.0 signals the creation of ‘extended cultural industries’ that fight over, control and enhance participation: ‘The most recent development of the Web 2.0 shows clearly that media enterprises were successfully able to implement user activities into new business models’ (Schäfer 2011: 168). In his edited volume, Scholz (2012) formulates the argument that, today, the Web signals the conflation between labour and leisure via user contribution to web content and via technologies and applications that constitute the essence of ‘playbor’ (play/labour) and offer a lure of exploitation from corporations and other stakeholders. Nevertheless, Scholz’s critical account leaves some room to consider user empowerment on the Web. Rheingold (2012) offers a possible response to such critiques and emphasises the importance of mindful and meaningful use of today’s Web. He discusses five forms of digital literacy (or five digital literacies) that are pre-conditions for user empowerment on the Web: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information (or ‘crap detection’) and network smarts: As laptop-carrying, smart-phone-using members of the digitally connected infosphere, we need to start by learning a new discipline: the literacy of attention. As citizens and cocreators of the cultures that shape us, we need participatory media skills. As collaborators in the collective intelligence that faces massive problems from global warming to water-sharing conflicts, we need to learn literacies of cooperation, mass collaboration, and collective action. As dwellers in the network society, we must understand and master the nature along with use of social networks, technical and human – and grasp the way both mediated and face-to-face social practices can increase or drain social capital. And in a world where nobody can trust the authority of any text they find online, the ability to quickly evaluate the validity or bogosity of information is no longer an intellectual nicety. Critical thinking about media practices has become an essential, learnable mental skill. (Rheingold 2012: 32–3)

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What about the 3.0 version of the Web? Web 3.0 is currently growing and its future appears bright and challenging at the same time. It is broadly regarded as moulding a new system of cooperation and global exchange on all levels of cooperative activity, (e.g., Wikipedia, Open Source Software platforms): ‘Web 1.0 is a tool for thought. Web 2.0 is a medium for human communication. Web 3.0 technologies are networked digital technologies that support human cooperation’ (Fuchs 2008: 127). However, whereas some argue that the collaborative enablers of the Web can be found in the ongoing developments towards Web 3.0 (Fuchs 2008), others contend that such collaborative tools – especially those that enable the production of services and content – are key elements of Web 2.0. For instance, Taylor-Smith and Cruickshank (2010) have examined the opportunities, challenges and drivers in Web 2.0 collaborative co-production of government services, or e-government, in the UK. This controversy is not merely a matter of labelling and preference (Web 2.0 or Web 3.0). Instead, it can point to questions regarding how the Web is defined, how its history is understood and how its future is foreseen or envisaged. This also brings up questions concerning the study of the Web, both in terms of themes addressed and methods employed within the broadly framed and as yet not fully formed field of Internet studies. Nevertheless, the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and now to Web 3.0 has changed the patterns of communication and relationships developed online, with asynchronous communication gradually giving way to synchronous communication and with one-to-one communication having been enriched by one-to-many and many-to-many relationships. The three core affordances of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 – networking, collaboration and sharing – have repercussions for people’s creativity, sociability and empowerment and have the potential to open up new avenues for democratised production, distribution, availability and consumption of web technologies, services and content. At the same time, studies in the field point to new risks arising in the present phase of swift movement towards Web 3.0. These are risks relating to privacy infringement, identity dilution, surveillance practices and barely controllable mechanisms of exploitation of free labour and corporatisation of Web 2.0 spaces and outputs (Zimmer 2008). Concluding Remarks: Certainties and Enigmas The Internet and its study both have histories. The two histories are inextricably linked and both have been subject to debates, controversies and divergent approaches. As Livingstone has suggested, the story of Internet studies is substantially marked by the debates, complexities, uncertainties, politics and contested developments surrounding the Internet, offering a multi-dimensional and highly diverse mapping of this field of study: A parallel story to that of the rise of the internet can be told about the emergence of ‘internet studies’ … like the internet itself, internet studies is by no means

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settled as an intellectual endeavour. Its disciplinary roots are diverse, its methods barely formed and its politics much contested. Moreover, its continuallyevolving object of study, being a moving target for research, sets a challenging pace to the entire project. (Livingstone 2005: 2)

On the one hand, the history of the Internet is far from linear and its study has produced anything but consensual accounts. Scholarship poses questions on the leading forces of the Internet and its historical development. While the fundamental rationale of the Internet was significantly underpinned by the military-scientific focus on decentralised, flexible and evolving networks of information and communication, later (in the 1980s) it was influenced by communitarian, hippy and radical countercultural values in America and Europe. Through experimentation, these values dismissed the military-scientific elitist culture and envisaged the Internet as a creator of communities of action, play and democratisation (Curran 2012a). Allen (2012) considers multiple origins of the Internet and recognises that different studies of the history of the Internet emphasise different origins, either in the form of people who contributed to the development of the Internet or in the form of actual technological advancements that allowed its progression and spread. This work could prompt discussion concerning the multiple histories or understandings of the history of the Internet or multiple versions of the same history. Jones (1999a) agrees that different authors and historical accounts of the Internet have located its origins in different actions and agents. For instance, he points to scholarly accounts of the importance of various cultures for the development of the Internet, such as the MIT hackers in the 1960s, computer hobbyists and academics, the hackers and bulletin-boardsystem operators and users of the 1980s, and professional organisations such as Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Key figures mentioned in histories of the Internet include John Perry Barlow, a cyberspace pioneer; Knight Lightning, a cunning hacker; and the Chaos Computer Club and the Legion of Doom (Jones 1999a: 2–3). In addition, pre-Internet online services played an important role in web developments and essentially constituted the precursors of today’s web applications. As Elton and Carey (2013: 31–34) note, early online services either functioned as standalone services or were integrated into videotext platforms. For instance, online databases made their appearance in the early 1960s and constituted the precursor of today’s web information services. Similarly, computer conferencing services can be traced to the late 1960s, while electronic banking services were an extension of the computerisation of banking in the 1960s and 1970s and a forerunner of today’s web banking. Bulletin-board systems were enthusiastically adopted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, essentially presaging the contemporary blog. Videotext became a platform for such early, non-Internet online services. It was first initiated in the 1960s by the British Post Office to provide homes and businesses with on-demand access to a centralised database of a broad range of information presented as pages of alphanumeric characters and simple graphics.

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This initial videotext platform was then mimicked and developed via similar initiatives in many other countries (Elton and Carey 2013: 34–37). However, such pre-Internet online services are mostly overlooked in accounts of the history of the Internet and are barely considered in studies of the origins of today’s popular Internet tools and services. As regards the history of the study of the Internet, Internet studies did not arise purely out of technological innovation. Loblick and Scheu (2011) have suggested a state-of-the-art model, based on the field of sociology, for studying and analysing the history of communication studies. This model considers intellectual, biographical and institutional perspectives in the history of communication studies and positions them in a disciplinary context as well as in the broader context of society. Hence, this model suggests a joint emphasis on biographies, ideas and institutions in the discipline of media and communication, while linking these to the influence of a constellation of surrounding, competing or ‘mother’ scientific disciplines as well as to the influence of the broader non-scientific political, economic, social and media/ technological context (Loblick and Scheu 2011). In considering this model within the context of the birth of Internet studies, one can argue that the development of information and communication technologies, content and services has gone hand in hand with the socio-economic, political and cultural movements of the past few decades. This complex set of drivers has given rise to new fields of study and research and especially to new areas of scholarship, intellectual progression and work, with Internet studies being one of the most prominent. This is to say that Internet studies emerged from and is continually growing as a result of the challenges set by technological change, in conjunction with a range of strikingly complex, global and revolutionary events over the past few decades. An associated problem in conceptualising and accounting for the historical development of Internet studies is that concerning the blurred boundaries with contiguous fields of study, such as that concerning the Information Society. Towards the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, a drive towards the study of the Information Society emerged. Webster is one of the scholars who significantly contributed to the generation of fundamental arguments in support of the research into the Information Society (2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b). Webster acknowledged the broader socio-economic and political power of the term ‘information’ and contended that the societal system has for many years increasingly been shaped by the widespread production, dissemination and consumption of information. He supported the study the Information Society as a standalone field of knowledge that, at the same time, embraces all areas and disciplines of social study (e.g., sociology, politics, economics, philosophy) in order to examine the Information Society’s economic, cultural, symbolic, educational and technological ramifications. Webster considered that, among other factors, media technologies have played an important role in the growing power of information and that we live in ‘a world of media saturation … of instantaneous movement of information across time and space and of an array of new technologies and especially the internet’ (Webster 2004b: 9). Although he does not identify the study of the Information Society with

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that of the Internet, the overlaps and mutually shared reflections between these two study areas are more than obvious in his work, thus posing questions on how we distinguish, if at all, the two fields of study and their histories. The question that keeps being asked is whether Internet studies is an established discipline with a short past and a barely predictable future. As briefly pointed out in Chapter 1, key scholars in the field have been reluctant to assign a unique disciplinary identity to Internet studies. For most, it appears to be a quickly expanding and in-flux field but not yet a fully-fledged discipline: ‘a new and provisional field, inevitably since it is tied to a fast-changing technology, that – appropriately – takes its key theories and methods from long-established disciplines in the social sciences and beyond’ (Livingstone 2005: 4). In this sense, Internet studies appears to be a fast-growing interdisciplinary field that pursues theoretical, empirical and methodologically informed study of the Internet while continually facing knowledge enigmas and building ‘provisional’ certainties. It is broadly acknowledged to be a much-needed field of study as it allows critical examination of whether, how and why the emergence and development of the Internet are linked to past and ongoing systemic developments and with what repercussions for individuals and society. At the same time, Internet studies is increasingly required to place the Internet in context so as to examine its role within ongoing changes and developments in all life areas. In conclusion, the study of the Internet (and its history) is faced with challenges concerning both the concepts and contexts employed and the associated theoretical, research and real-life questions that it aims to answer in evaluating the multilayered, complex and controversial role of the Internet in the past, present and future. Chapter 3 tackles the book’s theoretical area of focus – namely, the study of the Internet and the related theoretical perspectives on the processes and factors shaping the Internet and determining its significance.

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Chapter 3

Theorising the Internet: Crafting an Internet Theory Various concepts and theories are employed in the study of Internet phenomena; these include digital divides, the digital economy, e-democracy, cyberculture, virtual communities, the online public sphere, the network society, Web 2.0, and so on. Through intense debate, revisiting prevalent intellectual frameworks and challenging existing concepts, theoretical approaches to the Internet continually evolve so as to contemplate aspects of the Internet experience and their implications in real-life contexts, thus endowing the study of the Internet with a flavour of controversy, intellectual endeavour and critical thinking. This chapter reviews key theoretical works in the field of Internet studies and sheds light on their disciplinary roots as well as on their strengths and weaknesses, also highlighting controversial concepts, unresolved debates and barely answered theoretical questions. Specifically, it discusses works that conceptualise the Internet and contextualise it in the light of three theoretical routes: society and the social embeddedness of the Internet; the political economy of the Internet; and the network society. These theoretical realms also touch upon debates concerning time, space and the Internet and a number of other theorisations that are critical for understanding not only the grounds for the development of an Internet theory but also the conceptual frameworks that can be employed for the study of the Internet from a real-life perspective (see Chapter 4). The theoretical work discussed here provides an account of some of the most important contributions in the field, while identifying pending questions that theoretically informed work should address in the future. Such breadth of deliberation puts the depth of the analysis at risk, but, as explained in the introductory chapter, this book does not aim to offer an exhaustive assessment of the study of the Internet. As regards theory in particular, it does not propose one particular perspective (cf. Fuch’s elaboration on critical theory), nor does it seek to develop a novel theoretical framework for the study of the Internet. On the contrary, the evaluation of the theoretical streams discussed in this chapter concludes with some timely reflections on the likelihood of a single, integrated Internet theory being put forward in the future.

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Why Theorise the Internet? But allow me to commence with some reflections on a direct and apparently simple question that has nevertheless been far from sufficiently addressed: why do we need to theorise the Internet? The interdisciplinarity of the field of Internet studies, which was briefly outlined in the first two chapters and will further be demonstrated in the discussion of Internet research in Chapter 5, has led some to emphasise the empirical and problem-solving aspects of the field rather than its theoretical foundations: ‘Interdisciplinary entails a recognition that research is focused most often on addressing problems, such as understanding the social implications of the Internet, like narrowing digital divides, rather than advancing a particular theory’ (Dutton 2013a: 8). It is as if the various disciplines and traditions of social study have allied together so as to address complex issues, problematic phenomena and barely explicable developments in today’s multifarious social world that one single discipline cannot address alone. This poses the question of whether empiricism in Internet studies is as inescapable as interdisciplinarity appears to be and invites us to reconsider the value of theory and its links with empirical knowledge gained in the study of the Internet. There is some evidence that much of the work in Internet studies is undertheorised and most of the emphasis is directed at the technical and real-life examination of the presence, role and importance of the Internet. A review in the early 2000s found that very little of the study of the Internet was theoretically grounded, framed and informed; only 17.1 per cent of Internet-related studies tested a specific communication theory or relied on communication theories for their primary arguments (Kim and Weaver 2002: 529–530). This finding is hardly a surprise, given the long history of techno-deterministic perspectives on emerging technologies and their emphasis on the empirical implications of such technologies, thus often ignoring the diverse forms and routes of success of past technologies and the broader context in which emerging technologies are located. Evidence on the absence of theoretical foundations to the study of the Internet raises concerns and invites scholars to place theory at the core of the study of the Internet. For instance, Webster’s response to the question ‘Why do we need to consider theories in Internet studies?’ advocates the importance of theory as a means to practically inform a better understanding of activity domains wherein significant phenomena and effects arise: Some theory is a very practical tool to help us better understand the real world. The idea that ‘theory’ is impractical is a caricature. Though appropriate enough to describe some writing, usually that excessively concerned with epistemology (how we know what we know), theory of a sort is crucial to how we see and think about the world around us. Theory helps us better comprehend how we live by scrutinizing evidence, and by involving itself with substantive developments. (Webster 2004a: 3, italics in original)

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On the one hand, it is fair to accept Webster’s contention that theoretical knowledge is a prerequisite for understanding and directing developments in practical fields such as ICT development and innovation (Webster 2006a: 29–30). On the other hand, different theories have different degrees of applicability or scope of application, while theory itself is highly subjective even when it aims to ‘objectively’ inform us on technology’s forms, functions, usages and effects. Besides, there are and will always be contesting theoretical schemes that spark debate, foster intellectual rigour and prompt the emergence of new theoretical insights. For instance, Internet studies draws from a range of theoretical approaches in technology studies, sociology, political economy, geography, cultural studies, political science, media and communication studies and many other disciplines. While the Internet brings forward technological and usage innovation and links software and hardware developments with long-lived communication practices, its theoretical positions have mainly been built by a twofold influence: those theorising Internet innovation as distinctive and revolutionary (e.g., ‘information revolution’) and those linking Internet innovation with past communication theories and broader sociological theoretical schemes (e.g., ‘media capitalism’, ‘public sphere’). As Webster notes (2006a), interdisciplinary theoretical schemes coming from sociology, business studies, cultural studies and more – such as Castells’ ‘network society’ and Baudrillard and Poster’s postmodernism – emphasise the revolutionary elements of the information society and pave the way to arguments concerning ground-breaking trends on the Internet. In contrast, Schiller H.’s ‘cultural imperialism’ and Habermas’ ‘public sphere’ approach today’s communication largely in continuity with past trends, giving support to those who argue that Internet-based communication remains highly dependent on and sustains broader political, ideological and economic legacies. Such contesting theoretical frameworks are and will continue to be employed so as to frame interdisciplinary matters of concern to Internet scholars and thus to assist the advancement of ongoing debates in the field. Furthermore, is theory to be valued only in connection with empirical knowledge? Is it possible for theory to constitute a sub-field of study in its own right? If so, is such a sub-field indispensable? I would argue that, so far, attempts to yield conceptual frameworks for the study of the Internet have been far from comprehensive or capable of forming an Internet theory sub-field. According to Carpentier (2012: 211), the first wave of new media theories revolved around the concept of interactivity, but then emphasis was placed on the notion of participation so as to capture the new dynamics in the relationship between user and technology. For instance, in his Convergence Culture, Jenkins was inspired by the rapid transformation of the media landscape where ‘new and old media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways’ (2006: 2). In such a speedily changing environment, Jenkins mapped out a highly interactive and deeply complex media landscape where mass media do not vanish at the sight of new media and, instead, what appears to happen is ‘convergence’,

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namely ‘a paradigm shift – a move from medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels … toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture’ (2006: 243). For Jenkins, convergence culture is essentially a ‘participatory culture’ in which people create their own mediated experiences, in contrast with ‘older notions of passive media spectatorship’ (2006: 3). This ‘participatory culture’ blurs the boundaries between consumption and production of media content and ‘rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands’ (2006: 3). Jenkins’ ‘participatory culture’ has provided particularly useful concepts for informing other attempts to theorise Internet phenomena. For example, as regards ‘produsage’, Bruns (2008) studied a range of Internet platforms – from open-source to blogs and from Wikipedia to Second Life – to argue that users have been turned into ‘produsers’. For Bruns, ‘produsage’ is a form of simultaneous production and usage, and produsers ‘take on a hybrid user/ producer role which inextricably interweaves both forms of participation’ (2008: 21). According to Bruns, this fast-growing ‘user-led content creation’ means that the production of content ‘takes place in a networked, participatory environment which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge’ (2008: 21). This makes usage productive and participants in today’s media landscape are not only users but also producers. ‘Interaction’, ‘participation’, ‘participatory culture’ and ‘produsage’ are just some of the many concepts found at the core of attempts to theoretically frame and intellectually equip the study of emerging, developing or established Internet phenomena. However, these concepts have not yet formed an Internet theory and those who study the Internet must consistently employ these and other concepts to theorise the Internet and evaluate the conceptual grounds in which an Internet theory may be rooted. Various factors may be of great value to the development of an Internet theory; for example, accumulated real-life experience relating to the Internet; personal reflections; original ideas that can in their infancy accommodate the fertilisation of new concepts and arguments; existing concepts and theoretical debates; and discussions that highlight the complexity of the Internet and its study. Also, scholars must acknowledge the temporal, spatial and cognitive relativity of existing knowledge in theorising the rapidly evolving Internet landscape, while abstract and up-in-the-air ideas can often feed theoretically rich suppositions about future Internet-related developments. Theory does not necessarily have to be abstract, generalisable and codified (Webster 2006a: 29). It can capitalise upon particularities of actual or perceived phenomena; can draw inspiration from single forms or pieces of technology; and can adopt various disciplinary perspectives to make sense of technology and to feed its empirical investigation. A theory does not need to be all inclusive, fully developed or well organised; instead, it can be esoteric and it may be undergoing

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development while it is uncertain whether it will ever be completed or standardised. If all this is true, though, can we anticipate the rise of a single and integrated Internet theory? Are we likely to soon devise such a theory for the conceptually rich and contextually framed study of the Internet? To best address this question and make valid assumptions about an Internet theory in the future, we need to disentangle key theoretical strands in the field. This undertaking will highlight the conceptual armoury of some of the key theoretical approaches and their contribution to the better understanding of past and ongoing Internet developments. So what follows is a quite detailed, though far from exhaustive, discussion of key concepts and debates in three theoretical strands in Internet studies. Society and the Social Embeddedness of the Internet The first strand of theoretical approaches discussed in this chapter contrasts sociocentric and techno-centric accounts of the Internet. Discussions around the social embeddedness of the Internet can be placed in the context of the broader epistemological debate concerning the primacy of agency or structure in explaining social phenomena and the associated arguments of subjectivism versus objectivism, structuralism and functionalism: ‘If interpretative sociologies are founded, as it were, upon an imperialism of the subject, functionalism and structuralism propose an imperialism of the social object’ (Giddens 1984: 2). This debate has been going on for many decades, since long before the emergence of the Internet, with scholars who take a middle position having been recognised as the preeminent ones. Giddens proposed structuration theory and the axiom of ‘duality of structure’ to respond to the structure-agency problem, according to which structure is both the outcome of and the medium/ condition for human practices to be enabled or constrained: ‘According to the notion of the duality of structure, the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organise’ (Giddens 1984: 25). From this perspective, agency is attributed some power, as it has the potential to reproduce the structures and conditions needed in order for its very practices to be possible (1984: 2). Similarly, Bourdieuian sociology departs from both subjectivism and objectivism, proposing the ‘habitus’ structure so as to ‘escape from the ritual either/or choice between objectivism and subjectivism in which the social sciences have so far allowed themselves to be trapped’ (Bourdieu 1977: 4). Bourdieu’s habitus mediates agency and structure as it is defined as ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations’ (1977: 72). According to this definition, habitus is a structural category but dialectically related to and in dialogue with human agency, both constraining and enabling human activity and creativity (1977: 95). This dialectical relationship of structure and agency is enabled through practices

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and therefore the habitus is both opus operatum (result of practices) and modus operandi (mode of practices) (1977: 18), with individual or collective agency being constrained and enabled (conditioned and conditional) (1977: 95). Socio- and techno-centric approaches to media technologies have a history a few decades long. These approaches became particularly appealing when McLuhan argued that ‘the medium is the message’ (1964: 7) and sustained that ‘all media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are extensions of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment’ (1969: 54; see also 1964). McLuhan’s work became the epitome of techno-determinism in the media field and it was mirrored in much of the later work on media technologies and society. Since the 1970s, the enormously rapid technological change has contributed to scholars shifting their attention from mass-media communication to new forms of communication and information dissemination. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the first views in support of the idea of ‘information revolution’ arose, and in the mid-1990s a second wave of arguments about the revolutionary nature and multi-faceted effects of ICTs and global information exchanges emerged (Webster 2006a: 9–11). Among those who initiated the theoretical study of the Internet were those who first talked about the ‘information society’, the ‘knowledge society’ and the ‘knowledge industry’ (Machlup 1962); the ‘information economy’ (Porat 1977); and the ‘post-industrial society’ (Bell 1976, Touraine 1971). These scholars introduced the concepts of knowledge and information exchange as key in understanding the contemporary social and economic forms (Bell 1976, Lyotard 1984, Machlup 1962, Touraine 1971). Similar terms, such as ‘information superhighways’ (Angell 1995, Graber 1995, Sawhney 1996), have been coined in the past two decades, with many of them aiming to herald the advent of a society deeply transformed by media convergence, ICTs and the Internet in particular (Dertouzos 1997, Negroponte 1995). This terminology and the declaration of the advent of a new era wherein the Internet and other information and communication technological systems prevail and have revolutionised individual and collective arrangements of living provoked the false perception that Internet technologies and the experiences deriving from them suggest a completely new, pioneering social reality that is completely disconnected from the past. According to such triumphant forecasts, the massmedia market rulings and monolithic order of power were to be subverted by the empowerment of the individual via the Internet and the diversity and multiplicity of roles of the Internet user, even though the Internet was becoming subject to increasing capitalisation and commercialisation (Negroponte 1995, Poster 1995). Such arguments signalled the advent of technological determinism in the emerging field of Internet studies and empowered a firm stance concerning ‘the effects of “impacts” of ICTs on users, organizations and societies … the belief that technologies have an overwhelming and inevitable power to drive human actions and social change’ (Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006: 21). Technological determinism also gave rise to theoretical approaches – such as the diffusion theory (Rogers 1995) – that manifested scholarly interpretation

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of diffusion of innovation as technologically deterministic and scholarly focus on the effects of innovation in social systems (Lievrouw 2006: 252). In terms of effects, the techno-deterministic viewpoint drove empirical studies such as Kraut et al. ‘Internet paradox: a social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?’ (1998), which adopted the impact approach and reported the paradoxical finding that the ‘social technology’ of the Internet can lead users to reduce their social involvement and can harm their psychological wellbeing. In Kraut et al., whereas the social character of the Internet was approached from a designers’ point of view, the potential role of the social environment where the Internet is used – which may possibly alter the very nature of and the meanings assigned to the machinery and its affordances (e.g., tools, services, features etc.) – was neglected. Kraut et al focused on the social and psychological consequences of the Internet, but, ironically, they overlooked consideration of the social context and how it can foster different and even divergent user behaviours online and thus how society itself interprets, appropriates or even affects the affordances present in the design of the Internet and its ‘deliberate’ social character. Critical scholars contend that techno-optimistic myths are still in place and have largely been fostered by the rapid expansion of interactive, participatory and collaborative Web 2.0 technologies in the past few years, as such technologies are largely presented as empowering the user in an almost programmed and barely avertable way: ‘The reigning myth of the past couple of years is that the world wide web and the internet have morphed into a participatory medium, with a reinvigorated participatory culture close in tow’ (Fuchs 2011b: 206). These critical voices reflect on recent celebratory accounts of the interactive, participatory and collaborative Web, such as Jenkins’ ‘participatory culture’ (2006) and Bruns’ ‘produsage’ (2008).1 Nevertheless, it is broadly acknowledged that a systematic shift of intellectual accounts of technology from technological to social determinism began to occur from the 1970s onward. This development suggested that ‘the technological, instead of being a sphere separate from social life, is part of what makes society possible – in other words, it is constitutive of society’ (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999b: 23). Sociological positions on the structure-agency debate, such as Giddens’ and Bourdieu’s (see above), are strongly influential and closely related to the idea of ‘social embeddedness of technology’, since technology can be regarded as, on the one hand, a structure within a broader structure and, on the other, an agency that emerges and acts under the influence of broader structures, human agents and technology users/non-users. Such positions have nourished the very idea of the social embeddedness of the Internet, and they invite us to reflect not only on what society is and how we distinguish its structures from its practices and actions but also on how technology is positioned within it. An increasing number of scholarly voices are contributing to the reverberation of critiques of techno-determinism in general, and particularly with regard to ICTs 1 The first section of this chapter offers a brief discussion of Jenkins’ and Bruns’ work.

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and the Internet. Information society theorists (e.g., Robins and Webster 2004) acknowledge the interplay between change and continuity that new technological developments have signalled and address words of caution concerning the risk of considering new technologies as a revolution that completely changes what we have known thus far. In reflecting on the novelty of the Information Society, Webster makes a thought-provoking statement: ‘If there is just more information then it is hard to understand why anyone should suggest that we have before us something radically new’ (2006b: 449). At the same time, scholars point out the risk of approaching Internet technologies as purely technical, calculative and instrumental elements of change and of considering their use in a routine context, thus neglecting the complex relationships between technology, information and power that are formed by culture and politics and through competition for control. For instance, Robins and Webster (2004: 66) talk about the ‘dark underside of the Information Revolution’, according to which control and surveillance are intensified through technology-enabled and automated exploitation of information for the enhancement of political and corporate power. More specifically, in his study of the Information Society, Webster2 acknowledges the broader socio-economic and political power of the term ‘information’ and how the overall societal system of the past many years has increasingly been shaped by widespread production, dissemination and consumption of information. He considers that media technologies, among other factors, have an important and multi-faceted role to play in the continuing and increasing dominance of information in all the various domains of life: ‘a world of media saturation’ that subsequently enables ‘extended education for the vast majority of us in advanced locations’, ‘generally cleverer and better informed people’, ‘large numbers of occupations concerned with “think work”’, ‘instantaneous movement of information across time and space’ and ‘an array of new technologies and especially the internet’ (Webster 2004b: 9). If we are to recognise that the ramifications of the Information Society touch upon technological, economic, spatial, occupational and cultural elements and effects of ICTs, we can then argue that the emphasis must be placed not on the quantity of information disseminated and exchanged through technologies such as the Internet but rather on the qualities of the information available, as information has a ‘semantic content’ (Roszak 1986, Webster 2006a: 26). This is to say that information has a qualitative meaning co-shaped by complex forces located not only in the technological context wherein mediated forms of information emerge but also in the broader social settings wherein information is distributed and aims to have some impact. Media and communication scholars have addressed similar warnings, being alarmed not only by the swift spread of the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s but also, and maybe more evidently, by the celebratory techno-deterministic discourses that have surrounded the Internet. For instance, one of the most prolific and leading figures in the study of the media over the past few decades, 2 For a brief introduction to Webster’s work, read Chapter 2.

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James Curran, has critically commented that: ‘It was assumed that the distinctive technological attributes of the internet – its interactivity, global reach, cheapness, speed, networking facility, storage capacity, and alleged uncontrollability – could change the world beyond all recognition … would reconfigure all environments’ (2012b: 3). For Curran, this constitutes ‘Internet-centrism’, essentially ‘a belief that the internet is the alpha and omega of technologies, an agency that overrides all obstacles’, a belief that ‘lies at the heart of most of these prophecies’ (2012b: 3). Even before the advent of the Internet, theories of the ‘social embeddedness of technology’ invited the study of media and communication technologies to depart from previously influential techno-deterministic approaches (e.g., ‘media effects’, ‘medium theory’) on the assumption that ‘technologies are created not by lone inventors or geniuses working in a social vacuum, but by a combination of social forces and processes’ (Mackay and Gillespie 1992: 688). Modern-day theories that argue for the social embeddedness of new media technologies such as the Internet draw on ‘social constructivism of technology’3 (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch 1987, Bijker and Law 1992, Pinch and Bijker 1987, Pinch, Bijker and Hughes 1987), on MacKenzie and Wajcman’s (1999a) social shaping of technology (see above), on Feenberg’s (1991) critical theory of technology,4 on Schutz’s phenomenological

3 Social Constructivism Of Technology (SCOT) employs the concepts of ‘relevant social groups’ and ‘interpretative flexibility’ of artefacts (Pinch and Bijker 1987) to depart from the technologically determinist and asocial account of the ‘impact’ approach. The SCOT approach argues that ‘relevant social groups’ adopt divergent meanings of technology, making technological artefacts exhibit ‘interpretative flexibility’. In the end, only certain interpretations and meanings prevail and these determine the design of an artefact, which finally ‘stabilises’ its shape and function and comes to a point of closure – though this is only provisional (Pinch and Bijker 1987: 44). In this sense, the concepts of interpretative flexibility, closure mechanism and relevant social groups form the central thesis of SCOT: that technology emerges through a process of negotiation and struggle over meanings and designs wherein a multitude of social actors have a part to play. Hence, SCOT scholars situate social actors at the core of the entire process of technology’s shaping and assign value to the notion of ‘social shaping’ of technology. 4 Feenberg’s (1991) critical theory of technology introduces the notion of ‘technological rationality’ to suggest that technological design is deeply political and highly driven by dominant groups, the elite. For Feenberg, there is inequality and domination between social forces competing for the drive of technological development and thus technology is ‘indelibly marked by the presupposition that production requires social domination’ (1991: 69). Technology is seen as an instrument serving particular social groups and sustaining the social order, and therefore it is actively involved in the battle between structure and agency for the interests of the former: ‘like market rationality, “technological rationality” constitutes the basis for elite control of society. That control is not simply an extrinsic purpose served by neutral systems and machines but is internal to their very structure’ (1991: 69).

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sociology,5 on Lefebvre’s critical theory,6 on cultural and linguistic studies,7 and on other theoretical propositions, all of which demonstrate in one way or another that technology is to be understood as socially embedded and largely shaped by social forces: We take issue with [the] implicit assumption that some inherent property or characteristic of technology accounts for the impact of technology on our lives. We propose instead that myriad other aspects of our relation with technology must be taken into account if we are to achieve a useful understanding of its consequences. These other aspects include: our attitudes towards technology, our conceptions of what technology can and cannot do, our expectations and assumptions about the possibilities of technological change, and the various ways in which technology is represented, in the media and in organizations. (Woolgar and Grint 1997: 6) The social environment … shapes the technical characteristics of the artifact. With their emphasis on social shaping, Pinch and Bijker deny technological 5 Schutz’s phenomenological sociology explores how people experience their ‘everyday life-world’ (Schutz and Luckmann 1973: 3) and their actions with regard to the life-world’s structure. The social arrangement of the life-world is the fundamental conceptual equipment of the Schutzian phenomenology, under which technology is viewed as being appropriated by users into a ‘finite province of meaning’ (Schutz and Luckmann 1973: 24). 6 Lefebvre’s (1991) critical theory in a way contrasts with the Schutzian phenomenology and its idealistic notion of a life-world, since it regards the outside material environment as influential for the experienced life-world and investigates the power relations and hierarchies in play and the two-fold character, the misery and the power, of everyday life. Lefebvre aims to investigate ‘the real social process beneath an accumulation of technological detail’ (1991: 8–9) and recognises the existence of capitalist technological artefacts that dominate the individual’s everyday life and establish the misery of everyday life. At the same time, he also departs from Feenberg’s critical view of the capitalist forces driving technology and formulates a critique of ‘the real by the possible’ (1991: 9). Through this, he recognises the potential of technological artefacts to empower everyday life and users through their ‘programming’ function in everyday life. For Lefebvre, technology directs behaviour in diverse spheres of activity, but everyday life and technology’s place in it also have the potential to release the powers of freedom inside the individual user. 7 The cultural and linguistic tradition employs the metaphor of ‘technology as text’, according to which technology can be read differently by different cultural groups or by people positioned in different socio-cultural circumstances. The notion of technology as text stresses the potential role of users in the manipulation and further elaboration of certain aspects of technology, but perceives technology as the outcome of a strategic process of production ‘organized in such a way that its “purpose” is available as a reading to the user’ (Woolgar and Grint 1997: 73). Thus, it argues that ‘preferred readings’ are inscribed into technology, ‘configuring the user’ in the machine’s design, but also recognises the possibility of alternative or deviant ‘readings’ of technology by the user.

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determinism … they argue that the social groups that constitute the social environment play a critical role … Pinch and Bijker point out that social groups give meaning to technology. (Pinch, Bijker and Hughes 1987: 12)

Such counter-techno-deterministic theoretical schemes have built a strong bulk of works that favour the view that ‘technology is not aloof from the social realm … On the contrary, it is an integral part of the social’ (Webster 2006a: 12). These works, accordingly, led to the rise of domestication and everyday life studies in the 1990s and 2000s (Bakardjieva 2005, Bakardjieva and Smith 2001, Frissen 2000, Haddon 2004, Lally 2002, Silverstone 1994, 1996, Silverstone and Haddon 1996a, 1996b, Silverstone and Hirsch 1992, Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002). Domestication and everyday life studies have developed the case that the Internet and other ICTs are incorporated into people’s lives – into domestic and everyday life milieus wherein users live and make use of ICTs. From this perspective, the shape, meaning and functionality of ICTs are constantly reconstituted in a fluid and dynamic process of incorporation into domestic and everyday life environments. With reference to domestication, Silverstone (1996: 223) characterised ICT adoption as ‘a taming of the wild and a cultivation of the tame’, and concluded that the ‘multimedia revolution’ should also be seen as a ‘domestic revolution’ (1996: 224). Relating to the role of everyday life, ‘what is at stake is the significance of social processes for the nature, direction and speed of technological change and the significance of the everyday as a context for the acceptance of, or resistance to, new communication and information technologies’ (Silverstone 2003: 3). Domestication of ICTs and their incorporation into everyday life dictate the direction these technologies take and thus ‘the invention of functions and meanings on the part of ordinary users is particularly vibrant at the early stage of the social shaping of a new technology and communication medium’ (Bakardjieva 2005: 6). In this sense, the user is ‘an active contributor to the shaping of technology’ (Bakardjieva 2005: 9). Such socio-centric approaches contend that ‘we are moving from a world of Internet wizards to a world of ordinary people routinely using the Internet as an embedded part of their lives’ (Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002: 6). These approaches are in contrast with techno-determinist accounts that perceive, according to Fuchs (2008: 3), technological systems such as the Internet as ‘the driving force of society … an independent factor outside of society that has linear effects on social systems’. So is it really that ‘technology is society made durable’ (Latour 1991)? Can the contemporary socio-centric accounts of the Internet heal the trauma that society has suffered from the brutal undervaluation of its strength and potential by techno-deterministic positions? What can be argued here is that the social-embeddedness perspective makes a valuable contribution but also encounters challenges in its attempt to foster a better understanding of the roots, drivers and norms of the Internet and Internet-related developments. Although socio-centric approaches can be seen as a progression compared to the longstanding and still often prominent techno-deterministic propositions in accounting

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for the present and future shape and importance of the Internet, they are vulnerable to subjectivity and dependent on interpretative mechanisms that allocate different meanings and social positionings to different instances of technology. At the same time, advocates of social constructivism often take insufficient account of structure’s constraining effects on relevant social groups, and neglect ‘the possibility that there may be dynamics evident in technological change beyond those revealed by studying the immediate needs, interests, problems, and solutions of specific groups and social actors’ (Winner 1993: 370). In the sociocentric theoretical framework, scholars are often trapped by the vision of the ‘social shaping of technology’, leaving unaddressed questions, such as: How can we account for the influence of marketing and promoting strategies on guiding the meanings that social groups assign to technological artefacts? Can experts, such as designers, advertisers, marketers and promoters, launch predetermined technological designs and make them socially acceptable, acquiring the consent and approval of social groups and individuals? Do the dynamics of social interaction(s) preclude the rather ambivalent interplay between structure and social agency and, if not, is it then legitimate to disregard structure and its various forces? Instead of socio-centrism, what appears as more sustainable approach is the idea of ‘mutual shaping of society and ICTs’ that accounts for parameters such as technological conditions, human cognition and responsiveness to technology, unmediated and uncontrollable events and phenomena related to the broader structures, and so on (Fuchs 2008, Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006). One of the contemporary critical Marxist scholars in the media field, Christian Fuchs8, has put forward a theorisation of society that adds complexity and nuance to the idea of socially embedded technology. Fuchs defines society as a dynamic, dialectical system that consists of communicatively interconnected subsystems – economic, political, cultural, technological and natural – each fulfilling a particular function and within which a reflective loop continuously interconnects human actors and structures (2008: 62–63). For Fuchs, technologies such as the Internet constitute an open subsystem (‘technosphere’) that gives rise to artefacts, means, processes and knowledge of a technological nature through the interaction between inner structures and agents, for the satisfaction of particular goals and interests and in interaction with and under the influence of other subsystems, such as the economic, the natural, and so on. Thus, Fuchs states that, in the ‘technosphere’, two dynamic processes take place, those of innovation and technization: New technologies emerge from social processes that reflect dominant interests, power structures, and worldviews – this is the process of innovation. Technologies are applied by humans in social systems in order to achieve certain goals – technology changes society; this is the process of technization. Innovation and 8 Fuchs’ work is presented in more detail in the next section, where the political economy of the Internet is discussed.

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technization are two dynamic processes that constitute the differentiation and reproduction of the technosphere. (Fuchs 2008: 65, italics in original)

Fuchs’ consideration of the Internet as an ever-shifting technosphere sheds light on the coexistence of ‘technological infrastructure and communicating human actors’ in which ‘the technical structure is medium and outcome of human agency; it enables and constrains human activity and thinking and is the result of productive social communication and cooperation processes … [it] is itself produced and permanently reproduced by the human communicative part of the Internet’ (2008: 123). Hence, the need to go beyond techno-deterministic accounts of the Internet, such as those of Dertouzos (1997) and Negroponte (1995), does not mean that society and its ‘ordinary’ forces are the only accountable factors in the emergence and appropriation of technological designs: ‘Design and use mutually shape one another in iterative, social processes’ (Brown and Duguid 1994: 29). On the other hand, as Castells acknowledges: ‘The history of the Internet provides ample evidence that the users, particularly the first thousands of users, were, to a large extent, the producers of the technology’ (2005: 3). The previous chapter offered an overview of the history of the Internet and contended that multiple social and technological forces have played a role in forming what today constitutes the Internet. In closing this discussion, it is imperative to comprehend the grounds on which both techno- and socio-centric accounts of the Internet appear to be theoretically inadequate and rather unhelpful for developing an Internet theory. On the one hand, techno-deterministic accounts of the Internet have been questioned with respect to what they tend to present as a revolutionary positive impact of the Internet and their failure to highlight the somewhat inevitable coexistence of risks and opportunities in technologically mediated forms of individual and societal life. Scholarly accounts that sustain the need to go beyond technological design, innovation and diffusion draw upon the combined presence of the bright and dark sides of the Internet: ‘Because the Internet is both international and interactive, it does not mean necessarily that it encourages only “sweetness and light”’ (Curran 2012b: 10).9 Cultural, media and political theorisations that consider Internet technologies as capable of changing the world order build their foundations on features of the Internet – such as global reach, user-based communicative tools and services, and freedom from censorship and political control – rather than on evidence concerning impact (Curran 2012b). In fact, the existing evidence does not allow us to put forward any grand claim for a one-directional revolutionary impact of the Internet, since the role and effects of the Internet greatly vary from one social context to another: ‘The influence of the internet is filtered through the structures and processes of society’ (Curran 2012b: 9). The alleged transformative effects of the Internet in all domains of the economy and social and political 9 A detailed discussion of the ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ sides of the Internet from a real–life perspective is offered in Chapter 4.

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life must be rationalised and regarded as associated with and dependent on past technological and other developments in order to offer a reality-mirroring account of the Internet and its role now and in the future (Curran 2012b). Such a critical view of techno-determinism hints at the need to place into social context questions concerning not only technology and its impact or lack of impact but also the kind of impact that technology involves. This signifies the need to conceptually and empirically empower the study of people’s use of technology and of associated context(s) and purpose(s) of use, since use largely determines the nuances and characteristics of technology effects, if any. In this regard, technology plays the role that society and its individuals, groups or other societal formations desire it to play, for whatever reasons. It is precisely the defining power of the user over interactive and highly-user-rooted technologies such as the Internet that awards technology with a mosaic of roles and effects, the diversity of which more or less mirrors the diversity of interests, intentions and practices found in society. Hence, simplistic accounts of the revolutionary and purely positive (or, reversely, pure negative) impact of the Internet on citizens’ freedom, participation and welfare are to be problematised by social dynamics and the complex variety of social practices. This position does not completely overturn positive or negative accounts of the Internet and the new opportunities it opens up or the constraints it imposes on individual users and the whole of society. Rather, it places contemplations about Internet technology and its effects within social context so as to regard society, at least partly, as in control of Internet effects: ‘The Internet has the potential to assist the building of a more cohesive, understanding and fairer world. But the mainspring of change will come from society, not the microchip’ (Curran 2012b: 12). On the other hand, one must equally avoid the extreme position that technology is unconditionally shaped by society and broader trends and developments within it or that society independently forms and transforms technology and puts it to work: ‘Technology, action and social context are usefully located within the wider analytic framework of late modernity, a framework that identifies multiple vectors of change’ (Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006: 4). In studying the technologies of email and videotext and their dissimilar histories of adoption and success, Lievrouw concluded that the development and use of new media technologies is ‘a process that involves a constant tension between determination and contingency, that is, between the imposition of order and uncertainty’ (2006: 247, italics in original). This view suggests that the development, course and success of technological innovations are dependent on the dynamics between determination and contingency, ‘design and use, negotiation and consensus, engineering specifications and market demands, channels and content, the material and the social’ (2006: 258). The relationship between society and technology is an everchanging one, shaping a ‘dynamic loop’ of action, influence, reaction and further action and giving value to both structure and agency, to both machinery and humans, and to both context and what lies within context: ‘every system affords a

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certain range of interpretations, and that range is determined by the discourses that have been inscribed into it’ (Agre 2004: 27). Hence, in order to contribute to the ongoing debate between socio- and technocentric approaches to the Internet and its theorisation, we need to address: • the challenge of continuity and change: how the emergence and development of the Internet as a complex set of technologies, services, content and practices is placed in history and is linked to capitalism and globalisation as well as to associated changes in communication, economics, culture, occupation and politics that have taken place at an unprecedented pace over the past few decades; • the multifaceted forms, shapes and effects of the Internet within context: the influence(s) and interdependencies developed between the Internet and the user, as well as between the Internet and the broader context in which it is positioned; • how ‘continuity versus change’ and ‘the interdependencies between the technology of the Internet, the user and the broader system’ can be addressed through theory: what approach is best to position the Internet within ever-shifting historical conditions and make sense of its presence in a historically informed way; and also, what theoretical frameworks are most useful for placing the Internet and its effects within complex socio-technical realities and for evaluating effects in a conceptually and contextually rich manner. Internet studies will continue to encounter the challenge of systematically and consistently replacing deterministic theories about society and technology with propositions that can contribute to the development of an Internet theory in which technology design, human agency and broader structures are all present and meaningful. The political economy of the Internet Debates on the social attributes of the Internet and the argument that social agency matters for the Internet’s historical development and effects go hand in hand with approaches concerning the politics and economics of the Internet – in other words, the political economy of the Internet. Many scholars have argued that to challenge techno-utopian or dystopian prophecies is to understand media technologies on the grounds of a systematic and critical evaluation of their politics and economics: It is important to look not just at the technology but also at the political economy in which it is being developed, to consider what type of organizations and corporations are associated with the present range of media provision and which with the new technologies that are likely to be introduced, what interests they

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The political economy is concerned with ‘the study of how values of all kinds are produced, distributed, exchanged, and consumed (the economic); how power is produced, distributed, exchanged, and exercised (the political); and how these aspects of social life are organised and enacted at any given place and time in history’ (Graham 2007: 227). In other words, it concerns ‘the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources’ (Mosco 2009: 2). In the media field, it addresses questions of ownership, power, plurality and control of media institutions; policy challenges regarding media concentration, pluralism and power distribution; and market interventions that determine media ownership, competition and power. The concepts of commodification of cultural goods, scarcity of resources and production/consumption of mediation (i.e., media content/services) are key in the political economy approach and feed arguments concerning the unequal distribution of material and symbolic resources through and within the media domain. The political economy places media technologies, services and content in an institutional framework and in the broader context of the capitalist system and related structures of production and power distribution (Mosco 1996), and thus aims to understand the ‘relations between the institutions of political economy and the processes of communication’ (Melody 1993: 80).10 The forerunner of this approach in media studies was the study of the role of media organisations and political control in propaganda and the formation of public opinion in the second decade of the twentieth century and amidst the sociopolitical unrest caused by World War I and its long-lasting consequences. Harold Lasswell (1927) and Edward Bernays (1928) contributed significantly to the preliminary study of the political economy of the media by looking at the lessons learnt from the propaganda in the inter-war period: ‘in the propagandists’ work we see an increasing emphasis on the role of communication in the production of values and its link with power. We also see a strong emphasis on the relationship between economic and political power’ (Graham 2007: 231). In the 1940s and 1950s, Harold Innis took a historical-materialist approach to communications, separated communications content from technology and originated the idea of ‘knowledge monopolies’ (1951a, 1951b), through which he examined the historically privileged groups in society (e.g., priests, kings, bureaucrats) and how they monopolised access to and production of knowledge. This theorisation

10 Golding and Murdoch (1991; see also Murdoch and Golding 1974) give an overview of the political economy approach, its foundations, its conceptual drivers and practical implications, and its importance for the study, research and practice of media and communications.

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provided a basis for examining the monopolisation of access to and production of knowledge through the press and the first mass-media technologies of the time. Around the same period, the Frankfurt School and its main representatives, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, coined the term ‘culture industry’ and contended that mass media and other cultural mechanisms are fully controlled by the elites for strengthening the status quo on all levels of social life. The Frankfurt School studied the manipulation of culture and denounced the media for reproducing the dominant order. In this tradition, ‘culture industry’ and ‘ideology’ have been key notions in understanding media power as a reflection of elite power that undermines the power of the individual: ‘Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce’ and to ensure that ‘no mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997: 121). As regards the individual, Adorno and Horkheimer sustained that ‘in the culture industry the individual is an illusion’ and ‘is tolerated only so long as his complete identification with the generality is unquestioned’ (1997: 154).The Frankfurt School was particularly influential in the post-war intellectual work on media institutions, content and effects in the capitalist system. At the same time, it has been subject to a number of critiques. Critiques concern the lack of empirical research, the neglect of audiences’ reception of media content and mass culture more broadly, and the inadequate conception of the individual (the ‘atrophy of the individual’), all of which have led the Frankfurt School theorists to a ‘totalizing and often pessimistic conception of modern societies and the fate of individuals within them’ (Thompson 1990: 106). In the post-war period, when mass media reached a peak of development and influence and near the emergence of new media technologies, a range of scholars, such as Garnham (1986, 1990, 2000), McChesney (2000), Mansell (2004; see also Mansell, Samarajiva and Mahan 2002), Mosco (1996), Schiller H. (1996) and Smythe (1960, 1981), framed many of the key ideas and principles of the modern-day political economy of media and communication. The modern-day political economy of media and communication is systematically concerned with the structures and processes of power in mass and new media and, according to McChesney, revolves around two areas of study: First, it addresses the nature of the relationship between media and communication systems on the one hand and the broader social structure of society. In other words, it examines how media and communication systems and content reinforce, challenge or influence existing class and social relations … Second, the political economy of communication looks specifically at how ownership, support mechanisms (e.g., advertising) and government policies influence media behavior and content. This line of inquiry emphasizes structural factors and the labor process in the production, distribution and consumption of communication. (McChesney 2000: 110)

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Although the modern-day political economy of media and communication can be seen as useful for the study of other than capitalist societies and communication systems, it is predominantly concerned with capitalism-founded, commercial media and communication systems (Mosco 1996). This is not because capitalism is dominating the industries of material production and distribution but rather because the capitalist economic system and its cornerstones of competition, surplus value, and power asymmetry call us to acknowledge that modern media are institutions that need the sort of attention given to industries of material production and distribution. Political economists examine the impact of capital, organisation and control in the media industries on media production, quality and allocation (e.g., Smythe 1960) and argue that large-scale capitalist economic activity and cultural production are inseparable (Williams 1977: 136). Thus, they largely focus on the historical settings of capitalism-run media production and the effects on media consumption (Garnham 1986, 1990, 2000, Mansell 2004: 98). Contemporary political economy studies present media production as a small part of the wider process of cultural production and reproduction and, at the same time, they consider material resources, production and distribution processes critical for media/cultural reproduction: ‘cultural reproduction is still directly governed by these material determinants in the sense that the time and resources available … remain limited’ (Garnham 1986: 12). At the same time, political economists acknowledge that, while the media require material support to function, they are not themselves material and have a relationship of mediation with the material reality they represent (Garnham 1986: 15). Political economists suggest that capital concentration in traditional capitalist industries is accompanied by a rising surplus to be invested in new areas of activity – traditionally outside the market industry – and that the media is one of these new areas. In this sense, the media have a direct economic impact as creators of surplus value through commodity production and exchange, as well as an indirect economic impact through advertising, thus creating surplus value within other sectors of commodity production (Garnham 1986: 18). The upshots involve a take-over of domestic media by multinational companies, the struggle to increase media productivity (with media traditionally opposed to such increases) and the attempt to open up new media markets in order to absorb excess capital (Garnham 1986: 30–31). On the other hand, political economists contend that the media constitute significant ideological and cultural mechanisms. They produce cultural/ideological/symbolic artefacts (e.g., news, information, reality reflections, messages, ideas, values, opinions and emotions) that have unlimited user value (i.e., cannot be destroyed, exhausted or consumed by use) and so it is impossible to attach an exchange value to them (Garnham 1986: 26). At this point, it is worth examining in more depth Herbert Schiller’s work, which largely shaped the modern-day political economy of media and communication. Schiller was one of the Marxian scholars in the post-war era who took a critical perspective on both mass and newly emerging media technologies to support and extend arguments of critical theory from a political economy perspective.

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He persistently argued that dominant capitalist structures give stimulus to technological development so as to use it to strengthen the market processes that govern economy and the politics of the contemporary system (Webster 2006a: Chapter 6). His work highlighted the structural features of the media messages and services distributed to people – features mostly related to economic indicators such as ownership, sources of advertising revenue and audiences’ spending. For Schiller, such indicators cast light on the dominance of the market criteria of buying, selling, trading and making profit and their role in the durability, quality and characteristics of media content and services, in a way explaining the full commodification of media messages and other cultural goods. In this sense, the prevalence of economic forces and the dominance of market rules and processes make media messages, content and services acquire a sellable value, leaving them empty of their symbolic, cultural and immaterialised standing. Schiller contended that the media and their products should be evaluated from a systemic perspective, since they constitute an integral element of the broader capitalist system, lacking an autonomous trajectory and an independent line of effects. Along these lines, Schiller’s work considered the media a driving force of class inequalities, and, accordingly, the material, market value and cost of media content and services a means for sustaining and regenerating such inequalities. Access, usage and benefit inequalities in the media field disadvantage those already deprived of the financial means to afford material goods and services that are offered at a price in the capitalist system. Schiller supported a historical approach, since for him periodicity and recurrences over time are parameters we need to consider to better understand and explain the media, cultural and information phenomena of our times. According to this, a historical perspective enables us to better explain such phenomena within a corporate capitalist context wherein media and information establishments are corporate institutions that are increasingly expanding globally, that have centralised systems of operation and that act in a largely oligopolistic realm in which concentration of power and economies of scale are the norm: ‘to Herbert Schiller this is precisely the point: the capitalist system’s long-established features, its structural constituents and the imperatives on which it operates are the defining elements of the so-called “information society”’ (Webster 2006a: 128). Schiller put together most of these ideas to formulate and develop his ‘cultural imperialism’ theory. This theory suggests that the oligopolistic media companies of America and the West more broadly afford the resources needed for media flows to be transmitted from the Western centre to the (non-capitalist) periphery of the world, thus ensuring not only the circulation of messages favourable to capitalist ideals but also the ideological dominance of the West over the South and East as a means to maintain and further strengthen its economic and political dominance (Webster 2006a: Chapter 6). Being fundamentally rooted in theoretical traditions such as Schiller’s political economy of culture and his ‘cultural imperialism’, contemporary political economy approaches to the media (Calabrese and Sparks 2004, Golding and

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Murdoch 1991, Herman and Chomsky 2002) have increasingly shown an interest in understanding whether the political economy of mediated communication has changed since the advent of the Internet. The overview of the political economy of media and communication above suggests that political economists consider this approach and its theoretical pillars indispensable for the critical study of media and communication: ‘we need to bring together the critical analysis of capital accumulation (including the role of advertising), ideology, audiences/users and alternatives/struggles when we study media communication critically’ (Fuchs in Fuchs and Winseck 2011: 256). On this basis, ‘rather than starting with the technology and asking what is its likely impact’, the political economy of new media technologies ‘starts from the prevailing distribution of power and inequality and asks whose interests will be best served by these new potentialities’ (Wasko, Murdock and Sousa 2011: 5). This is to say that political economists of new or digital media do not treat digital media ‘as a primary level of change but as a new field of struggle dominated by long-standing battles and combatants’ (Wasko, Murdock and Sousa 2011: 5). In addition, the above overview of the field indicates that corporate capitalism is at the core of post-war critical political economy theorists’ study of contemporary and emerging phenomena in the media field: ‘contrary to the notion that capitalism has been transcended, long prevailing imperatives of a market economy remain as determining as ever in the transformations occurring in the technological and informational spheres’ (Schiller H. 1981: xii). Thus, information technologies of the past few decades and their possible evolution in the future have been addressed by political economists mostly through classical political economy questions and areas of scrutiny, such as those of power and control: ‘the central questions concerning the character of, and prospects for, the new information technology are our familiar criteria: for whose benefit and under whose control will it be implemented?’ (Schiller H. 1973: 175). At the same time, political economists with an interest in the study of new media and the Internet are faced with positions that highlight the intellectual and even ideological complexity of the entire political economy perspective. Indicative is Winseck’s (2011) claim for political economies of the media and for four different viewpoints on the study of media and communication: conservative and liberal neoclassical political economy; radical media political economy; Schumpeterian institutional political economy; and the cultural industries school. Regardless of which of these four political economies one favours, what is important to note is that there is an increasing range of arguments that support the plural over the singular and talk about the many political economies of the media (e.g., Graham 2007). Furthermore, political economists with an interest in the Internet are encountering an increasing volume of intellectually and empirically rooted critiques of the traditional field of political economy of communication. For instance, Nicholas Garnham, one of the most well-established political economists in media studies and a representative of the cultural industries school (Winseck 2011: 29), argued in 2011 for the need to switch the focus of political economy. Specifically, he proposed that political economists depart from critiques of mass

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media and mass culture and from market-antimarket debates and take into account changes in the world by looking into the entangled relations between information services and culture and, in this respect, the new modes of production, reproduction and distribution and the associated role of ICTs and the economics of networks. Thus, he appealed for revisiting the political economy of communication on the following grounds: The term ‘political economy’ (PE) has become a euphemism for a vague, crude, and unself-questioning form of Marxism, linked to a gestural and self-satisfied, if often paranoid, radicalism. The story it tells has become drearily familiar. The capitalist mass media are increasingly concentrated on a global scale under the control of corporations and media moguls leading to a decline in cultural diversity, the suppression of progressive political views, and the destruction of local cultures … this general position is both empirically questionable and theoretically and politically dubious. (Garnham 2011: 41)

Garnham (2000) and Mansell (2004) were among the first political economists of the media to be consistently concerned with ‘new media’. These scholars examined the way new media embrace as well as reproduce and strengthen social structures and power hierarchies and the consequences for media users/consumers. The early 2000s were marked by a mushrooming of voices that suggested a new political economy approach to be concerned with ‘how the structuring of global networks and digital information flows and their consumption are informed by predominant and alternative principles, values and power relations’ (Mansell 2004: 99) and with ‘how the process of new media innovation is infused with new relationships of power’ (2004: 101). The political economy of new media/ the Internet has arisen as a component of the political economy of media and communication and it is similarly concerned with ‘the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources’ (Mosco 2009: 2). At the same time, it constitutes a new division that signifies the movement of the political economy tradition from mass or old media to the study of new media and the Internet. According to Mosco, this new tradition has developed four positions: Some political economists have responded by emphasizing continuities between old and new media. For them, old media issues endure in the world of new media. For others, the emphasis is on discontinuities or the new connections that the networked media make possible. Still others have focused a sceptical eye on the promises that new media experts and gurus promote, while some concentrate on newer issues that today’s media raise. (Mosco 2008: 54)

More specifically, the political economy of the Internet has generated both positive and negative accounts of the role of Internet technologies in communication trends, patterns and effects. On the negative side, it is argued that information

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technologies cannot evade major characteristics of mass-media communications, such as restrictions on access to resources; privatisation and commercialisation of information that serves consumption hedonism and undermines public and for-thepublic information and communication flows; and transformation of information into a commodity that aims at consumption, populism, pleasure and profit. Internationalisation and the occurrence of complex and horizontally and vertically expanded business models in the field have offered new means, mechanisms and forms of domination to old powerful media corporations, adding camouflage to protect them from criticisms about power imbalances and reducing regulatory and nation-state-based control exercised over them (Elliott 1986: 109). Furthermore, the democratisation of information production that the Internet has supposedly enabled is often considered unimportant. This is so since what is regarded as important is not who contributes to the process of production (e.g., user-generated content) but who extracts the surplus value from it and has the capital and control to further determine the evolution of the information-and-communication domain and its effects (Elliott 1986: 109). As McChesney and Schiller D. argue (2003: 6): ‘Underlying new communication technology has been a political force - the shift to neoliberal orthodoxy, which relaxed or eliminated barriers to commercial exploitation of media, foreign investment in communication systems, and concentrated media ownership’. The ‘digital capitalism’ wing of the radical political economy of the media (Winseck 2011: 23) views networks, according to Schiller D., as ‘directly generalizing the social and cultural range of the capitalist economy as never before’ (2000: xiv). A similar argument is made by Fuchs (2008: 109–110), who contends that computer networks and the Internet have been the instrumental results of capitalist development and that the social diffusion of the Internet has been possible because of its primary role in the restructuring of capitalism towards a global network capitalist model wherein the accumulation of capital is based on transnational network organisations that rely on technologically mediated global coordination and communication. A significant volume of work has recently provided evidence of the structural foundations and forces that govern the Internet. Many of these works have portrayed the Internet as a platform in which power imbalances in the ownership and distribution of communication resources prevail (McChesney 2007, Murdock and Golding 2004, Schiller D. 2007). In addition, many have argued for the need for a ‘critical political economy’ to challenge triumphant accounts of user empowerment online and to employ new analytical perspectives in the study of the Internet’s impact: ‘Overvaluations of the Internet’s impact follow logically from a foreshortened time perspective coupled with an underdeveloped analysis of the resilience of structural inequalities and the persistence of embedded structures of power’ (Wasko, Murdock and Sousa 2011: 4). For instance, Wasko and Erickson (2009: 383) are critical of the social platform YouTube and argue that it ‘is not shy about helping advertisers exploit users to generate revenue’. Studies of the political economy of Google bring up the issue of commodification of the user (Kang 2009) or commodification of information such as search results, keywords and keyword

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statistics (Lee 2011). Regardless of Garnham’s critique of contemporary political economy work as reliant on a ‘crude and unexamined romantic Marxist rejection of the market per se’ (2011: 42), Fuchs (2011a) employs a critical Marxian perspective in his political economy study of new media platforms11 and argues that services such as Google enjoy capital accumulation and spectacular levels of financial, technological and commercial success thanks to users who not only ‘consume’ online content and services but also produce content for the Internet (i.e., ‘prosumers’). For Fuchs, Google commodifies and exploits prosumers in two ways: On the one hand it indexes user-generated content that is uploaded to the web and thereby acts as a meta-exploiter of all user-generated content producers … On the other hand users employ Google services and … Google generates and stores data about the usage of these services in order to enable targeted advertising. It sells these data to advertising clients, who then provide advertisements that are targeted to the activities, searches, contents and interests of the users of Google services. (Fuchs 2011a)

Fuchs (2011a) contends that Google ‘permanently surveils the online behaviour of the users of Google services’ and economically exploits them through selling user data for profit and benefiting from unpaid labour done by users who produce user-generated content and offer – through usage – saleable data and information for free. On the basis of Marx’s ideas on exploitation of labour, Fuchs argues that the open and decentralised character of the Internet enables the turning of user data and user-generated content into a ‘prosumer commodity’ sold to advertisers, extending the ‘audience commodity’ of the mass media and signifying the ‘total commodification of human creativity’ (2011b: 216). Terranova (2004) discusses the existence of ‘free labour’ on the Internet, which ranges from open-source software created by communities of users and software engineers to user-generated services, communities and content running across cyberspace. She suggests that the capitalist system benefits from a ‘process of channelling of collective labour (even … cultural labour) into monetary flows and its structuration within capitalist business practices’ (2004: 80). In this sense, ‘free labour’ is happily embraced and comfortably exploited and the digital economy heavily relies on it. Similar arguments are echoed in discussions about the exploitation of user labour on Web 2.0 platforms (Halavais 2009: 82, Petersen 2008) and how ‘social 11 Actually, Fuchs is critical of Garnham’s appeal to a non-Marxist political economy of culture, communication and information and, in contrast with Garnham, he suggests that critical studies of media and communication are actually ‘not Marxist enough and should become more Marxist’ (Fuchs in Fuchs and Winseck 2011: 257). According to Fuchs, Marx’s rejection of the market is today more timely than ever before, especially given the global financial crisis of 2007 onwards and since exchange value remains at the heart of today’s free-market economy (Fuchs in Fuchs and Winseck 2011: 257).

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media’ in particular suggest a new capital-accumulation model largely facilitated by techno-optimistic and user-empowerment ideologies for the generation of surplus value (Fuchs in Fuchs and Winseck 2011: 256). Recent work reports that Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 services mostly employ advertising and targeted-advertising business models aiming at profit (e.g., 12 out of 13 Web 2.0/Web 3.0 platforms among the top 50 websites in the US in 2009 were profit oriented and supported by advertising, with Wikipedia being the exception) (Fuchs 2011b: 211). Also, in terms of ownership, the evidence shows a high degree of ownership concentration of Internet services and platforms. For instance, 18 human and corporate legal entities own 98.8 per cent of Google’s common stock and the vast majority of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 platforms have ownership rights on user-generated content and behavioural data, meaning that they can store, analyse, use and sell the content and usage data of their users for profit and capital-accumulation purposes, thus benefiting the few, not the many, and applying stratified access to communication, content and collaboration resources (Fuchs 2011b: 212–213). Such evidence appears particularly challenging, if one considers discourses that stress the socially empowering character of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 platforms and how they can foster a participatory democratic culture. However, one could challenge the above pessimistic accounts of the political economy of the Internet: ‘digital network media are immersed within the market, but they also enable and depend upon forms of expression that are not market driven’ (Winseck 2011: 4). Since such accounts are highly rooted in critical political economy approaches to mass-media communication and culture, let me start with a commentary on those approaches. Schiller H.’s position of ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘one-way’ cultural, media and ideological flows from the West to the periphery seems to ignore the multi-directional nature of communication flows and the often unpredicted route that flows take nowadays, not least because of the integration of Internet communication into daily communication exchanges. Multi-directional and often unpredictable flows are taking place at the level of ideas, information, communication, money, transactions and other circulations and exchanges. Although one cannot argue strongly enough that such rich flows necessarily change the power relations at the individual and collective levels, within a nation and cross-nationally, they make the picture of flow destination and ideological dominance far more complicated than that presented by Schiller H. and other critical political economists. In terms of market revenue, recent figures have shown that there is much more diversity and geographical spread in the media-economic system than radical political economists have argued and that the United States’ media market has been in relative decline (Winseck 2011: 37–38). Besides, Schiller H. and the like seem to disregard the continuous existence of publically available and capitalism-free media content, for example that transmitted through public service

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broadcasting12 or freely circulated media content and services (e.g., free papers and public-library-enabled access to computers and the Internet). In addition, Schiller H.’s concern regarding commercially exploitable and low-quality media content seems to ignore the existence of quality media content that does not necessarily satisfy the corporate capitalist market principles of selling and profit, such as local, community or alternative media content distributed both via mass media and the Internet. The Internet especially has given a new stimulus and breadth to non-commercial and often non-lucrative content and information distributed to millions of people worldwide. New interactive technologies are co-designed and modified by the user (see the discussion on social embeddedness of technology in the previous section) and offer user-generated content while extending mechanisms of control and power beyond those predetermined by the capitalist system. Wikipedia, for instance, has been recorded as being among the top 10 Internet companies worldwide and the fifth most visited website in the world while not accepting advertising and being based on an alternative model of property, the GNU Free Documentation License (Winseck 2011: 12). Wikipedia constitutes a collaborative platform where content production is reliant on the community of volunteer editors and the value of that content is accredited by the millions of Wikipedia users. In other words, Wikipedia constitutes an illustrative example of the power of the ‘social production of information’ (Winseck 2011: 12). If we adopt Castells’ main positions on the ‘network society’ (discussed in detail in the next section), we can argue that interactive information and communication technologies place the entire capitalist system in a situation of fluidity, cooperation and networking that seriously challenges pre-determined forces of inequality and control and restructures class-divided society, making communication a potential force of user empowerment and inequality alleviation. In addition, Benkler’s (2006) network political economy highlights the potential of ‘the social production of information, creativity, pleasure, and the potential of the network media to make valuable contributions to many aspects of life’ (Winseck 2011: 28). From an epistemological perspective, Mansell (2004) has proposed an interdisciplinary and critical approach to the political economy of new media, nourished by traditional political economy arguments on the one hand and, on the other, ideas in the domains of economics of technical change and innovation, Internet studies, information systems and open-source software research. This proposal essentially invites a better understanding of the sites of power in today’s (re)mediated experience, of the extent of commodification of new media and of the consequences for power distribution. According to this proposal, an interdisciplinary and revitalising agenda in the study of the political economy of new media would highlight the notion of power in new media practices, shedding,

12 However, we should not disregard the market challenges and pressures exerted on public service broadcasting nowadays.

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at the same time, a new light on issues of citizenship and democracy, governance and globalisation (Mansell 2004: 102). Regardless of the seeming or actual novelties brought about by the Internet in communication, collaboration, labour and other forms of organisation of social life and given the ‘globalisation’ of political economy research (Mosco 2009: 125), the debates concerning the anti-hegemonic or capitalist features of Internet communication networks are called on to provide new insight into the sorts of questions, critiques and challenges with which mainstream political economy approaches to media and communication are concerned. These debates need to respond to critiques that the political economy tradition is over-concerned with the structures of media production and institutions, neglecting the content, meaning, symbolic forms, consumption and audiences of media (Mansell 2004: 98). Furthermore, they need to address questions about the capitalist framework of study and to seriously consider whether we should carry on studying the media and particularly the Internet within a capitalist political economy system or whether we should also consider other aspects – for example, corporatist aspects (Graham 2007) – of that system. Finally, those who study the Internet from a political economy perspective will have to make a contribution to discussions about the many political economies of media and communication (Graham 2007, Mosco 1996, Winseck 2011), as the case is in other fields, and to the related invitation to re-map the political economy field and its offshoots. Have Internet scholars and especially those who take a political economy approach to the Internet responded to such challenges and criticisms? The work conducted so far demonstrates the potential of this emerging strand of the political economy of media and communication to address such challenges and critiques. However, I dare to say that we are still missing concrete responses, as well as a vision for the future of political economy theory within today’s rapidly evolving domain of technological and communication development. At the same time, those who study the political economy of the Internet have the mission not only to address long-standing issues in the broader political economy of the media arena but also to tackle issues partly arising from and partly being exacerbated by the politics and economics of the Internet, such as ‘control over intellectual property, electronic surveillance, and the significance of a network economy’ (Mosco 2009: 126). Let me close this section with an acknowledgement and a suggestion. We need to acknowledge that, while none of the established political economy approaches can perfectly address outstanding questions and emerging issues in the field of Internet studies, each of the ‘many’ political economies can contribute something towards accounting for the ‘newness’ or ‘oldness’ of Internet-centred institutional frameworks and power structures and thus to the development of an Internet theory. At the same time, the organisational and structural patterns, power relationships and economic dynamics of the Internet must be theorised in a way that will enable us to reflectively and resiliently understand the shapes and effects of power relations and politico-economic dynamics and forces around the Internet

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and throughout its development and evolution. This suggestion resonates with Winseck’s thesis that ‘the fact that so much is changing around us means that we must be open to theoretical revision more than ever’ (2011: 13). Network(s) and the Network Society The third theoretical realm the book is concerned with is Castells’ network society and the conceptualisation of the Internet as a ‘network of networks’. According to Winseck (2011: 27), Castells and Benkler are two representatives of the network political economy school, which is one strand of the Schumpeterian institutional political economy. This school employs the metaphor of ‘network’ to theorise the manifold connections and relationships built inside or via the Internet as a new social structure and their implications for other traditional networks, social structures and relationships. Castells’ network society and its critiques (by van Dijk 1999a, Munro 2000 and Garnham 2004, among others) aim to understand Internet-based networks and the power dynamics developed within and among networks and to address questions such as: Do Internet networks enable agency? Do the Internet and its networks foster a new type of individualism (e.g., ‘networked individualism’)? Do Internet networks lead to the retreat of old-fashioned collectivity and sociability? How can the separation between ‘personal identity’ and ‘network identity’ modify what we have known about identity formation, modification and development? Have new forms of power emerged in the network society, moving us away from sovereign and disciplinary forms of power? But let me begin with an introduction to the ‘network’ concept in this theoretical context. The ‘network’ can be defined as: A system of interlinked nodes that don’t imply full connectivity and a symmetric flow of resources … there can be hubs and centers that are of strategic importance because they have much more direct links from and to other nodes than other nodes; they store and centralize resources and hence also control the flow of resources throughout the network … A network can have different degrees of centrality and hierarchy; there can either be a rather polycentric, pluralistic, and decentralised structure, or there can be central actors that dominate the system. (Fuchs 2008: 113–114)

Scholars have recognised the widespread presence of networks and associated concepts such as ‘networking’, ‘networked’ and so on within Internet-facilitated and Internet-enabled communication, information exchange, and collaboration: ‘The world may never have been freer, but it has also never been so interdependent and interconnected’ (Mulgan cited in van Dijk 2006: 1). The most broadly read and discussed theorisation of Internet networks has been put forward by Manuel Castells and his network society theory: ‘one of the key features of informational society is the networking logic of its basic structure, which explains the use of the

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concept of “network society”’ (Castells 2000a: 21). Castells essentially introduced the importance of the metaphor of ‘network’ in his trilogy The Information Age (1996, 1997b, 1998), in which he demonstrated in an analytically insightful and empirically robust way the importance of information networks. Overall, Castells considers networks as digital media enabled by and constitutive of the new social morphology of society. He contends that ‘dominant functions and processes in the Information Age are increasingly organized’ around networks, as today’s networking logic ‘substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture’ (Castells 2000a: 500). For Castells, networks give substance to ‘a new society’ (Castells 2000b: 693–695), the network society, which is ‘a social structure based on networks operated by information and communication technologies based in microelectronics and digital computer networks that generate, process, and distribute information on the basis of the knowledge accumulated in the nodes of the networks’ (Castells 2005: 7). In Castells’ network society, economic transactions, the overall development of social action and life, and information and communication flows are greatly determined by networks: ‘while we are not in an information society … we are in a networked society’ that essentially constitutes a ‘fundamental, morphological transformation of society’ (Castells 2004). He understands information technologies as indispensable means that have allowed ‘the formation of new forms of social organization and social interaction along electronically based information networks’ (Castells 2000b: 693). In this regard, information technologies enabled – rather than caused – the network society, as, for Castells, the network society emerged out of three historical processes: the information communication revolution, which originated in the 1970s; the restructuring of capitalism that emerged in the 1980s; and the cultural social movements in the 1960s and their aftermath in the 1970s (e.g., feminism, ecologism) (Castells 1997a: 7). Castells’ network society is able to link up or unlink the entire realm of human activity (Castells 1997a: 15). Mediated vision and multimedia content – whether visual, audio or text – are complicatedly blended in the network society to generate ‘virtual reality’ or ‘real virtuality’, where ‘reality itself … is entirely captured, fully immersed in a virtual image setting, in the world of make believe, in which appearances are not just on the screen through which experience is communicated, but they become the experience’ (Castells 2000a: 404). In Castells’ network society, humanity is moving from a ‘community-based structure’ – reliant on culture, on sharing of values and social organisation, on spatial proximity and on a few strong personal, interpersonal and ideological ties – to a ‘network-based structure’ that capitalises on agents’ interests, choices and strategies, on mediated communication and on many weak and volatile ties among network members: ‘Networks were primarily the preserve of private life; centralized hierarchies were the fiefdoms of power and production’ but now ‘the introduction of computerbased information and communication technologies, and particularly the Internet,

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enables networks to deploy their flexibility and adaptability, thus asserting their evolutionary nature’ (Castells 2001: 2) This network-based structure spans both economic relationships (marked by flexibility and globalisation of capital, production and trade) and social ones (where the values of individual freedom and open communication have become paramount). In the economy, the network-based structure enables two parallel and correlated economic forces to take place: economic globalisation, globalised capital and global competition on the one hand, and informationalism and the rising importance of information and knowledge for economic activity on the other. Starting with the notion of a global economy, Castells argues that networks lead to flexibility and globalisation of economic capital, production and trade, establishing individual freedom and open communication in economic and related activities. Paraphrasing McLuhan’s famous saying, he argues that ‘the network is the message’ (Castells 2001) and that today’s computer-based information and communication technologies, and particularly the Internet, have fundamentally transformed (economic) networks from centralised hierarchies of power and production to flexible and adaptable areas of networking, exchange and collaboration (Castells 2001: 2). In a globalised, fluid and networked milieu, corporate centralisation, power and expansion are disappearing in the light of ‘globalisation of competition’, which ‘dissolves the large corporation in a web of multidirectional networks’ (Castells 2000a: 209). This process of economic or business decentralisation, global expansion and fluidity has been called the ‘network enterprise’, indicating that enterprises are establishing strategic alliances with individual corporations or networks of businesses through subcontracting, outsourcing and other means, thus paving the way for ‘linkages between different firms or segments, organized ad hoc for a specific project, and dissolving/ reforming after the task is completed’ (Castells 1997a: 8). Fuchs (2008: 111) has called such a globally spanned economic system a ‘nomadic dynamic system’, as it unceasingly organises itself, its boundaries and its components to shape new and eliminate old links and related networks of collaboration. In this reconceptualisation of the economic field, Castells also aims to cast light on the importance of networks (technological and human) from an informational perspective, namely their importance for the production, dissemination and management of information and knowledge. For Castells, today’s economy is an ‘informational economy’ (Castells 1997a: 7) and at its core one finds economic activity, transactions and labour that are information and network dependent – specifically, dependent on the flows of information and knowledge through ICT and Internet networks. The consequence of this is the fall of the working and capitalist classes and the establishment of a rapidly changing and highly volatile ‘informational capitalism’: ‘Information and communication technologies, combined with accompanying new ways of working and a global reach that is instantaneous, have enabled the economy to escape the doldrums and enter into a new form, informational capitalism’ (Webster 2004c: 135). In informational capitalism, a meritocratically created ‘networked labour’ or ‘informational labour’

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exists consisting of ‘those who are well educated and able to constantly re-educate themselves, and who are articulate, connected, analytical and alert to opportunity’ (Webster 2004c: 135). For Castells, flexibility of employment, mobility of labour and continuous reskilling of the workforce are the norm in informational capitalism, creating individualised relationships between capital and labour and contractual labour conditions that are not subject to ‘collective bargaining’ (Castells 2005: 9). Although for Castells informational capitalism and the related changes in employment and labour result in power devolution, volatility, flexibility and creativity, it is about a new capitalism that is replacing the old propertied, middle and working classes of capitalism and is seeing the rise of the informational class – a new stratum – with informational labour at the top, generic labour in the middle and the excluded underclass at the bottom (Webster 2004c: 135). In addition, his approach suggests a new model of labour in which network-oriented, temporary, volatile and flexible organisation of capital and enterprise foster individualisation of work and elastic forms of labour (e.g., temporary, self-employed, part time) (Castells 1997a: 8–10). In this sense, informational capitalism (and the overall dynamic informational economic model) not only fails to escape from past capitalist exclusionary practices but also, ‘because of its dynamism and creativity … is potentially more exclusionary than the industrial economy’ (Castells 1997a: 7). Castells reflects on the new divisions in the world of informational capitalism and introduces ‘the notion of the emergence of a Fourth World of exclusion’ to suggest that the unskilled labour and the poor, switched-off, technologically low, digitally excluded and thus dis-networked parts of the population are located not just in the Third World (which is increasingly diversified) but also within leading capitalist zones of the West (Castells 1997a: 8). A similar argument is made by Fuchs, whose critical-theory reflection on Castells’ ‘informational capitalism’ and ‘network enterprise’ points out the relentless antagonism between competition and cooperation and between the informational commodity economy and the informational gift economy. For Fuchs, in the informational gift economy class struggles are highly involved and the old capitalist relations of production often subsume gift-economy principles and information production practices for the sake of capital accumulation (Fuchs 2008: 209–212). In the domain of social relationships, Castells contends that the density, flexibility, structure and organisation of computer networks (e.g., newsgroups, mailing lists, usenets, hyperlinking) have led to ‘networked individualism’ becoming the dominant form of sociability nowadays (Castells 2001: 131). On the one hand, he considers individualism the dominant culture of our times, having been encouraged by broader socio-structural and historical changes. On the other hand, he argues that, unlike the mass distribution of a one-way message from one to many in the industrial society, the communication system of the network society fosters ‘horizontal networks of interactive communication that connect local and global in chosen time’ (Castells 2007: 246). In this sense, today’s technologically mediated networks foster sociability that is built ‘along selfselected communication networks, on or off depending on the needs and moods

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of each individual’ and that creates ‘a society of networked individuals’ (Castells 2005: 12). Essentially, ‘networked individualism’ signifies the flexible expression of sociability and low levels of commitment that mark today’s social relationships. This suggests a change from the past, but not a completely new and previously unseen reality of social relations: whereas physical spatial communities once shaped social organisation, processes of social organisation (based on common interests) are now shaping online, Internet-based networks. Other scholars have also delved into the concept of ‘networked individualism’ and its implications for community building and sociability more broadly (Rainie and Wellman 2012, Wellman 2001, 2002, Wellman et al. 2003). Wellman has suggested that the Internet allows people to be connected ‘as individuals rather than being rooted in the home bases of work unit and household. Individuals switch rapidly between their social networks. Each person separately operates his networks to obtain information, collaboration, orders, support, sociability, and a sense of belonging’ (2002: 16). For Wellman, this entails that each person runs a personal community network and functions as ‘a switchboard, between ties and networks’ (Wellman et al. 2003). Networked individualism challenges the foundations of traditional community-centred and collective-oriented networks, as the connection is to the individual, not to the place, which raises questions around Internet users’ sociability in general and the role of the Internet in community formation and evolvement in particular: ‘The developing personalization, wireless portability, and ubiquitous connectivity of the Internet all facilitate networked individualism as the basis of community … It is I-alone that is reachable wherever I am: at a home, hotel, office, highway, or shopping center. The person has become the portal’ (Wellman et al. 2003). Rainie and Wellman (2012) call networked individualism an ‘operating system’ because it is personal (with the individual being at the autonomous centre), for multiple users (with people interacting with numerous diverse others) and for multithreaded multitasking (as people do several things and more or less simultaneously). For Rainie and Wellman, the social operating system of networked individualism offers new efficiencies and affordances for people to meet their needs and solve their problems (2012: 9).13 Hence, the notion of networked individualism underscores the spread of target-oriented online networks of communication and action that combine the following characteristics: sharing of interests, purposes and goals rather than values and identities; target- and purpose-dependent networking and action; lack of community spirit and collective culture; and creation of weak links that foster

13 Gurstein (2011) critiques ‘networked individualism’ from a community informatics perspective. He argues that such a concept is profoundly pessimistic and depoliticising as it ignores the possibilities for community-based resistance and action in the Information Society. He does not advocate the dominance of personalisation and individualisation in social networks and rather considers that digital media enable communities networked both internally (as community networks) and externally (as networked communities).

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bridging rather than bonding social capital.14 The devolution of human relationships from the level of tightly bonded, traditional and proximity-enabled communities is especially demonstrated through Castells’ analysis of the way the network society has fundamentally changed the material (and symbolic) foundations of life – that is, space and time: ‘the network society, as the dominant social structure emerging in the Information Age, is organized around new forms of time and space: timeless time, the space of flows’ (Castells 1997a: 12).15 For Castells, timeless time and space of flows essentially enable the pervasive logic of global and fluid networks to spread. Time, space and place are subjects of a broader discussion of continuity and change in relation to electronic and online media (networks). This discussion involves concepts such as ‘distantiation’, ‘time-space compression’, ‘placelessness’, ‘Internet time’, ‘virtual space’, ‘mediated time and space’ and ‘temporal simultaneity’. Before electronic communication, people were bound by oral communication and physical travel, whereas today they are able to cross and adjust temporal and spatial distances largely through the usage of electronic media and communications. Space-time compression (Harvey 1990, 1993), compression of the world into a single place (Robertson 1992: 6) and stretching of social relations across distance – namely ‘action at distance’ (Giddens 1994: 4), no sense of place (Meyrowitz 1985) and placelessness (Relph 1976) – are some of the ideas employed in scholarship to unpack the impact of electronic communications on time, space and place. Thompson (1995: 21) argued that ‘any process of symbolic exchange generally involves the detachment of a symbolic form from its context of production: it is distanced from this context, both spatially and temporally, and re-embedded in new contexts which may be located at different times and places’. Waters (1995: 58) contended that new communication technologies have encouraged transglobal social relationships to become more intense and robust rather than stretched. Recently, Fuchs (2008: 111) argued that ICTs ‘dissolve temporal and spatial distances’ and considered this the driving force of today’s post-Fordist global economy as well as a characteristic of globalisation more broadly: ‘Globalisation can generally be defined as the stretching of social relationships, that is, communication networks, in space-time, as a result, social relationships can be maintained across larger temporal and spatial distances’ (Fuchs 2008: 111). In essence, this discussion poses the question of whether digital technologies diminish to insignificance the concepts of time and space or subjective experiences of them. On the one hand, scholars involve the notion of ‘mediated time and space’ in digital communication, putting forward the argument of temporal 14 See Granovetter (1983) on the theorisation of weak versus strong social ties and Putnam (2000) on the bonding and bridging of social capital. 15 For Castells, ‘timeless time’ and ‘space of flows’ create a culture in the network society of ‘real virtuality’. For a definition of ‘real virtuality’, read Castells (2000a: 404); see also above.

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simultaneity and non-significance of space in the digital era. On the other hand, temporal shrinking, permeable spatial boundaries and the establishment of new electronic spaces draw a complex picture of mediated space-time experiences. Different media forms and usages give rise to divergent perceptions of distance, duration and mobility in multiple contexts, thus mediating, remediating, defining and negotiating variable understandings and experiences of time and space (Tsatsou 2009). This complex picture challenges McLuhan’s (1964: 3–4) claim that electronic media have ‘extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time’, thus leading people to ‘live mythically and integrally’ in a global village. The Internet influences the dynamics of everyday life and changes ‘time, people’s perceptions of time, and the way time is organised’ (Lee and Liebenau 2000: 44). Contact between distant locations can take place on the Internet instantly. Internet activities, such as e-mail, alter the dimension of time in work and in social interaction, releasing rigid time-patterns in the organisation of work and other everyday life activities. Industrial settings of work and living are now being revised by flexible and shifting post-industrialist modes of time management. In weakening time constraints, the Internet offers people a new virtual reality that ‘allows future or inexperienced experiences to be experienced’ (Lee and Liebenau 2000: 50) and some even argue that the Internet ‘allows simulation of the future’ (2000: 50). Indicative examples are Internet spaces (such as Second Life), social networking sites and interactive online games, as these allow shifts of conventional offline temporal boundaries through fitting into these boundaries activities that are located in ‘virtual’ temporal frameworks, thus challenging users’ identities and life timeframes. Likewise, electronic media have boosted the emergence of electronic spaces, with the latter embodying ‘the magical liveness of a here-and-there, nowand-then’ (Scannell 1996: 173). For example, broadcasting has offered humans the ‘possibility of being in two places, two times, at once’, so that ‘the world returns for us in its wholeness’ (Scannell 1996: 172). With the Internet, new virtual spaces have signalled further transformations or even debasement of conventionally perceived ‘real’ spaces. In the age of mobile Internet and other mobile means of communication, the ‘reconstruction of space’ (Ling and Campbell 2009) and a new material organisation independent of physical proximity (Castells et al. 2006: 171–178) obtain significance. Against the uncritical exposition of extreme theses regarding the collapse of temporal differences and the elimination of spatial distances, one should argue in favour of a moderate view wherein time and space continue to matter and electronic media play a complex role in mediating and restructuring concepts and experiences of time and space. It is important to consider mediated social relationships as prominent and to understand that electronic media and communications tremendously facilitate them. At the same time, nowadays time and space are both stretched and compressed. In this sense, Giddens’ distantiation should not be abandoned, as the creation of new spaces through media and communications can lead to new places in various units of time. This invites us

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to a ‘reconceptualisation’ of time and space (Tsatsou 2009) so as to challenge the arguments concerning temporal simultaneity and insignificance of space and to acknowledge that the Internet in particular gives rise to divergent perceptions of distance, duration and mobility in multiple contexts, and mediates, remediates, defines and negotiates variable understandings and experiences of time and space. Regarding the dimension of ‘time’ in the network society, Castells (2000a) has argued that technologically mediated networks of communication and relationship building do not encounter the time barriers of the past or those imposed by biological or clock time. This is because computer networks enable instantaneous, retrieved and future-managed communication at various levels and across distances in an attempt to eliminate time sequences ordered by past, present and future references. They break the condition of rhythmicity (Castells 2000a: 497); they create a ‘no-time mental landscape’ (2000a: 493) and ‘systemic perturbation’ (2000a: 494); and, thus, they allow time flexibility, discontinuity, instantaneity and spontaneity in communication (Webster 2006a: 109). Regarding space and place, Castells’ ‘space of flows’ prevails over the logic of the ‘space of places’ and advocates that diverse, quickly shaped, flowing and changing localities (e.g., cities) are integrated into one or more networks, signifying ‘geographical discontinuity’ (2000a: 422) and enabling information flows and related processes rather than the existence of a place. Along these lines, Castells thinks of space as the ‘material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows’ (1997a: 14) and as a signifier of the way that networks enable disintegration of distances through the continuous, complex flow of whatever can flow in human communication and exchange. In this way, geography and its constraints become less of an issue for communication, while distance itself becomes subjected to networks of communication that can redefine and refine the ideas of distance and location: ‘networks of discontiguous places in interaction with a diverse range of localities are the components of the new sociospatial structure’ (Castells 2000b: 697).16 The space of flows is often determined by forces of domination, while alternative forms of communication (e.g., social movements) can create flows that challenge the domination of particular social networks, communication patterns and related interests and thus subvert well-established space(s) of flows (Castells 1997a: 14–15). Hence, for Castells, the network society creates new foundations of conflict for the organisation and development of communication in which the space of flows involves dominant interests and power relationships while also inviting active individuals and groups to indulge in a search for cultural codes and

16 Borrowing from Castells’ ‘space of flows’ and ‘timeless time’, Fuchs argues about the emergence of ‘transnational/global social spaces in economy, polity, and culture’ (2008: 113) that enable transnational flows of ideas, communication, capital, power and so on, thus transforming previous formations of space and place and associated conceptions and experiences of time.

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to revisit their identity so as to amalgamate new forms of network-enabled and flow-saturated relationships that overcome old temporal and spatial boundaries. This last point takes us back to the political economy features of Castells’ network society and essentially poses the following question: Does the movement from the industry society to the network society challenge the power asymmetries that, according to the political economy tradition, capitalism fosters? Castells does not overlook the edifice of capitalism; on the contrary, he contends that the network society is a capitalist society and that ‘we live more than ever in a capitalist world’ (1997a: 15). At the same time, he contends that the ‘dynamic, open-ended, flexible, potentially able to expand endlessly, without rupture’ architecture of networks transforms power relationships in the sense that ‘the power of flows in the networks prevails over the flows of power’ (1997a: 15). This means that global flows of material, cultural and other resources within and across dynamic, open-ended and multi-faceted networks pose challenges for the economic power of capitalist forces and the political power of state authorities alike. On the one hand, uncontrollable financial flows can challenge the power of dominant capitalist forces. On the other hand, global flows of information, wealth and crime challenge state sovereignty and oblige states to band together in multilateral governance schemes.17 Nevertheless, Castells acknowledges that ‘power in the traditional sense still exists: capitalists over workers, men over women, state apparatuses still torture bodies and silence minds around the world’ (1997a: 15). He also concedes that the network society does not include everyone: ‘In fact, in this early 21st century, it excludes most of humankind, although all of humankind is affected by its logic, and by the power relationships that interact in the global networks of social organization’ (2005: 5). Nevertheless, there is a degree of positive difference made by highly flexible and barely controllable flows of information and knowledge across the world that challenge previously unquestionable power structures and asymmetries. Castells’ network society has inspired much of the scholarly work in this area18 and has provoked powerful critiques and counter-propositions. For instance, given the long history of the concept of ‘network’, there are voices that problematise the newness or novelty of the ‘network society’ and argue that it constitutes an evolving model of computer-mediated communication rather than a new structure 17 Castells discusses the demise of ‘state sovereignty’ (1997b, 2000b) and argues that nation-states will not disappear ‘but their existence as power apparatuses is profoundly transformed, as they are either bypassed or rearranged in networks of shared sovereignty formed by national governments, supranational institutions, co-national institutions … regional governments, local governments, and NGOs, all inter-acting in a negotiated process of decision making’ (2000b: 694). In addition, he argues that market pressures toward deregulation reduce the ability of the nation state to intervene and regulate, while crises of political legitimacy undermine the state’s authority over citizens (Castells 2007). 18 It is worth mentioning Terranova’s (2004) study of the ‘network culture’, which places emphasis on structure over content and audience.

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of non-spatial communication. One of the key scholarly figures in the network society scholarship and one of Castells’ critics is Jan van Dijk. Van Dijk has defined the network society as ‘a social formation with an infrastructure of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels (individual, group/organizational and societal). Increasingly, these networks link all units or parts of this formation (individuals, groups and organizations)’ (2006: 20). For van Dijk, the network society entails social networks of face-to-face communication gradually being replaced or supplemented by media networks (2006: 240). In this sense, networks shape the prime mode of organisation and the most prominent structures of modern society, constituting causal factors of organisational and structural change. At the same time, van Dijk is critical of Castells and contends that networks do not constitute the entire substance of today’s society, as, according to van Dijk, Castells has exaggeratingly argued (2006: 240). This means that networks ‘are not (increasingly) the content of this society, as they are for Castells … Society still consists of individuals, groups/pairs and organizations. Of course they form external and internal relations, but these relations do not equal society’ (van Dijk 1999a: 133). Furthermore, van Dijk places networks back into time and place and argues that media networks are contextually dependent, embedded in and transformative of time and place and also connected to organic reality – media/virtual networks are not autonomous: ‘media networks cannot exist without their resources in technology, economy, society and human minds, including neural networks’ (van Dijk, 1999a: 134). Finally, he considers Castells’ theory ‘one-dimensional’, as for him it does not problematise network structure and associated internal conflicts: ‘internal conflicts in the design and use of network structure or “logic” are absent in Castells’ analysis. He neglects the design dimension of networks … and does not pay sufficient attention to the social struggles over networks’ (van Dijk 1999a: 135, italics in original). According to this critique, social struggles over networks take place within networks and involve social actors positioned inside networks, while being of concern to those excluded from networks. Internal conflicts and struggles over the design and identity (or identities) of networks seriously challenge Castells’ view of a self-expanding network logic: ‘the prevailing logic of dominant, global networks is so pervasive and so penetrating that the only way out of their domination appears to be out of these networks, and to reconstruct meaning on the basis of an entirely distinct system of values and beliefs’ (Castells 1998: 351). Others have also criticised Castells’ theorisation while making their own contributions to the network society theory. Munro’s work (2000) has aimed to demonstrate that little explanation has been given of power relations in the network society or of the non-disciplinary forms of power emerging with the development of new information technologies (‘network power’). For Munro, ‘network power’ suggests not the elimination of ‘power’ but rather the restructuring of power relations, structures and techniques that gradually move away from the past techniques of hierarchical observation and the imposition of disciplinary exercises

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(Foucault’s ‘disciplinary power’). Munro suggests that information technology drives ‘the emergence of new forms of resistance, social divisions based around access to information and institutions almost entirely constituted by information technologies’ (2000: 689). This is to say that, besides the liberating potential of media/online networks, ‘network power’ suggests the control of information flows within and among media/online networks and the struggle to access flows, thus undermining the democratic, open, transparent and accessible character of networks. In a way, Munro’s ‘network power’ challenges Castells’ network society and invites deeper thinking on power and the ‘political’ elements of the network society. Other critiques propose a stronger grounding in political economy. They talk about ‘global network capitalism’ rather than the ‘network society’ and emphasise the complexity of antagonism, resistance, disparity, dynamism and transnationalism in network capitalism: ‘Global network capitalism is an antagonistic system; transnational networks are both spaces of domination and spaces of potential liberation from domination’ (Fuchs 2007: 49). Although Castells’ work is acclaimed as a conceptually deep and empirically rich analysis of the network society in the information age and of its ramifications (e.g., informational capitalism, networked or informational labour), political economists find Castells’ account relatively problematic as regards the ‘underestimation of the salience of class inequalities, the relation between continuity and change in his arguments, and ambiguities as to what he understands by information’ (Webster 2006a: 123). Such critiques support the continuing existence of a capitalist class and the importance of capital ownership for the acquisition of information skills, the shaping of social stratification and the formation of informational labour in particular. Thus, they are critical of Castells’ emphasis on the role of technology in the emergence of the network society and the rise of an informational mode of development in the economy (Garnham 1998, 2004, Webster 2006a: 123). For such critics, Castells presents networks as dominant actors and driving forces of today’s society and underestimates the value of human actors and other non-network elements of social organisation.19 Castells’ contention about ‘the autonomous dynamics of technological discovery and diffusion’ (2000a: 59) suggests, according to critics, that economic development in the regime of ‘informational capitalism’ is autonomous and driven by technology, whereas the economic capitalist forces and the interest of capital accumulation still determine the informational economy: ‘the informational mode of development is developed for and put at the service of a set of property relations and the goal of accumulation, not vice versa’ (Garnham 2004: 174).

19 This is quite close to van Dijk’s critique of the negligence of ‘internal conflicts in networks’ in Castells’ work (see above) and his view that Castells adopts an instrumental approach to technology (i.e., technology as a force) that dissociates technology from the broader context and presents it as producing autonomous development (van Dijk 1999a: 136).

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Others tone down such criticisms, considering that Castells’ theorisation does not entirely neglect the value of human actors and social structures that predate networks (Fuchs 2008: 102–103). Castells himself dismisses technological determinism and suggests that 'the dilemma of technological determinism is probably a false problem' (1996: 5). Also, as said above, Castells contends that the network society is deeply capitalist and, in this sense, exclusionary mechanisms, inequalities and power asymmetries are still very much in place. For Castells, however, it is a different capitalism, a capitalism wherein ‘class’ and ‘class inequalities’ are to be defined differently and wherein power relationships are determined by flows of knowledge and information that take place in dynamic, flexible and ever-expanding networks. It is precisely those flows of knowledge and information that determine production, distribution and consumption processes and make ‘the power of flows in the networks’ prevail ‘over the flows of power’ (Castells 1997a: 15). It is precisely the power of flows in the new media space that allows ‘the structural bias of this space’ to be ‘diminished every day by the new social practices of communication’ (Castells 2007: 258), even though the battle between capitalist forces and grassroots for power and domination continues. In much of his latest work, Castells attempts to address some of the criticisms, especially those that come from political economists and that stress the ‘political’ factor in the network society. In his recent work he makes explicit reference to the capitalist class and associated power forces while being sceptical of the allpervasive power of the capitalist class, which critical political economists argue about: ‘the capitalist class, it does have some power, but not power over everyone or everything: It is highly dependent on both the autonomous dynamics of global markets and on the decisions of governments in terms of regulations and policies’ (Castells 2011: 775). At the same time, he clarifies the lines along which he theorises power in the network society and suggests that, compared to the past, power relations are taking place in new forms and with new actors. Specifically, he identifies four distinct catergories of power in the network society – networking power, network power, networked power and network-making power – and considers that most forms of power follow the logic of network-making power, which depends on two mechanisms: (a) the ability to constitute network(s) and to program/reprogram the network(s) in terms of the goals assigned to the network; and (b) the ability to connect and ensure the cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources while fending off competition from other networks by setting up strategic cooperation. (Castells 2011: 776)

Essentially, in the above excerpt Castells reiterates that power and counterpower coexist in the network society and regards both as taking place via networks and being dependent on the two mechanisms of network-making power: ‘both the dynamics of domination and the resistance to domination rely on network formation and network strategies of offense and defence, either by forming

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separate networks and/or reforming existing networks’ (2011: 779). This argument echoes Castells’ faith in the role of communication in the formation and exercise of power and acknowledges that Internet and other horizontal digital-communication networks that foster ‘mass self-communication’20 affect the dynamics of the four facets of power and relevant power relations among global/local, dynamic, flexible and multidimensional networks in all realms of human activity (2011: 785). In concluding the discussion of Castells’ theorisation of the network society and its critics, I would like to point out that existing scholarship is yet to fully address how emerging and highly fluid and changing Internet-enabled networks position the individual in relation to traditional networks and community living, as well as in relation to broader social structures. In this regard, I consider that future scholarship should continue to examine questions such as: Are today’s networks a result of pure choice and strategic action, as argued by Castells (2001: 127), empowering social actors and creating occurrences of alternative or counteractivism? Are traditional class-based power relations, mostly emphasised by political economists and critical scholars, retreating in the network society and are new forms of power turning attention away from disciplinary power? Do the Internet and its networks enable the evolution of social relationships and ‘the rise of individualism’ (Castells 2001: 128), severely undermining old-fashioned collectivism and sociability? Is there a conflict between networks and identities and, if so, does this conflict appear inside networks and over their design and identity (or identities) while being of concern to those excluded from networks, as van Dijk (1999a) suggests? The systematic examination of such questions is critically important for the formulation of an Internet theory capable of facilitating the understanding of the Internet and its role in how external social and network structures and associated power dynamics obtain new shapes and evolve over time, also bringing together some of the problematic issues identified in the two first theoretical realms discussed in this chapter. Concluding Remarks: Key Concepts for Crafting an Internet Theory This chapter presented the first focus area of the book: aspects of the theoretical study of the Internet and theory-grounded perspectives on the processes and factors that shape the Internet and determine its multi-layered, complex and often controversial role in past, present and future terms. The first section introduced the idea of ‘theorisation’ and suggested that the study of the Internet is currently under-theorised given that much emphasis is placed on empirical assessments of Internet technologies and their effects on individual users and on society as a whole. It argued for the value of theory and for multiple sources of theorisation, and contended that personal reflections 20 For a definition of ‘self mass-communication’, see footnote 6 in Chapter 4.

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as well as complex ideas can produce conceptual frameworks for the better understanding of the Internet. It also contended that theory can allow scholars to comprehend the complexity of the Internet and the time, space and cognitive relativity of knowledge in this area and supported the pursuit of theoretically informed empirical study of the Internet. This section paved the way for a farfrom-exhaustive discussion of three theoretical strands of the study of the Internet: socio- versus techno-determinism, the political economy of the Internet and the network society. These theoretical strands either pre-dated the Internet (i.e., socioversus techno-determinism, political economy) or emerged alongside and were steered by the development of the Internet (i.e., network society) and each was discussed at some length. The discussion of the first theoretical strand shed light on debates between techno-determinists (e.g., Dertouzos, McLuhan, Negroponte, Rogers) and scholars who advocate the social embeddedness of the Internet (e.g., domestication studies, everyday life studies). It illustrated that considerations of the foundations of the Internet are highly rooted in ‘agency versus structure’ discourses and in historical accounts of technology. It was argued that both socio- and techno-deterministic accounts make some contribution to the study of the Internet but that their monolithic character prevents them from enabling a better understanding of the roots, drivers and norms of the Internet and of Internet-related phenomena. This discussion favoured theoretical approaches that support the mutual shaping of technology and society and concluded with reflections on why Internet studies should move further away from deterministic accounts of the Internet and acknowledge that technology design, human agency and broader structures all matter. At the same time, it stressed that much work is yet to be done in order to develop through theory balanced accounts of ‘continuity versus change’ and of ‘the relationship between the technology of the Internet, the user and the broader system’. The second theoretical realm discussed in this chapter was the political economy of the media, with the emphasis placed on works on the political economy of the Internet (by Fuchs, Garnham, Graham, Mansell, Mosco, Winseck and others). This section highlighted the debates between those who note the unbiased and egalitarian nature of the Internet and those who point to the persistence of capitalist power and domination in cyberspace. It concluded with a brief account of the political economies of the Internet and associated agency and power issues. While none of the political economies discussed in this chapter can perfectly address outstanding questions and emerging issues in the study of the Internet, each can contribute something to the assessment of the ‘newness’ or ‘oldness’ of institutional frameworks and power structures surrounding the Internet. At the same time, it was argued that political economy approaches should theoretically reflect on the changes in organisational and structural patterns, power relationships and economic dynamics of concern to the Internet so as to reflectively and resiliently understand the different roles that power relations and politico-economic forces can play at different times in the Internet’s development and evolution.

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Finally, Castells’ network society and its critiques (by Dijk, Garnham, Munro, Webster and others) were presented in connection with the discussions of socioversus techno-determinism and the political economy of the Internet. This theoretical realm can allow us to make sense of how the Internet is understood as a network of networks; of what this means for social structures, economics, labour, culture and sociability; and of what the network society’s implications are for agency, individualism, identity and power. The network society theorisation poses questions on agency, ideology and power to be tackled in the future. Also, it invites us to comprehend how the emerging and highly fluid Internet-facilitated networks position the individual in relation to traditional forms of networks and communities as well as in relation to broader social structures and well-established power forces and other dynamics. The discussion of these theoretical strands acknowledges their profound implications for theorising the Internet and for proposing an Internet theory that enables an understanding of the deeper structures and dynamics of the Internet and an evaluation of its role in the past, present and future – here and there, here and everywhere. A future Internet theory should be able to account for past, ongoing and future (though hypothetical) conceptual and contextual challenges in the study of the Internet so as to allow scholars, among other interested parties, not only to better understand the Internet as such but also – and more importantly, I would say – to understand its intercourse with a multi-layered milieu of actors, conditions and rulings as well as the range of phenomena that emerge either within the Internet domain or in association with and under the influence of the Internet. This is to say that an Internet theory must address challenges at the conceptual and contextual levels in the above-discussed three realms of theorisation – among others – and must construct the sort of theoretical edifice that bridges theoretical manifestos with real-life Internet phenomena. In this sense, an Internet theory must provide a theoretical edifice that enables us to revisit existing evidence on the multiple realities of the Internet as well as popular forecasts about the future of the Internet and its realities. For the purpose of offering some concluding reflections, I point here to three concepts and associated questions that stand, in one way or another, at the core of arguments, debates and discourses in all three theoretical fields and that should constitute the focus of whatever efforts to craft an Internet theory arise in the future: • Agency (versus structure), namely the concept of agency and the question of whether agency derives from social or systemic/structural actors and factors. Theoretical perspectives on the social shaping of the Internet versus those that suggest a powerful and socially autonomous course of action for the Internet largely constitute a reflection of the broader ‘agency versus structure’ area of theorisation. Theory is yet to insightfully address the relationship between the technology of the Internet, the user and the broader system in a way that positions the Internet within ever-shifting historical conditions and complex socio-technical realities and evaluates

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the Internet’s ‘nature’ and effects in a conceptually and contextually rich manner. The political economy of the media has challenged techno-utopian prophecies and calls for an understanding of media technologies on the grounds of systematic and critical analyses of the politics and economics of the media. In this respect, political economists propose the analysis of the organisational and structural patterns, power relationships and economic dynamics of media technologies, largely problematising techno-celebratory accounts of user empowerment on the Internet. Techno-determinism is a topic of debate and controversy for the ‘network society’ scholarship as well, since the ‘network society’ notion invites scholars to address whether Internet networks are powerful and, in this respect, to consider the position of the social actor in the creation and control of networks. This area of theorisation contrasts Castells’ idea of the pervasive logic and autonomous course of action of technological networks with political economists’ focus on human actors, on capitalist organisation of activity and on what they regard as dominant agency and control exerted by capitalist elites over the Internet. • Power relationships and dynamics, namely the concept of power and the questions of who owns power in relation to the Internet and what are the associated implications for the Internet’s development and effects. Socioversus techno-deterministic debates are inevitably linked to questions of power, power relations and power dynamics. Techno- and sociodeterministic accounts of the Internet pose questions about power relations in their attempt to disentangle the dynamics between the Internet and the user and between the Internet and the broader systemic milieu, and thus to identify powerful actors and forces in place. Power is at the core of the political economy of the Internet as well, since this perspective assesses power relations that drive the production, distribution and consumption of Internet resources. This perspective accommodates relentless debates on ownership, power, plurality and control of the media in general and the Internet in particular and tackles questions on concentration, pluralism, competition and power distribution. Political economists and the theoretical disputes inside the political economy field make it rather obvious that power relations and dynamics around the Internet must be theorised in a way that will reflectively and resiliently understand the varied roles that political and economic dynamics and forces can play in the Internet’s development and evolution. Lastly, in the network society domain, the question revolves around whether new forms and types of power have emerged in the network society. On the one hand, Castells argues about the coexistence of power and counter-power in the network society. He suggests that both power and counter-power are enacted via networks and are dependent on them and he stresses the power-related role of network-making mechanisms in particular. His stance contrasts with that of theorists – mostly political economists – who point to the sustenance of a powerful capitalist class that

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undermines the autonomous course of action of technological networks and maintains traditional class-based power relations so as to continue to determine patterns of social organisation. • Identity formation, modification and development, namely the concept of identity and the question of whether the Internet has an identity and, accordingly, the Internet’s implications for user identity. Debates over the social embeddedness of the Internet constitute the foundations of discussions concerning user identity, the identity of the Internet itself and associated matters of identity modification and development. The ‘social shaping of technology’ thesis points to social identities and their inscription in the design and appropriation of technology, while techno-deterministic accounts examine the social effects of technology and particularly the influence of Internet technology on people’s identities, so that they can make sense of Internet ‘effects’ on user behaviours and practices. Identity issues are not immediately visible in political economy debates over the Internet, but they are inherently present, as the separation between the elites and the ‘others’ – the powerful and the powerless, those in control and those controlled – strongly involves identity, with identity mostly defined alongside socio-economic divisions and inequalities. Finally, in the network society theory, the Internet is viewed as a new structure with implications for traditional networks and conventional social structures and relationships. It poses questions about the separation of ‘personal’ and ‘network’ identity and associated conflicts, disparities and struggles. A significant portion of the debates in this theoretical realm is concerned with sociability and a new type of individualism, ‘networked individualism’, and the subsequent retreat of traditional communities and collective identity formations. Such debates invite future work to examine the ways in which highly fluid Internet-facilitated networks position the individual and his/her identity in relation to traditional networks and community frameworks as well as in relation to broader social structures. The above three concepts and associated questions, all raised and debated in the three realms of theoretical work, not only suggest some conceptual pillars for crafting an Internet theory in the future but also point to lessons for the future of the study of the Internet in general. A first lesson is that the under-emphasis on theory in the study of the Internet deprives empirically grounded work of a conceptually rich exploration and intellectually ‘protected’ understanding of the Internet and related phenomena. The second lesson relates to the interdependency between theory and empirical study and demonstrates that the above three concepts (among others) are in need of empirical evidence and continuous ‘testing’ so as to refine their premises and shape future theorisations in the study of the Internet. The interplay between theory and empirical study will be more explicitly shown in Chapter 4, wherein the Internet and its ‘real-life’ risks and opportunities in today’s complex and rapidly evolving society are discussed on the basis of

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existing empirical study and evidence. Finally, a third lesson to be drawn is that each of the three concepts proposed for crafting an Internet theory potentially has more than one meanings, can be interpreted in multiple ways and can be studied from a number of angles, essentially signifying the need for any attempt to craft an Internet theory to have an open approach to these concepts, recognising their multi-faceted and controversial character. It is needless to reiterate that this chapter offers a far-from-exhaustive account of theorisations of the Internet. So let me just name a selection of other popular theories that often frame empirical studies of Internet phenomena: the public sphere and theorisations around the existence and characteristics of an online public sphere; the community and theorisations concerning virtual communities and virtual worlds;21 media audience theories and their shift from mass to new media audiences (or users); and globalisation and globalised communication in the age of the Internet. Although this chapter has not discussed these and other popular theories in relation to the Internet, I hope it has enabled the reader to delve into gaining some understanding of the complexity of the Internet and its theoretical study and of the abundance of theoretical perspectives, debates and propositions in the field. This chapter informs the final chapter, contributing to the development of the concluding argument of the book with regard to the future of the study of the Internet. I would like to close the theoretical area of discussion with an attempt to, in a way, answer the questions asked early on in the chapter: Can we anticipate the rise of a single and integrated Internet theory? Are we likely to soon devise such a theory for the conceptually rich and contextually framed study of the Internet? The answer is ‘possibly yes, possibly no’, and so ‘it all depends’. But what does an Internet theory depend on? It largely depends on how well theoretical concepts and pending questions are synthesised, both to form the foundations of an Internet theory and to inform scholars on the shape and agenda(s) of such a theory. At the same time, one could justifiably question whether a synthesis of key theoretical and conceptual pillars, such as those discussed and proposed in this chapter, is adequate and can enable us to put forward a comprehensive and responsive Internet theory. Finally, it could also be questioned whether the entire vision of an Internet theory is realistic and practically feasible given the complexity of the Internet per se, its multiple and complex roles in individual and social-life settings, its fast and barely predictable evolution in time, and the multi-layered theoretical concepts, positions and debates involved in its study. For now, I cannot but concede that I am far from offering confident answers to such difficult and at the same time important questions.

21 The online public sphere and virtual communities are discussed from a ‘real–life’ perspective in Chapter 4.

Chapter 4

Studying the Role of the Internet in a Real-Life Context: Opportunities versus Risks Many of the concepts discussed in Chapter 3, as well as many that were not discussed, prompt contemplation and even scepticism regarding the applicability of Internet theorisations and the extent to which they explain one-off phenomena or long-standing conditions concerning the Internet. Of course, this is a broader epistemological issue that runs across the social sciences and arts and humanities, that perplexes scholars and that continually triggers demanding discussions on whether theoretical concepts and abstract conceptualisations can actually help us to understand reality and its innumerable ramifications a little a bit better. This chapter does not aspire to take a formative position with regard to the ‘theoryreality’ question but it hopes to offer reflections on how existing studies of the Internet have used the concepts discussed in Chapter 3 so as to demonstrate several things. First, ways in which concepts and theorisations can pave the way for the evidence-based study of Internet phenomena; second, the knowledge produced and the new questions raised by studying such phenomena from a real-life perspective; and third, how existing knowledge and pending questions about the Internet and its real-life presence can further motivate theoretical study on the Internet. More specifically, this chapter conducts an extensive review of real-life contexts and their study in relation to the complex and debatable role of the Internet, aiming to shed light on the coexistence of the ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ sides of the Internet in past, present and forward-looking terms. This chapter presents studies of the role of the Internet in areas of experience and life – such as civic engagement and democratisation, virtual identity and community, and social gaps/divisions – and demonstrates that such studies have for more than two decades provoked wide interest and intense debates combined with numerous appraisals and critiques. In addition, in this chapter I discuss the study of facts, promises and dilemmas concerning Internet governance, which constitutes an area of controversy with regard to the present and future of the Internet. Studies and evidence in these areas are reviewed alongside two broad thematic categories: Internet opportunities and Internet risks. The discussion begins with Internet opportunities and draws attention to the study of phenomena that arise online or via the Internet that are innovative, beneficial and liberating for the user. That is, I consider the concepts of the public sphere and the online public sphere and, more specifically, the role of the Internet in citizen engagement and mobilisation – so-called ‘democratisation’. Also, I review

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studies on the emergence and life trajectory of virtual communities and their effects on user identity, sociability and community-building. Then the discussion moves on to Internet risks and draws attention to the study of risky, possibly harmful and actually jeopardising phenomena that arise online or via the Internet. First, I consider the study of digital divides and debates on whether this is an ongoing issue that can exacerbate social disparities and disfavour socially, economically and culturally deprived parts of the population. This section also reflects on discussions about persistent challenges in Internet governance and on the application of effective policies and regulations for the use and development of the Internet in the future. The discussion of the challenges in governing the Internet completes the series of reflections on the study of the Internet from a real-life perspective and paves the way to close the chapter with a discussion of the multitude of uncertainties that Internet scholars encounter with regard to the study of the Internet’s future form(s) and role(s) in society. What I argue is that, in seeking an overview of real-life perspectives on the Internet and its role, we can clearly point in the direction of a balanced view on the meaningfulness of the two antithetical but deeply symbiotic sides of the Internet: the ‘dark’ and the ‘bright’. The Internet and its Opportunities The Internet and Politics: Public Sphere, Civic Activism and Democratisation The role of the Internet in politics and especially in public engagement and democratisation is a vast area of study that involves concepts such as the public sphere, social capital, mediated or mediatised activism, cyberprotesting, hactivism, network activism, e-participation and digital/e-democracy. Essentially, the study of the role of the Internet in politics reflects on phenomena of activism, protesting and democratic politics (or participatory democracy), particularly those that take place on or via social media and Web 2.0 platforms. It mainly accounts for the way Internet communication can facilitate user engagement and participation and its implications for citizenship and democracy more broadly. According to Margetts (2013: 422), most of the research in this area comes from outside the academic discipline commonly associated with the study of democracy – that is, political science. This constitutes an area of debate and controversy with a broad and interdisciplinary scope that accommodates scholars from a range of disciplines, such as new media, political communication and social analysis/sociology. It is broadly acknowledged to be a rapidly expanding and prolific study area, especially over the past few years, during which much of the existing discourse has been concerned with the political and civic-activismoriented communication carried out through new media and on social media and other Web 2.0 platforms in particular (Bennett 2008, Cammaerts 2008, Chadwick 2009, Chadwick and Howard 2009b; Coleman 1999, 2007, Coleman and Spiller 2003, Dahlgren 2005, Della Porta and Tarrow 2005, Graber et al. 2004, Hacker

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and Dijk 2000, Jenkins and Thorburn 2004, Loader and Mercea 2012, Margetts 2013, Papacharissi 2002, 2004, 2009, Smith 2008, van Dijk 2012).1 Chadwick and Howard (2009a: 3) have pointed out that by mid 2006 there was more published scholarly research on the Internet and politics than on broadcast media, the press and politics. For the purposes of this discussion, I mainly focus on studies of concepts and phenomena relating to the online public sphere and Internet-enabled citizenship, to social movements and protesting on the Internet, and to digital/e-democracy. The public sphere, citizenship and the Internet The discussion of civic participation in politics and participatory democracy is closely related to Habermas’ public sphere. The German social theorist Jürgen Habermas put forward his public sphere theory in works such as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989) and ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’ (2006). In these he raised questions regarding how people participate in public affairs and their engagement in the sphere of public deliberation and conduct. He examined the bourgeois public sphere that succeeded the feudal order of the one-sided and absolute power of the monarch. He argued that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries an emerging middle class and the existence of public rational discussion gave shape to a public sphere that ‘mediates between society and state’. In this public sphere, ‘the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion’ on the basis of the ‘principle of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities’ (Habermas 2006: 74). The emergence of the public sphere was boosted by a combination of socioeconomic and political changes, the most important being the rapid development of the capitalist system of production and trade in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and subsequently the development of a rapidly growing and power-gaining middle class of capitalist entrepreneurs. This emerging middle class (i.e., bourgeois class) pressed for changes towards independence from the supremacy of the church and state forces that had enjoyed dominance in the past. The bourgeois middle class challenged the feudal order of the past by nurturing a culture of ‘letters’ (e.g., coffee houses, theatre, art) to encourage conversation, debate and criticism of the state and church supremacy while also investing in the power of the press and campaigning for freedom of speech and for parliamentary reform so as to make politics open to the public. As a result, the first state independent press started to make its appearance, and strong political opposition came to the surface seeking to accommodate all those who aimed at deliberation, debate and critique of state and church authority. The chief characteristics of Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere – ‘open debate, critical 1 For an overview of key trends in the study of the Internet and politics, see Chadwick and Howard (2009a).

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scrutiny, full reportage, increased accessibility and independence of actors from economic interest as well as from state control’ (Webster 2006a: 165) – gave rise to a deliberative democratic model. According to this model, a public sphere that is rational and open to all encourages participatory democracy and decentralised governance, allows citizens to participate in rational debate about the common good, and makes deliberation and unconstrained public discussion the main mechanisms for shaping public opinion. Habermas argued that, in the mid and late twentieth century and under the influence of mass media (which rapidly became one of the key mechanisms of public debate), a ‘refeudalisation’ of the public sphere took place along with the dominance of organised private market interests, the repoliticisation of publicness and the development of a centralised governance model (Habermas 2006: 77– 78).2 Habermas considered mass media as a platform for political and corporate manipulation of the public and a venue for the nurturing of private market oligopolies and the growth of the advertising industry: ‘The news generally assumes some sort of guise and is made to resemble a narrative from its own format down to stylistic detail … The world fashioned by the mass media is a public sphere in appearance only’ (1989: 170–171). By taking a critical approach to the mass media, highly rooted in the Frankfurt School tradition, he sketched the structure and operation of the mass media as being in concert with the structures and forces driving the dominant capitalist system. According to Habermas, powerful media are (mostly) owned by powerful capitalist forces; thus, they not only reflect the ideological vehicles of capitalism but also echo and reinforce the dual goals of capitalism: market profit and popularity. In this regard, the media passed from state-controlled transmission of information to capitalism-censored spread of information and facilitation of communication, thus undermining the public-debate-enhancing role that the media were and are still expected to play. Habermas does not refer to a full return to the feudalistic past but to a ‘faked version’ – that is, a manufactured public sphere in which advertising and public relations, among other things, ensure that corporate interests are packaged by the media and disguised into favourable ideas around democracy, openness and participation. In this sense, economy and state are no longer separated and the public sphere is not awarded the space it needs to develop public opinion and rational debate: ‘public affairs become occasions for “displays” of the powers that be (in a matter analogous to the medieval court) rather than spheres of contestation between different policies and outlooks’ (Webster 2 Habermas suggested that the internal capital logic of capitalism and how this increasingly served the ends of what became the governing economic system in the West was the driving force behind the decline and refeudalisation of the public sphere in the twentieth century. For Habermas, the state-opposing logic of the bourgeois class retreated as this class moved up to an economically powerful and politically influential status. Thus, in the end, this class used the state to serve its own interests and not to maintain openness, political transparency and democratic debate.

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2006a: 165). Habermas’ concerns over commercialisation, infotainment and the invasion of commercial and entertaining elements into the realm of information circulation and exchange (e.g., the running of a powerful ‘information packaging and management business’) have been endorsed by contemporary critical political communication and other scholars (e.g., Bennett and Entman 2001, Jones 2005, Street 2011, Thussu 2007, van Zoonen 2005). Information management, corporate public relations, spin doctoring and advertising are at the epicentre of scholarly accounts that echo Habermas’ concerns about the lack of space for debate and reasoning between politics and the economy. Scholars also support Habermas’ argument that the media are used, manipulated and controlled while commercially serving the public-relations, branding and opinion-shaping tactics of corporate and political interests (Webster 2006a: 190–198). Poster resonates such a critical account and states: Contemporary social relations seem to be devoid of a basic level of interactive practice which, in the past, was the matrix of democratizing politics: loci such as the agora, the New England town hall, the village Church, the coffee house, the tavern, the public square, a convenient barn, a union hall, a park, a factory lunchroom, and even a street corner. Many of these places remain but no longer serve as organizing centers for political discussion and action. It appears that the media, and especially television, have become the animating source of political information and action. (Poster 1997: 206–207, italics in original)

At the same time, Habermas’ public sphere has been critiqued from various perspectives. Some have deemed it normative and prescriptive (Calhoun 1992) while others have referred to the multiplicity of public spheres (e.g., ‘public sphericules’) (Gitlin 1998), the inevitability and necessity of agonistic confrontation in what can be thought of as a (democratic) public sphere (Mouffe 1999: 755–756) and the existence of ‘counterpublics’, namely ‘parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (Fraser 1992: 123). In a similar vein, Negt and Kluge (1993) discussed the ‘proletarian public sphere’ as opposed to the bourgeois sphere. In addition, critiques have been put forward regarding the exclusion of women from Habermas’ public sphere and its gender biases (Felski 1989, Fraser 1989, 1992). Also, Habermas’ contention that the public sphere has declined in the twentieth century can be confronted on the basis of the public availability of information and cultural content that can stimulate and feed rational public debate. An indicative example is the availability of information and content through public service broadcasting, public libraries, public museums, art galleries, government information and statistics services and the like, which are still present in countries such as the United Kingdom despite the economic pressures of our times (Webster 2006a: 169–189). Critiques have also pointed to the lack of historical accuracy and the normative character of Habermas’ public sphere (Webster 2006a: 199), questioning how the public sphere

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is placed in history and whether its foundations provide a pragmatic account of public affairs or rather rely on ideas ruling different times and places in different ways. As an outcome of Habermas’ contended decline of the public sphere and amid broader alarming messages concerning the lack of trustful, reliable and freely operating media, new debates have arisen to address the role of the Internet in the formation of an online, virtual or transnational public sphere (Cammaerts and van Audenhove 2005, Dahlberg 2001a, 2001b, 2004, Dahlgren 2005, Gripsrud 2009, Papacharissi 2002, 2009, Poster 1997, Sassen 2002). This is an area of inexorable debate and conflicting evidence. On the one hand, as early as 2001, Dahlberg (2001b) argued that ‘the thousands of diverse conversations taking place everyday online and open to anyone with Internet access … indicate the expansion on a global scale of the loose webs of rational-critical discourse that constitute what is known as the public sphere’. From a political communication and democratic theory perspective, there are those who discuss the creation of an online (democratic) public sphere through platforms of online communication and information dissemination such as blogging sites that prompt deliberation and exchange of opinions about politics (Coleman 2005, Wright 2009). Salter claimed that an online public sphere can be created through online mobilisation that takes the form of social movements and protests: ‘the Internet can be seen as a foundational medium for civil society and the informal public sphere’ (2003: 129). On the other hand, optimistic accounts of the existence of an online or transnational public sphere cannot be fully justified on the grounds of the Internet’s decentralised structure and the public sphere’s partial migration online, where it largely functions in parallel to its offline iterations. Existing debates fail to address social fragmentation and its reflection on fragmented and often loosely interconnected online spaces that challenge the ‘universality’ of the public sphere and pose the question of whether many public spheres – of whatever size, fluid and with barely predictable internal dynamics and complex external relationships – are in existence on the Net. In addition, antagonisms and power conflicts raise questions about the existence of oppositional public spheres online while leaving unanswered questions concerning user appropriation of the opportunities for public deliberation and participation available online, the power imbalances online (i.e., do all discourses, arguments and points of influence on the Internet actually matter?) and, as political economists continue to argue, the capitalist control of the Internet or dominance of elites online. The vast and floating map of actors and activities online often results in a chaotic production of online content and, subsequently, insufficient ‘quality control’ of online spaces and their content, while making the voice of the ‘expert’ lost amid the myriad voices on the Internet. This challenges the credibility of online public exchange and the quality of the public deliberation that takes place online. The discussion of virtual communities and identity in the next section will shed more light on this complexity of virtual networks and online spaces, also showing that disparity and exclusionary mechanisms remain online. Such mechanisms recall questions regarding the

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disenfranchisement of disadvantaged populations and pose questions on who is precluded from discussion, deliberation and opinion formation in the virtual space. Critical accounts of the online public sphere reflect on some of these problematic and complex issues. In his network society theory, presented in Chapter 3, van Dijk argues that the currently multilayered social and media networks demonstrate a fragmentation of the public sphere, since an ‘increasing number of subcultures … communicate completely separately from each other in using the new media’ (2006: 39). He contends that three conditions of the modern public sphere do not exist online: first, the association of the public sphere with a specific place or territory, since cross-boundary and global flows of discussion, deliberation and participation appear online; second, the presumed unitary character of the public sphere, since the extremely diversified, fluid and complex scenery of human actors and other forces that perform online create a patchwork of partial public spheres; and third, the public-private distinction, which is becoming blurred on the Internet (2006: 173). Thus, van Dijk contends that the public sphere ‘will be reconstructed as a complex mosaic of distant, but overlapping and interconnected public spheres. A public sphere and the idea of a society will continue to exist, albeit in much more differentiated forms’ (2006: 189). Cammaerts and van Audenhove’s (2005) study of three transnational civilsociety organisations shows that the notion of a transnational public sphere is highly problematic and that the construction of such a sphere through the Internet is burdened with many constraints : ‘While the issues being addressed may be transnational, participants are often located in the Western hemisphere, discussion often happens between likeminded activists, and discussions are restrained by language and cultural barriers’ (2005: 194). In an even more critical spirit, Dahlgren emphasises the commodification of the public sphere in today’s commercial media system and does not seem to think that the Internet is an exception: ‘the use of the Net for political purposes is clearly minor compared with other purposes to which it is put … democratic deliberation is completely overshadowed by consumerism, entertainment, nonpolitical networking and chat, and so forth’ (2005: 151). Overall, the creation of a virtual or online public sphere has been problematised for more than a decade by arguments that the Internet has limited potential to foster a virtual public sphere as it promotes elitism, exclusion, focus on single issues, fragmentation and corporate control (Dahlberg 2001a, Papacharissi 2002, Polat 2005, Wilhelm 2000). Such arguments to an extent support Putnam (1995, 2000), who argued that low-quality and entertainment-oriented usage of the Internet distracts users and allows them insufficient time to become informed about civic engagement in the public sphere. Nevertheless, the difficulty in applying the Habermasian public sphere model to the Internet does not necessarily invalidate the civically empowering and democratic role of the Internet. For instance, Papacharissi (2009, 2010) questions the extent to which online public spaces can resemble the rational space of public deliberation symbolised by the public sphere. She argues that the self-centred character of online networks, the proliferation of partly commercial and partly

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public-interest online content and services, the subsequent hybrid public space on the Internet (where civic and consumerist rhetoric coexist), and the use of online content and services to complement traditional media and to serve subversive movements create a ‘virtual sphere 2.0’ that has very little in common with the Habermasian public sphere. At the same time, she contends that the nonexistence of the Habermasian public sphere online does not mean that the Internet cannot contribute to plurality, political dialogue and satisfaction of civic needs and wants. On the contrary, she argues that the above trends in cyberspace lead to an ‘atomized’ mode of civic action, an ‘empowering, liquid, and reflexive’ private sphere wherein what exists are ‘narcissistically derived, civically beneficial expressions of political opinion present in blogs; subversive actions articulated in discourse that emphasizes plurality and agonism; and, finally, privately generated narratives published in commercially public spaces’ (2009: 244). In the following two subsections I discuss how researchers in this field have approached the new possibilities for civic activism and democratic politics opening up in cyberspace. Social movements, protesting and the Internet To consider whether one or many online public spheres exist (if any exist at all), we need to revisit the notion of citizenship3 and consider its qualities within cyberspace given that fulfilled citizenship is the cornerstone of the Habermasian public sphere. Citizenship in the digital age has been debated (e.g., Bakardjieva, Svensson and Skoric 2012, Bennett 2008, Dahlgren 2007, Mossberger, Tolbert and McNeal 2008), and Bakardjieva, Svensson and Skoric argue that the talk around ‘digital citizenship’ is significant for assessing how digital media and the Internet more specifically can lower the threshold for people’s involvement in collective action (2012: i). To study the influence of the Internet on citizenship, scholars are invited to bear in mind that citizenship and its ramifications must not be considered equivalent to tangible forms of socio-political participation and activism (e.g., speaking, networking, protesting), since citizenship can also involve less visible and more lifestyle-embedded forms of acting and thinking to accomplish the rights and obligations of what it means to be a citizen. On the one hand, Kahn and Kellner (2004: 94) refer to ‘online activist subcultures … a vital new space of politics and culture’ that produces new social relations and alternative forms of civic participation in politics. Carty (2010: 169) emphatically concludes that ‘new ICTs allow for new modes of communication, forms of collective identity and solidarity, and grassroots mobilization to resist … the colonization of the public sphere and public opinion’. On the other hand, Wellman et al. (2003) argue that e-citizenship is likely to develop when citizens are already involved and that the Internet should just be considered another means, not the cause of citizen engagement in politics and public affairs: ‘Those who 3 For an overview of definitions and approaches to the notion of citizenship, see Cammaerts and van Audenhove (2005).

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communicate more in other ways also communicate more by e-mail and are more apt to participate in political activity’. Overall, a growing debate is being held, and is developing various ‘branches’, with respect to whether activism on or via the Internet empowers citizens and subverts well-established power relations and disparate power distribution: Optimistically, we believe that the erosion of elite gatekeeping and the emergence of multiple axes of information provide new opportunities for citizens to challenge elite control of political issues. Pessimistically, we are skeptical of the abilities of ordinary citizens to make use of these opportunities and suspicious of the degree to which even multiple axes of power are still shaped by more fundamental structures of economic and political power. (Williams and Delli Carpini 2004: 1209)

Forms of citizen activism, such as social movements and protesting, are extensively used means for citizens to perform citizenship. Internet-facilitated social movements and cyberprotesting have been widely studied and highly debated (e.g., Ayres 1999, Della Porta and Tarrow 2005, Earl and Kimport 2011, Kahn and Kellner 2004, McCaughey and Ayers D.M. 2003, Pickerill 2003, van Aelst and Walgrave 2002, van de Donk et al. 2004)4 and are closely related to Castells’ network society (see Chapter 3). This is so since how people become networked and network more and how their activities are facilitated and transformed through technologically enabled networks constitute core ideas in understanding social movements and protesting online or via the Internet. As discussed in Chapter 3, Castells considers that in the network society there is significant stock of counterpower and resistance to dominant forces. One of the influential ways to resist and exercise counter-power is through social movements, which nowadays are ‘coming in very different forms and with sharply contrasted systems of values and beliefs, yet opposed to what they often define as global capitalism … they are purposive collective actions aimed at changing the values and interests institutionalized in society’ (Castells 2007: 248–249).5 The Internet has made many scholars underscore the need to revisit longstanding assumptions about and approaches to social movements and protesting 4 Other means of citizen engagement in politics through the Internet include access to and diffusion of wide-ranging political information online at a lower cost than offline; user-generated political content and messages on the Internet; contact with politicians; and use of e-government and other political sites and services on the Internet. For an overview, read Margetts (2013). 5 For Castells, social movements are ‘purposive collective actions whose outcome, in victory as in defeat, transforms the values and institutions of society’ (2010: 3). Similarly, Diani defines social movements as networks of ‘informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in a political or cultural conflict, on the basis of a shared collective identity’ (1992: 13).

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since ‘the Web can allow more than the simple augmentation of protest: innovative uses of the Web can transform protest’ (Earl and Kimport 2011: 19). On the one hand, Internet researchers discuss specific movements originated online or originally shaped offline but with their communication and other activities migrated online in order to demonstrate how the Internet has led to increased civic engagement and new forms of political activism, connecting groups, networks and individuals from all over the world and through new communication and technical means (for an overview, read Curran 2012b: 15–16). There are positive accounts of the role of the Internet in overcoming past disparities in society and enabling citizens to become more active and participatory than previously: ‘the next step is a thoroughly personalized information system in which the boundaries of different issues and different political approaches become more permeable, enabling ordinary citizens to join campaigns, protests, and virtual communities with few ideological or partisan divisions’ (Bennett 2003: 165). Fuchs (2008: 296) suggests that online cognitive, communication and cooperative processes empower humans towards constructing participatory social systems, what he calls ‘e-participation’, and towards opposing dominant and exclusionary forces in social systems and on the Internet. Especially, Fuchs (2008: 243) considers that the existence of global problems that touch on the sensitivities of the global society (e.g., ecological depredation, wars, poverty, unemployment) in parallel with the rapid development of a medium of global communication and exchange such as the Internet have enabled social movements that take action on a global scale and across spatial and time distances to flourish. Furthermore, Castells (2010) considers that the network society induces movements of resistance (e.g., environmentalist, feminist, religious) to forge new identities that can replace those that have collapsed since traditions and certainties of the past have torn apart. According to Castells (2010: 72), globalisation and informationalisation create social movements that oppose the new global, social and/or cultural order and take advantage of the information, communication and collaboration tools available on the Internet while often being entirely conducted via Internet platforms: ‘the social movements of the information age, and the new forms of political mobilization are widely using the means of mass selfcommunication, although they also intervene in the mainstream mass media as they try to influence public opinion at large’ (Castells 2007: 249).6 For Castells, counter-power activists use the Internet as it ‘provides the essential platform for 6 Castells defines much of the communication that occurs via the medium of the Internet as mass self-communication: ‘It is mass communication because it reaches potentially a global audience through the p2p networks and Internet connection. It is multimodal, as the digitization of content and advanced social software, often based on open source that can be downloaded free, allows the reformatting of almost any content in almost any form, increasingly distributed via wireless networks. And it is self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many that communicate with many’ (2007: 248).

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debate’ and constitutes their ‘means of acting on people’s mind, and ultimately serves as their most potent political weapon’ (2007: 250). From an organisational perspective, contemporary social movements that make use of digital technologies can greatly benefit as ‘the new means of digital communication constitute their most decisive organizational form, in a clear break with the traditional forms of organization of parties, unions and associations of the industrial society’ (Castells 2007: 249–250). Earl and Kimport (2011) contend that the Web can affect social movements through its affordances7 and argue that activists use the Web’s affordances to enhance or modify their organisational patterns and practices; their tactics, strategies and means of activity; their repertoire of activities; and even the objectives and drivers of their movement. Specifically, Earl and Kimport identify two affordances that can significantly transform social activism: first, reduced costs of creating, organising and participating in protest initiatives; and second, co-presence, which allows activists to retain a sense of presence even from geographically remote locations, thus decreasing the need for physical presence and identification as a prerequisite for action and participation. The latter can also increase participants’ anonymity and enhance their perceived or experienced sense of security when they go online. In researching online petitions, boycotts, letter-writing campaigns and email campaigns, these authors suggest that the extent to and ways in which these two affordances are leveraged determine whether the Web will have a transformative or limited impact on patterns of organisation and participation in social movement. Thus, they suggest that web affordances can, on the one hand, mobilise and strengthen offline activism (‘e-mobilisation’) and, on the other, form new types, dimensions and shapes of activism (‘e-movements’), in which case the ‘organization of and participation in the movement occurs entirely online’ (2011: 12).8 Research (Castells 2010, Garrido and Halavais 2003, van de Donk et al. 2004) has examined specific cases of protest and movements of the past, focusing on how Internet platforms were used by rebels to diffuse information internationally and thus to gain support from activists, civic groups and organisations all over the world. For instance, the Zapatistas movement was successful largely due to its communication strategy, which made some call it ‘the first informational guerrilla movement’ (Castells 2010: 82). The Zapatistas developed autonomous communication to send their message to an international audience and thus to exert pressure on the national government. They made extensive use of the Internet to create a network of support groups, ‘Internet-based alliances’, and thus to turn 7 They define affordance as the ‘actions or uses a technology makes easier … what one technology facilitates versus the next most comparable technology’ (Earl and Kimport 2011: 32). 8 However, Earl and Kimport also discuss what exists in between ‘e-mobilisation’ and ‘e-movements’ and the myriads ways that activists can use the Web’s affordances. For them, the more these affordances are leveraged, the more radical the changes to organising and participating in social movements.

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international public opinion to their favour, ‘forcing negotiation and raising the issue of social exclusion and political corruption to the eyes and ears of public opinion worldwide’ (Castells 2010: 84). In addition, it has been argued that the Internet is important for the development of transnational movements, with a transnational movement being defined as ‘integrated within several societies, unified in its goals and organization, and capable of mounting contention against a variety of targets’ (Tarrow 1998: 185). Transnational movements do not originate in the virtual world but they are virtually mediated (Fuchs 2008: 278). In Bennett’s (2003) words, they can be regarded as ‘global activist networks’, with many centres and no leading points, inclusive and open to adjustment and expansion. Through enabling networking of small, local and national organisations and by disseminating virtual community spaces to strengthen shared collective identity, the Internet can mobilise people to join and take action beyond national boundaries. Furthermore, ‘hyperlinking’ of local, national and other movements on the Internet does create a kind of transnational network. At the same time, ‘the fluid, non-hierarchical structure of the Internet and that of the international protest coalition prove to be a good match’ and ‘it is no coincidence that both can be labelled as a “network of networks”’ (van Aelst and Walgrave 2002: 487). If we look at the very early years of transnational communication via the Internet and use the example of the anti-globalisation protest activity in the later part of the 1990s, it can be argued that the Internet ‘provided the glue to bind the opposition that had begun simultaneously in a variety of developed countries’ (Ayres 1999: 140). Along these lines, it has been argued that the Internet ‘may be deployed in a democratic and emancipatory manner by a growing planetary citizenry’ (Kahn and Kellner, 2004: 88). On the basis of recent examples of transnational action against the war in Iraq, against Western imperialism and against capitalism, it has been argued that ‘after using the internet to successfully organize a wide range of anti-war and anti-corporate globalization demonstrations, activists … build a “virtual” bloc that monitors, critiques, and fights against the sort of aggressive versions of Western capitalism and imperialism’ (Kahn and Kellner 2004: 88). From a social-conflict perspective, the literature has underlined the role of ‘mediation’ in social conflict, or ‘mediatized conflict’ (Cottle 2006), and how rival sides in a conflict can use technology to influence the course, evolution and possible termination of conflict: ‘We live, it hardly needs to be said, in highly conflictual times. We also live in mediatized times’ (Cottle 2006: 1). Although cases of social conflict and associated citizen activism have been framed, mediated and represented by mass media, it has been claimed that mainstream media framing and reporting is marked by ‘ideological closure’ (Cottle 2006: 33), inferring a lack of flexibility, reflectiveness and democratic openness in reporting. On the contrary, new media technologies such as the Internet arguably empower bottomup forces of conflict and allow the control of communication flows from ‘inside’ as a result of interactivity, multimedia platforms and user-generated content on

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the Internet, thus giving rise to transnational movements of social resistance (e.g., anti-globalisation, human rights). In the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, a plethora of case studies evaluated the role of social media in the civically motivated revolutions in the Middle East and South Europe (Howard and Hussain 2011, Khamis and Vaughn 2011, Rahimi 2011, Sayed 2012, Tufekci and Wilson 2012). Although the often violent riots during the Arab Spring mostly expressed the exasperation of citizens about the domestic socio-political and economic conditions, they ignited heated debates concerning the role that online communication and social media in particular played in the development and effective manifestation of civic rebellion against long-established political regimes. In examining the role of the Web in the 2011 Egyptian protests, Khamis and Vaughn (2011) argue that social media were not the cause of uprising but a very significant vehicle for it. Specifically, they contend that social media were used, inter alia, as tools of citizen journalism so as to transmit to the international community news on governmental brutality and, thus, to overcome the state-run censorship of television and other mass-media outlets. Overcoming mass-media restrictions on communication and information dissemination (e.g., gatekeeping, censorship, elitism, powerful minorities in control of communication) is significant because it can determine the outside world’s attitudes to a social movement and consequently affect the movement’s course and outcomes. In this respect, it has been argued that online networked communication is important for ‘exogenous mobilisation’ and has an ‘indispensable role for the mobilization of communication networks across borders in an attempt to recruit political support and human, financial and material resources required for public will to emerge and gain traction’ (Salmon, Fernandez and Post 2010: 162). Khamis and Vaughn (2011) note that social media affected public demonstrations in Egypt in a direct way, since they allowed coordination of protesting and related activities: ‘The protests were organized and led largely by a loose network of young people, most of whom demonstrated significant capacity for organization, discipline, restraint, and integrity, resulting in a unique peaceful and youthful revolution’. What Khamis and Vaughn call a ‘loose network of young people’ is essentially what Beckett (2011) calls ‘weak ties’ in his discussion of the role of new media in the Tunisian revolution in 2011. The ‘weak ties’ – the strength of which was first discussed by Granovetter (1983) – built on social media platforms such as Facebook have constituted for Beckett (2011) not the cause but a precondition for activism, since they have the ‘practical benefit of spreading information, of making people feel part of something’ and thus they give people ‘a sense of solidarity and for some, the “permission” to go further’. In their study of the role of Twitter in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which broke out in the fall of 2011,9 Penney and Dadas (2014) found that the 9 The Occupy Wall Street movement spread to over 100 cities in the United States and 1,500 cities globally, claiming to fight back against the power of banks and multinational corporations and the role of Wall Street in the economic collapse that the big economies

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rapid circulation of texts, messages and other material via Twitter allowed activists who participated in the movement to build a geographically dispersed, networked counter-public. Specifically, in their interviews with activists who used Twitter during the Occupy Wall Street movement, Penney and Dadas (2014) found that Twitter played seven roles in the movement: it assisted face-to-face protests via announcements of events and activities and by soliciting donations; it enabled live reporting from face-to-face protests through posting and sharing of updates, photos and videos; it disseminated news via links and retweets; it enabled the expression of personal opinions about the movement; it allowed engagement in discussions about the movement; it strengthened the personal ties between members of the movement; and it facilitated online-based actions. They suggest that these roles are fluid and overlapping, while this varied mix of affordances enabled Twitter activists to build a geographically dispersed, networked counter-public and to challenge well-established power formations backed by mainstream media. Similarly, Hardt and Negri (2011) considered social media’s nonhierarchical, leaderless and horizontal structure, namely its ‘multitude form’, in relation to the Occupy Wall Street movement. These authors argued that social media operate in a horizontal, peer-to-peer style, thus stimulating diffused popular participation and engagement: ‘Such network instruments do not create the movements, of course, but they are convenient tools, because they correspond in some sense to the horizontal network structure and democratic experiments of the movements themselves’. In attempting to unravel the key characteristics of cyberactivism and its repercussions for offline activism and democratic politics, Fuchs (2008) focuses on cyberprotest. He detects three main forms of cyberprotest: alternative online media that operate as protest-information systems, such as Indymedia;10 online protest communication, which involves the organisation and coordination of social protests (e.g., coordination of the anti-globalisation movement) through online means and platforms (e.g., the Association for Progressive Communication); and virtual protest or ‘electronic civil disobedience’, such as hacking, defacing and hijacking websites, virtual petitions, denial-of-service attacks, email spamming, IRC jamming and others. All types of cyberprotest are, according to Fuchs, ‘to a certain extent a spatiotemporal distanced and disembedded form of social protest … globally distributed and networked’ (2008: 285). Specifically, he claims that technological and social systems are dialectically related and that, on the basis of this relationship, cyberprotest constitutes ‘a virtual circulation of struggles of global protest movements’ (2008: 279). Fuchs lists ‘decentralization, networking, of the West experienced from 2008 onwards. Essentially, it was inspired by the events of the Arab Spring, by the international economic recession of the time and by the diverse facets of the broader anti–globalisation and anti–capitalist movement that has long been in existence across the world. 10 Numerous studies have dealt with the Indymedia phenomenon. For example, read Pickard (2006a, 2006b).

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dynamics, and globality’ as features specific to online protesting and suggests that they all enable processes of ‘coordination, communication, and cooperation in global protest’ (2008: 278). For him, the highly dynamic, decentralised, networking-reliant and global practices in cyberprotest are driven by selforganisation processes rooted in both the Internet and the protest systems. In this regard, the interface between Internet communication networks and the protest system is mutually shaped: protest movements take advantage of the networked forms of communication, exchange, cooperation and competition on the Internet, while the Internet accommodates movements of protest that evolve its technical and human-driven tools and structures alongside their own affordances and effects (2008: 278). Such positive accounts of how the Internet facilitates, boosts and even enables civic mobilisation and protest are far from unproblematic. The characteristics and effects of protesting and other forms of citizen activism on, via or with the assistance of the Internet offer much space for deliberation, debate and critique. Fuchs recognises that, regardless of the flexibility, global scope and openness of cyberprotest, lack of resources and limited visibility of cyberprotest result in limited effectiveness and call us to consider the embeddedness of Internet structures in offline structures of disparate distribution of communication resources (2008: 282–283). In addition, dependency on communication and information relay through the Web and platforms such as social networking sites can make protestors vulnerable to restrictions associated with technologically mediated and distant communication as well as to censorship and surveillance (Penney and Dadas 2014). Constraints on effectiveness question the claim that online communication can create ‘global contagion effects of protest’ (Fuchs 2008: 287). Although this is a possibility (e.g., a single message or video on the Internet can be spread and lead to a surge of social reaction and to waves of protest), unequal distribution of resources and power disparities are present in cyberactivism too. Furthermore, there are those who are critical of the supposedly socially empowering and democratic character of the Internet as a whole. Such critical voices question the neutral character of technology, raise the issue of the costeffectiveness of Internet use and treat with scepticism the extent to which Internetbased communication can replace traditional communication and technologically unmediated activism (e.g., Breindl 2010, Pickard 2006b, Scheufele and Nisbet 2002). Also, language barriers in online communication challenge the idea of global and inclusive communication on the Internet, while the Internet is considered liable to ‘information overload’. The information offered online is often thought of as excessive and chaotic, with activists being obliged to conduct information and knowledge management accordingly (Wright 2004). The ‘digital divides’ phenomenon and associated debates (discussed later in this chapter) pose further questions concerning the inclusiveness of online communication and whether all people can access, use and benefit from the Internet so as to get involved in social activism and associated initiatives. Another dimension of digital divides is to do with the user, the user’s choice of online action and particularly

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the user’s interest in making beneficial and initiative-taking use of the Internet. In consideration of this, there is no sufficient evidence to correlate Internet use with user engagement and interest in politics. On the contrary, Xenos and Moy (2007) assessed instrumental and psychological approaches to the impact of the Internet on civic and political engagement and found that impact is contingent on users’ interest in and predisposition to engage in politics. Social movements that use the Internet as a tool – such as the anti-globalisation movement, the ‘movement for democratic globalisation’11 – can barely escape from competitions and struggles deeply ingrained in broader social structures. At the same time, the presence of fluid, cross-boundary and ad hoc online networks, which are marked by loose internal and external connections, ambivalent traits and an unpredictable life course, develop a dynamic and multifaceted relationship between online activism and broader social structures. Besides, cyberprotest, alongside other forms of Internet activism, is in dialogue with communitybuilding and identity-formation and -transformation processes in cyberspace (discussed in the next section), thus developing interdependencies with other highly controversial phenomena in cyberspace and complicating conclusions concerning the characteristics, lifespan and effects of Internet activism. It can quite readily be agreed that the Internet serves to enhance global spread and to intensify the scope and effects of civic activism in politics and protesting. However, recent empirical research has found that, although there has been major growth in political activity on social networking sites (e.g., 39 per cent of American adults were involved in some political activity on social networking sites in 2012), day-to-day political conversations mostly occur offline: ‘Americans are three times as likely to discuss politics or public affairs with others through offline channels … as they are through online channels. Even the most tech-savvy users … discuss politics with greater frequency offline than online’ (Smith 2013: 9). Also, it would not be prudent to simply endorse the claim that ‘the Internet is a medium of global political solidarity’ (Fuchs 2008: 279). This claim has a series of problems and the following two questions indicate some of these: How can the ‘political’ be defined in cyber context? And, why is solidarity to be placed at the centre of cyberactivism since powers of competition and antagonism still very much exist in cyberspace? Cognition, communication and collaboration processes in cyberspace (e.g., knowledge production and exchange, awareness-raising and dissemination, coordination and mobilisation) also involve competition and antagonism and point to the existence of counter-forces online as much as offline. Moreover, the capacity of the Internet to foster transnational communication does not automatically lead to transnational and long-lasting social activism. Interaction solely based on Internet communication is usually deprived of the necessary interpersonal bonds and solidarities for building permanent relations, although it often creates previously nonexistent ties between communicators (Diani 2000). 11 The anti–globalisation movement is discussed at some length by Fuchs (2008: 290–294).

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Whereas cognition, communication and cooperation processes on the Internet determine activism and protest, these processes are present in offline contexts too, though they occur on a smaller scale and by appropriating different and not necessarily technological means of cognition, communication and collaboration. Hence, numerous question marks should be placed next to optimistic claims that networked activism – Internet-enabled activism – can ‘contribute to breaking the continuum of repression that suppresses the voicing of alternative ideas that go beyond a competitive society’ (Fuchs 2008: 294). Ideas in support of online ‘political solidarity’ seem to draw only one part of the entire picture. Decentralised online structures and accommodation of diverse movements and ideologies on the Internet create an ‘activism environment’ that is far from uniform, and in which internal conflicts, power imbalances and unequal distribution of resources are very much present. A power-struggle-loaded mosaic of activism is present online too, often overtaking the complexity and ambivalence of offline activism. Although activism can obtain new forms and employ new means of development and dispersion when held in cyberspace, this does not suffice to make a grand claim in favour of the new horizons being opened up for citizen mobilisation and democratisation on the Internet. Finally, the existence of broader systemic and barely researchable parameters that influence people’s genuine interest in and potential for engaging in public affairs mitigates claims in support of the revolutionary impact of the Internet and invites us to seriously consider that ‘more than one causal process may be at work’ (Bimber 1999: 423). Democracy and the democratising role of the Internet The above discussion of citizen activism and protest inescapably leads to questions concerning the democratising potential of the Internet. This does not simply relate to the way the Internet can change the terms and conditions of citizen communication with political agents through e-government services, politicians’ and political parties’ websites, and similar means. Instead, it goes much further and poses questions on whether the Internet offers spaces and resources for citizens to become politically informed and to meaningfully engage in political and public affairs. The democratising role of the Internet concerns whether ‘the world wide web has created the conditions for a more advanced or a more effective form of democracy’ (Street 2011: 266). The democratic nature of the Internet and its effects on democratic dialogue and complex processes of democratisation at the local, national and global levels have been widely debated (Bennett and Entman 2001, Bohman 2004, Coleman 2007, Coleman and Blumler 2009, Dahlberg 2011, Ferdinand 2000, Hacker and van Dijk 2000, Hindman 2008, Oates, Owen and Gibson 2005, Seib 2007, Shane 2004, van Dijk 2012, Weare 2002, Wilhelm 2000). On the one hand, manifestly optimistic accounts support the vital role of grassroots-initiated information and communication practices on the Internet in empowering democracy. A growing volume of research contends that the Internet enhances information exchange, communication practices and action resources,

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and that in doing so it overcomes institutional, spatial, time and legislatory constraints on public communication, revitalising participatory democracy (Bimber 2003, Carty 2010, Kellner 2004, Langman 2005, Nip 2004). From a social capital perspective, Kobayashi, Ikeda and Miyata (2006) translate social capital into trust and reciprocity and suggest that the Internet is a ‘lubricant for democracy’, since it can enhance social capital through collective participation in online communities and groups. A similar position has been supported by Gil de Zúñiga, Jung and Valenzuela (2012), who found that seeking information via social networking sites is a positive predictor of people’s social capital and political participatory behaviour both offline and online. Such studies have suggested that online social capital might be a factor that could strengthen weak civil society online. Others contrast the multilayered, multidirectional, fast-spreading and global intercourses on the Internet with the centrally organised, vertically oriented and time- and space-constrained communication fostered in mass media. They strongly argue for the intrinsically democratic character of online communication, since the lack of elite gatekeepers and the interactive nature of the Internet allow the appearance and empowerment of citizen-driven, affordable and boundless communication spaces and practices both among citizens and between citizens and politicians (Bentivegna 2002, Livingstone 2005). Key scholars have fervently supported the democratising role of the Internet. Castells has been optimistic about the way ‘electronic grassrooting of democracy’ can be fulfilled through the Internet and especially via means of online protesting and mobilisation: ‘The Internet can contribute to enhance the autonomy of citizens to organize and mobilize around issues that are not properly processed in the institutional system’ (2010: 417). Coleman is positioned positively towards the democratising role of Internet blogs and argues that blogs are ‘sophisticated listening posts of modern democracy’ that could nourish ‘a kind of democracy in which everyone’s account counts’ (2005: 274). Similarly, Kline and Burstein have argued that blogs can broaden the ‘range of voices and issues for political debate’ (2005: 9), while Kahn and Kellner contend that bloggers demonstrate themselves as ‘technoactivists favoring not only democratic self-expression and networking, but also global media critique and journalistic socio-political intervention’ (2004: 91). Optimists concerning the democratising role of the Internet often speak about a new democracy, the so-called digital or Internet democracy. Digital or Internet democracy and its dialectical or nondialectical relationship with past and existing forms of representative, direct and participatory democracy have been broadly deliberated. An abundance of theses about the scope, facets, layers and effects of digital democracy have been put forward, while ambivalent or even contradictory claims about the links of digital democracy with democratic politics in the offline realm are often made. Early on, Hagen (1997) defined electronic democracy as ‘any democratic political system in which computers and computer networks are used to carry out crucial functions of the democratic process – such as information and communication, interest articulation and aggregation, and decision-making (both

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deliberation and voting)’. He distinguished between three concepts of electronic democracy: teledemocracy, cyberdemocracy, and electronic democratisation. A little later, Hacker and van Dijk defined digital democracy as ‘a collection of attempts to practice democracy without the limits of time, space and other physical conditions, using ICT or CMC [computer-mediated communication] instead, as an addition, not a replacement for traditional “analogue” political practices’ (2000: 1). In his recent work, van Dijk redefined digital democracy as ‘the pursuit and the practice of democracy in whatever view using digital media in online and offline political communication’ (2012: 51). In studies of the Internet and democracy, one can find various typologies of digital or Internet democracy. For instance, Margetts (2013) presents three models of democracy – republicanism, pluralism and cosmopolitanism – as those most discussed in relation to the Internet. In any case, it is fruitless to attempt to yield a one-size-fits-all typology to provide an overarching account of the existing approaches to electronic, digital or Internetenabled democracy. Essentially, the discussion around digital democracy has attempted to scrutinise whether and how online technologies can either completely change the democratic status of the present time (e.g., retrieve the deliberative democracy of the past) or improve the representative liberal democracy of our times (Street 2011: 269–270). Early on, Tsagarousianou (1999) contended that in order for digital democracy to be formed three conditions must be in place: information acquisition and exchange, engagement in public debate and deliberation, and participation in decision-making. The emphasis in discussions of digital democracy has been on the existence of new forums in which citizens not only exchange ideas on politics but also generate their own political content, play a part in political reporting (e.g., through blogging, citizen journalism) and interrogate politicians online via publishing and circulating political commentaries, questions and letters of request or complaint. Those supporting the potential of digital democracy argue that the Internet solves problems concerning time (e.g., alleviation of time costs required for voting or contacting politicians in person), size (e.g., massive political participation is enabled online without size/space constraints), knowledge (e.g., wide-ranging political information is available online at low costs or completely free) and access (e.g., enhanced access to and flexibility of participation in political events and activities organised online) (Street 2011: 270–271). On the other hand, a plethora of evidence problematises the democratising role of the Internet and considers thorny matters such as inclusiveness and efficiency of online public consultations on political matters; Internet censorship by policymakers; the prevalence of top-down e-democracy initiatives; and the inherent elitism of any proposed online direct democracy model (Curran 2012b: 12–13). Evidence has shown that inequalities rooted in offline political participation are reinvigorated online as the highly educated are more likely to engage in political participation practices in cyberspace (Di Gennaro and Dutton 2006). From such a sceptical perspective, it has been argued that ‘the virtual political sphere clearly fails the test’ (Murdock 2002: 389), since ‘individualisation, unequal access and

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disenfranchisement may be the outcome of net politics’ (Golding 2000: 176). In this respect, should we be ready to accept that ‘politics, as usual, will probably prevail’ (Graber et al. 2004: 97) in cyberspace? Others problematise the internal dynamics and practical outcomes of e-democracy initiatives. For instance, van Dijk (2012) questions the quality, equality and dynamics of public deliberation on the Internet and its actual influence on official decision-making. Also, he considers that the e-participation initiated by citizens (e.g., e-petitions, e-voting guides, e-complaints) is more popular and thus more successful than governmentinitiated e-participation activities (e.g., online public consultations, official online discussions). Others take a more middling position and suggest that the ideal of a deliberative public sphere on the Internet is an utopia, since Web 2.0 platforms offer to citizens and policymakers a low-threshold deliberative environment ‘where different repertoires of engagement sit side-by-side, from postings to comments to ratings to wiki editing and so on’ (Chadwick 2009: 34). Middling positions also echo arguments that all possibilities and possible effects on democracy must be considered given that digital networks’ effects are ‘mixed, contradictory, and lumpy’ (Sassen 2006: 44). Livingstone rejects arguments in favour of the inherent democratic nature of the Internet and poses two main questions to drive future studies of its democratising potential: ‘can the internet be used to widen participation, not simply providing an additional route for the already-engaged to deliberate or mobilize further?’ and ‘can democratic measures be developed to address the anti-democratic voices that oppose, drown out or otherwise undermine online deliberation, transforming potentially democratic spaces into authoritarian, reactionary or extreme ones?’ (2010: 134). Regarding the latter question, researchers have taken the perspective of international politics to address whether Internet communication can democratise or at least challenge oppressive political regimes and undemocratic systems of political communication (Howard 2011, Morozov 2011). Howard (2011) reports findings from Muslim countries that confirm the link between technology diffusion and democratisation. On the other hand, there are voices that view with scepticism the idea that the Internet can ascribe a revolutionary force to suppressive societies, because governments can always legitimate themselves through various other means (e.g., economics, identity/nationalism, clientelism) without needing to control the Internet (Curran 2012a: 49–50). Also, in such undemocratic settings, the Internet is very often state censored through technical and human means (e.g., software, partnership with Internet industry players, legislation, propaganda) (Morozov 2011). Morozov (2011) does not dismiss the potential benefits of the Internet for the democratic conduct of public affairs, but he highlights that the Internet has an equal potential to serve political authoritarianism and suppression. He argues that the latter is actually the case when the Internet is driven by ‘cyberutopianism’ – the faith in the emancipatory and democratising power of the Internet – and ‘Internet-centrism’ – the belief that every phenomenon has to be framed in terms

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of the Internet and thus has to be oblivious to context. For Morozov, these two trends – very much present today – lead to ‘net delusion’, citizen complacency and misinterpretation of politics, granting access to new degrees of manipulation of the Internet for surveillance, propaganda and censorship activities of authoritarian regimes. Hence, he pleads for ‘cyber-realism’ and the acceptance that ‘the Internet is poised to produce different policy outcomes in different environments’ since ‘a world made of bytes may defy the law of gravity but absolutely nothing dictates that it should also defy the law of reason’ (2011: 320). As noted previously, from an empirical perspective, the Arab Spring in 2011 has raised questions on the mobilising and, consequently, democratising effects of the Internet and social media technologies in particular. Named by some the ‘Tweeter’ or ‘Facebook’ revolution, civilian insurgence in countries of the Arab authoritarian world has spurred scholarly work in support of the causal effects of the communication, networking and cooperative traits of the Internet on the political regime change experienced in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (see the discussion above). On the other hand, some researchers have considered domestic and historical factors (e.g., lack of political legitimacy, economics, social inequality, religious and tribal conflicts) to be the main explanations of civilian unrest and political change, thus viewing technologies such as mobile telephony, satellite television and the Internet as factors of secondary importance that ‘contributed to the build-up of dissent, facilitated the actual organisation of protests, and disseminated news of the protests across the region and to the wider world’ (Curran 2012a: 54). The low penetration of the Internet and other technologies in the Arab world problematises celebratory accounts of the causal role of technology in democratisation, while it remains to be seen whether these instances of civilian mobilisation heralded a genuine process of democratisation in the Arab world or have mainly mirrored conflict over domestic power and control. Fuchs (2008) proposes a typology of digital democracy that reflects on the classifications of democratic regimes that theory and research have tracked in societies of the past and present times. Specifically, he identifies three types of digital democracy: 1. Representative digital democracy, which is equivalent to the model of representative democracy and embodies ‘top-down digital communication of governments and citizens and intragovernment digital communication’ (2008: 234). This top-down communication via the Internet can take various shapes (e.g., online campaigning, newsletters, consultations, e-government, citizen information sites and tools). Regardless of its potential benefits, it lacks bottom-up communication mechanisms that could empower citizens, encourage many-to-one instead of one-to-many political communication and challenge communication power accumulated around individual politicians and parties. 2. Plebiscitary digital democracy, which is equivalent to the model of direct democracy. Plebiscitary digital democracy refers to ‘bottom-up digital

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communication of citizens and governments’ (2008: 235) and can take the form of online voting, online referenda or online polls/surveys. The nature of plebiscitary digital democracy is arguably twofold: first, it enables direct participation of citizens in decision-making that especially involves those who are excluded from representative forms of decision processes offline; second, it is not entirely estranged from top-down forms of democracy, as the agenda of issues on which citizens vote12 is usually defined by politicians through top-down online and offline communication mechanisms. 3. E-participation or grassroots digital democracy, which corresponds to the model of participatory democracy. Grassroots digital democracy ‘stresses citizen-citizen digital communication and communication processes of and in non-governmental civil society protest groups and movements’ (2008: 237). It is close to participatory democracy, as it is envisaged that communication that derives from and involves citizens will enable the creation of a self-organised, self-managed participatory society. Digital platforms that hold the potential for citizen-to-citizen communication about politics are wikis, blogs, online networking platforms, discussion boards, virtual communities or virtual worlds, chat rooms, online petitions, and cyberprotest or protest-campaign sites and tools. In this type of digital democracy, citizens set the agenda of political discourse, debate and action, aiming at an empowered civic society that will not be governed but rather will govern and make decisions for itself and its members. To criticisms concerning the feasibility and scale of such a model (i.e., whether it is possible in a globalised and complex social system), Fuchs responds by discussing the possibility of delegates, decentralised communes and federated communes of communes that could reach from the local to the regional and global levels (2008: 240). I will not set forth a detailed discussion of Fuchs’ typology of digital democracy. However, it is worth noting that his argument for the feasibility and global scale of grassroots digital democracy raises questions about whether a system of delegates and federated communes of communes brings us back to the ideas of representation and majority vote, in a way recycling what we have learnt from representative democracy, but this time through technological mediation. His argument also raises questions about the efficiency and length of deliberation that takes place beyond the local or national scale (e.g., what cultural, linguistic, national/identity and other parameters should be factored in). Nonetheless, Fuchs’ account acknowledges the various possibilities online and concedes the existence of a range of prerequisites in order for online participatory democracy to become a 12 I do not agree with Fuchs’ point that online voting (or the click of a button) can take place at the expense of deliberation and public debate (2008: 236). Cyberspace offers tools and spaces for a parallel exercise of public deliberation before online voting goes ahead or survey responses are processed.

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reality. Such prerequisites include the closure of digital divides, sufficient material and social security, and education for all, so that everyone is granted similar privileges and has the capacities (material and cognitive) to use the Internet for the accomplishment of policy targets and ideals. In this respect, there is significance in his suggestion that, depending on the usage of Web 2.0 social software such as blogs, the Internet may ‘support grassroots digital democracy just as it can support representative and plebiscitary forms of digital democracy’ (Fuchs 2008: 134). Coleman and Blumler in turn argue that the Internet ‘possesses vulnerable potential to improve public communication’ and to cure the lack of ‘mutually communicative and respecting relationships between governments and governed’ (2009: 166). In revisiting their earlier proposal (Blumler and Coleman 2001) for the creation of a civic commons in cyberspace, they acknowledge the need for sufficient and independent policy support for a civic commons in cyberspace, specifically an online democratic space, to become feasible, sustainable and efficient. On the one hand, they contend that, in order for the obstacles to today’s representative democracy to be countered, the Internet and its interactive features could add to the establishment of a much-needed direct representative system that goes beyond formal consultations on pre-established policy agendas and stimulates an ongoing political dialogue between citizens and politicians in trusted spaces of everyday communication: ‘a key factor in making direct representation a realistic possibility has been the emergence of interactive, digital media’ (2009: 80). On the other hand, they concede that the Internet constitutes a space of power struggle that is ‘vulnerable to state-centric (and, for that matter, corporate) strategies’ (2009: 9). They suggest that state control is exerted via top-down e-democracy initiatives and that there is a lack of evidence of policy impact of bottom-up e-democracy initiatives. Thus, they argue that e-democracy initiatives can have essential political impact only if an online civic commons space is created and if sufficient policy and institutional support is offered to it. In this regard, they support the making of a space of intersecting networks that will be institutionally supported by the agency of a democratically connecting institution (2009: 182).13 Coleman and Blumler’s account raises the question of how to ensure that politicians will be interested in the citizen-grounded deliberation taking place online. 13 Coleman and Blumler define this space as trusted and shared, or in between (i.e., publicly funded but independent of government), but they barely describe its scope, its complexity, its level of inclusiveness or the means employed to ensure its effectiveness and operability. In addition, the provision of policy and institutional support for that space by a public agency is questionable. Although the authors attempt to specify the breadth of activity of such an agency, they provide a rather generic account, using various buzzwords to frame it but having very little sense of pragmatism in the way they approach it. They talk about applying a democratic governance model to this agency (2009: 184) but do not specify the model any further. In addition, there is no serious indication that governments, policy authorities or other institutions will fund, respect and empower this agency so as to make policy makers more accountable to the public(s).

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Even if political feedback becomes a requirement and the institutional agency that supports the online civic commons space has the power to make representatives take citizens’ input into account, there is no guarantee that politicians will become subject to that agency’s rules or that their decisions will reflect citizen input. We should not assume that representatives have had insufficient opportunities up to now to develop dialogue with citizens or that the proposed civic commons space is the only way to do this. At the same time, there is no way to guarantee that the suggested online civic space would not compromise the quality, value and essence of political feedback on citizen-stimulated dialogue and questioning. As van Dijk observes, e-participation initiatives scarcely have any influence ‘on institutional policy and politics’, since decision-makers question the representativeness, surplus value and quality of the input they receive from civic society through the Internet (2012: 60). Overall, it is not easy to address the effects of the Internet on democratic politics, and more than one thesis can be generated accordingly. Many of the above-mentioned accounts of the democratising potential of the Internet clearly deem social conditions and society’s democratic culture critical in determining the role of the Internet in the democratisation of politics. This in turn calls us to consider how citizens who lack the financial means and skills to use the Internet can go online and how socio-economic marginalisation and resultant political disaffection can be overcome on the Internet so as to raise people’s political interest and make decision-makers consider citizens’ voices accordingly. Again, it might be a wiser thing, as Livingstone points out (2005: 11), to ask whether the Internet’s design and its communication affordances further enhance participation of those already engaged in public affairs, and, consequently, what the actual repercussions of the Internet are for how ‘mainstream’ politics is deliberated and conducted offline. Concluding remarks I hope to have shown in this section that the study of the role of the Internet in democratic politics is marked by strong and unresolved debates between proponents and opponents of the Internet. On the one hand, I do not support that Internet users are becoming increasingly absorbed in their private online worlds of entertainment, distancing themselves from the public arena, and that, in this way, the high-choice Internet environment leads to the decline of an informed and active citizenry (Boggs 2000, Noveck 2000, Prior 2005, 2007, Putnam 2000, Scheufele and Nisbet 2002, Tewksbury, 2005). On the other hand, I am equally sceptical regarding the ‘inclusive, cooperative, participatory, direct democratic potential that is immanent in the new media’ (Fuchs 2008: 242). Both positions must consider parameters relating to technology itself (e.g., can technology determine democratic features of public affairs?) and the coexistence of online participation with phenomena of exclusion, competitiveness and top-down public communication in cyberspace.

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This section shed light on the role of the Internet in politics and its democratising potential by discussing only some aspects of citizen engagement and activism, especially those concerning social movements and citizen protesting. It did not tackle other important aspects of civic engagement in politics, such as citizens producing political information on the Internet, or voting turnout being affected by the Internet. Also, my discussion left unaddressed the ways in which the Internet could make political competition a more level playing field through opening the political gates to less powerful parties while allowing decision-makers to get closer to citizens through social media, e-government services, blogs, institutional or individual websites and other means. As regards decision-makers’ appropriation of the Internet, I do not devalue top-down initiatives on the Internet as a means of boosting democracy; on the contrary, such initiatives can currently be regarded as more effective than citizen activism online. However, my aim in this section was to make sense of the dynamics and diffusion of power between citizens and politicians on the Internet by looking more into citizen-driven, bottom-up initiatives. Future work is called on to study the following parameters if we wish to cast more light on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the role of the Internet in citizen engagement in politics and democratisation and to further understand the associated barriers: 1. The accessibility of Internet-enabled means of communication and the implications for citizen engagement in public affairs. By considering ongoing and persisting digital divides, work can inform how technology and its accessibility and usability can, among other factors, influence the appropriation of the Internet for civic-participation and democratisation purposes (digital divides are discussed below). 2. Political economy factors, such as the reproduction of mass-media structures and power relationships on the Internet and associated matters of control, ownership and market domination in cyberspace (for more on the political economy approach, see Chapter 3). Citizen empowerment and digital democracy pass through and are seriously dependent on the political economy of the Internet and the power dynamics developed around it. 3. Technology design and whether the design itself (e.g., search-engine design and settings) promotes elite views and maintains well-established power relationships or whether it equips citizens with tools and means for innovative and effective forms of civic activism. 4. People’s ability to use the Internet, and the Internet’s use for reverting the political order. Future study must consider both individual-specific and systemic barriers to online civic activism so as to produce realistic accounts of the usage of the Internet for civic activism and broader political purposes. Also, studies must look deeper into whether Internet users actually engage in activities of a revolutionary or unconventional character or whether

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users’ online activities are in fact part of their routines and within their zones of comfort (Street 2011: 268–269). The meticulous study of these parameters will hopefully produce answers to pending questions about power distribution as well as hierarchies and imbalances in citizens’ access to and participation in public affairs in the age of the Internet. Purely optimistic or uncritical considerations of political power and control in relation to the Internet lack sufficient understanding of constraints on the democratic potential of communication and activism tools in cyberspace. Along these lines, studies should acknowledge that the mere proliferation of venues and voices for the expression of opinion through online communication does not generate effects on public affairs. Finally, more than ever we need thorough, systematic, unpretentious and unbiased studies of the actual potential of the Internet to mobilise masses, activate grassroots and organise protests (online and offline) in single countries as well as at the transnational level. In closing this section, I should briefly note the relevance of the theoretical concepts highlighted in Chapter 3. Those studying the democratising role of the Internet are inescapably affected by deliberations on the concept of power. They either advance or oppose accounts that present the Internet as a space that empowers citizens and subverts previously powerful authorities and minority elites. On the one hand, studies emphasise bottom-up activism on the Internet and discuss how interactive platforms and user-generated content on the Internet can enable users to control communication flows from ‘inside’. They look into Internet-based social-resistance movements and the formation of a geographically dispersed, networked counter-public and argue that counter-power arises to challenge unequal distribution of resources and power disparities. On the other hand, studies refer to a power-struggle-loaded mosaic of online activism. They challenge optimistic accounts of civic empowerment through the Internet and refer to the state and corporate control of the Internet, the prevalence of top-down e-democracy initiatives, the minimal impact of civic mobilisation on decisionmaking and the (broadly speaking) still disparate distribution of power on the Internet. Discussions of power strongly engage the concept of agency. Consequently, questions arise with regard to whether new forms and dynamics of civic agency derive from the Internet as well as whether social agency can overcome systemic constraints such as those represented by state and other elite agencies. Finally, the themes of online activism, social movements on the Internet and cyberprotesting are related to the concept of identity, although not always in an obvious way. For people to get together and act as a group, community or collective, one or more of their ideas, visions, values or life elements must be shared or have something in common. Such ideas, values and life elements are either integral parts of personal identity or factors that drive people’s identity. In this respect, the concept of identity and its diverse manifestations can be considered a driver or at

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minimum an influential factor for individuals to be involved in civic activism in or via cyberspace. The Virtual versus the Real in the Internet Era The second study area of the bright side of the Internet that I address in this book is the ‘virtual’ and specifically the rise of virtual identity and the formation of virtual communities. In general, communication, cultural exchange and networking on the Internet have introduced the term ‘virtual’ in the sense that the Internet creates another space, a nonspace that transcends boundaries, as well as new spaces not easily compared with the offline spaces so far known (Fuchs 2008: 136). This has given rise to terms such as ‘cyberspace’ (Gibson 1984), ‘virtual community’ (Rheingold 2000) and ‘virtual togetherness’ (Bakardjieva 2003), with scholarship being deluged by debates around virtuality, virtual life and multiplicity of identity in virtual spaces. Debates are largely framed by the notion of ‘virtual reality’, which signalises the extension of human reality with a technological substratum (Fuchs 2008: 137), or by the so-called ‘real virtuality’, which is arguably constructed through electronically based, virtual processes of communication (Castells 2000a: 404). More specifically, the study of virtual identity and virtual community mainly aims to demonstrate that cyberspace constitutes an ever-evolving and user-driven space wherein users extend existing offline relationships and dynamics and even modify their ‘real’ offline reality on the grounds of personal interests and individual gratification. As a result, studies of the ‘virtual’ suggest that cyberspace enables users to overcome restrictions they experience in offline relationships such as spatiality, synchronicity, physical presence and materiality. At the same time, artificiality of the virtual reality and its effects on sociability are two of the popular themes in existing studies that problematise cyberspace and especially the extent to which cyber-reality constitutes an authentic reflection or an online version of the so-called ‘real’ offline reality. On the one hand, highly optimistic accounts bring forward user empowerment and the potential of the Internet user to form or participate in online communities, with online communities being unrestrained from the constraints and prerequisites of offline communities such as spatial proximity, physical embodiment and materiality. User empowerment in online community spaces is largely related to user identity and the unprecedented scope for selfexpression online. On the other hand, this bright potential of the Internet has been greatly debated and challenged, with a body of research looking into the ills of the Internet and how it can encourage pseudo-identities and deception in fake and highly problematic or even ‘unreal’ communities in cyberspace. On the whole, scholarly work has attempted to comprehend the standing of virtual identity and the ‘real’ status and traits of virtual communities; whether virtual communities affect pre-existing offline communities; and the implications for people’s sociability and other aspects of living. The level of success of

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scholarly attempts to shed light on virtual identity and the extent to which people’s community living is revolutionised in cyberspace is yet to be inferred, while a series of pending questions and matters must be examined further in the future. In this section I aim to demonstrate the value and complexity of the study of virtual identity and community and to point out challenges, lessons and questions that future work should address so as to understand not only the nature, function and effects of the Internet but also its linkages with non-technologically-mediated settings of identity, community living and experience. Virtuality and identity in the virtual The study of virtuality in relation to communication, social networking, community-building and connectedness took off in the mid 2000s with the mushrooming of social software, namely ‘tools that enable group-forming networks to emerge quickly’ and involve ‘numerous media, utilities, and applications that empower individual efforts, link individuals together into larger aggregates, interconnect groups, provide metadata about network dynamics, flows, and traffic, allowing social networks to form, clump, become visible, and be measured, tracked, and interconnected’ (Saveri, Rheingold and Vian 2005: 22). ‘Virtuality’ suggests the pervasiveness of the virtual in all facets of our lives, the incorporation of the virtual (and its networks) in all aspects of reality and the creation of ‘virtual reality’ (Castells’ definition of ‘real virtuality’ can be found in Chapter 3). The study of virtuality is closely concerned with the notion of identity and the way identity evolves and complicates itself online. According to Castells (2000a), symbols, practices and identities in cyberspace are not just metaphors but also comprise part of virtual reality and actual experience. The study of identity holds a major place in the field of Internet studies, since ‘a core set of questions in Internet Studies encompass precisely those surrounding matters of selfhood and identity as we are able to engage with one another in increasingly diverse and intense ways in online environments’ (Ess 2012: 276). In parallel, in late modernity, the study of identity has departed from notions of collective identity and has emphasised selfhood and the role of the individual in shaping, reshaping and making decisions for selfhood: ‘The choosing, deciding, shaping human being who aspires to be the author of his or her own life, the creator of individual identity, is the central character of our time’ (Beck and BeckGernsheim 2001: 22–23). The role of the Internet and Internet-related phenomena such as networked individualism (discussed in Chapter 3) are hugely important considerations in this respect. Existing studies have shown that identity is a complex and controversial concept that consists of a set of characteristics that are internal and external to the individual and that determine ‘who I am in relation to myself and the world where I live in’ (Tsatsou 2013: 57). In traditional approaches, identity is understood to be shaped in the early years of our life and to be relatively stable until the end of life.

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On the contrary, postmodern approaches present identity as polymorphous, fluid, multifaceted and dynamic – more of a process that involves reflection upon self and reality rather than status (Fuchs 2008: 321). Contemporary approaches have come to the understanding that ‘we can be multiple people simultaneously, with no one of these selves necessarily more valid than any other. These varied identities can have varied degrees of relation to the embodied “self”’ (Baym 2006: 41). Castells defines identity as ‘the process of construction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or a related set of cultural attributes, that is given priority over other sources of meaning’ (2010: 6). He contends that ‘for a given individual, or for a collective actor, there may be a plurality of identities’, with plurality being ‘a source of stress and contradiction in both self-representation and social action’ (2010: 6). In Castells’ definition, attention should be drawn to the notion of ‘process’, since identity is not static but a dynamic and continually shifting mechanism of meaning construction carried out through ‘individuation’ (Castells 2010: 7). Such a dynamic process of meaning-creation concerning ‘who I am’ is possible only if meaning is internalised and self-constructed. Also, such a dynamic process does not entail a single, unique and always-clear-cut dimension of identity; on the contrary, various dimensions and aspects of identity can coexist, compete or fight one another depending on the broader context and on individual circumstances. From a philosophical point of view, Rodogno identifies various forms of personal identity, such as a passport and numerical, attribution and social-function identities. Rodogno considers these forms less meaningful than ‘attachment identity’, namely the persons, objects, projects, ideas, values and norms that an individual is attached to. Attachment identity ‘may indeed have very little in common with the specification of one’s professional or social role, and … [it] is much more in line with what people think is a “deeper” understanding of “personal identity”’ (Rodogno 2012: 312). In this regard, attachment identity largely explains the individual’s emotional wellbeing, his/her cognition and much of his/her motivation and activity: ‘To know a person is to understand her, and we cannot understand a person unless we have figured out what she is attached to’ (Rodogno 2012: 313). Fuchs has argued about the ‘decomposition of centralized collective identities’ of the past (2008: 308) due to the crisis of pre-Fordist and Fordist capitalism and the rise of ‘new shared identities that are open, dynamically reconstructed, defined from the bottom [and] allow a great deal of plurality and individual expression’ (2008: 307). For Fuchs, competition, atomisation and individualisation are key drivers of today’s identity and signify the departure from collective, coherent and centrally structured identities of the past. Individualisation and the flexible association of individuals in diverse networks are arguably inherent characteristics of modernism and its phenomena of global network capitalism, knowledge labour, neoliberal deregulation and development of ‘difference’ as commodified capitalist ideology (2008: 306–307). This suggests the formation and transformation of

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identities within and through individual-oriented networks and the prevalence nowadays of networked individualism. Castells supports that the process of individuation and internalisation, which, as noted above, is integral to identity formation, is (sometimes tightly and sometimes loosely) connected with new media and Internet-based communication. Specifically, he (2010: 8) identifies the following categories of identity: legitimising, resistance and project identity. Legitimising identity is introduced by dominant institutions of society and generates formal forms of social organisation (i.e., civic society). Resistance identity is introduced by marginalised actors and leads to the formation of less or more organised community action against dominant order (e.g., nationalistic, religious, territorial and other communities). Finally, project identity is introduced by social actors who aim to transform social structures and establish new ones. For Castells, in modernity, project identity was formed and driven by legitimising identity, but in the network society the identity construction processes have changed so as ‘subjects, if and when constructed, are not built any longer on the basis of civil societies, which are in the process of disintegration, but as prolongation of communal resistance’ (2010: 11). This means that, largely as a result of ICT-enabled communication, social actors and their identities are influenced by resistance identities that mushroom and become increasingly visible through technological mediation, undermining to an extent the scope, power, validity and application of legitimising identity and its ramifications. In today’s rapidly changing technological and social landscape, scholarship is called to address questions about identity components and their framework of development, establishment and evolution. Although these are prominent questions in the age of the Internet, they have concerned scholars since the emergence of massmedia technologies and especially in relation to national identity. For instance, Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ (2006) and ‘long-distance nationalism’ (1998) as well as Appadurai’s theory of ‘mediascapes’ and ‘ethnoscapes’ and the tightly related concept of ‘deterritorialisation’ (1990) have placed ‘imagination’ at the core of the construction of mediated ethnic and national identity. According to Anderson (2006: 6), ‘all communities larger than primordial villages of face-toface contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined’. The literature has attempted to overcome ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995), has discussed the importance of diasporas (Cohen R. 1997) and ‘traveling cultures’ (Clifford 1992), and has emphasised the role of diasporic communication (Dayan 1998) as a key instance of how mediated communication can affect the development and maintenance of national identity.14 Such works paved the way for research that increasingly presents Internet technologies and their networking attributes as critically important for the 14 At the same time, the literature observed that globalisation’s boost to diasporic communication and the construction of a diasporic identity goes hand in hand with ‘nationalist resurgence’ (Castells 2010: 30). In a way, nationalist resurgence constitutes another aspect of national identity’s identity.

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strengthening of national identity ties among those located in remote places. The Internet has been presented as the communication platform that maintains a feeling of intimacy at a distance within diasporas, since it ‘offers the opportunity to directly contact people who are on the move. Communicative mobility within diasporas is thus structured in a complex and highly differentiated way and depends on the appropriation of multifaceted media environments’ (Borkert, Cingolani and Premazzi 2009: 8). Parham (2004), Mitra (2003, 2005) and Tyner and Kuhlke (2000) have brought up the examples of the Haitian, Indian and Philippine diasporas, respectively, and have emphasised the role of the Internet accordingly. They have talked about the role of the Internet in fostering not only a national but also a pan-national identity as opposed to a transnational identity (Tyner and Kuhlke 2000), in creating ‘immigrant ethos’ and in sustaining cultural memories that enhance immigrants’ sense of sharing and belonging (Mitra 2003, 2005, Skop and Adams 2009). Going beyond the case of national identity, Internet studies has largely drawn its attention away from shared identities and solid forms of community living and has called conventional processes of personal identity-construction into question. It has considered a number of matters related to personal identity in cyberspace, such as changing self, challenging individual identity, identity play, connected identity and identity reconstruction. Lindlof and Shatzer (1998: 177) suggested that identity in virtual spaces is established in what a person claims his/her identity to be like and that this sort of self-expression online is detached from the politics of the body. At the same time, an identity switch occurs online when ‘individuals claim that they have a certain social identity (gender, ethnicity, origin, age, sexual orientation, place of residence, etc.) that is not ascribed to them in the offline world’ (Fuchs 2008: 321). Chronologically, the study of identity in relation to computer-mediated communication and later to the Internet has undergone various phases (Ess 2012). It commenced in the middle of the 1980s, when discussions were associated with previous discourses of moral panic and focused on anonymity, pseudonymity, identity deceit and possible harm on the Internet. Later on, discussions were fuelled by postmodernist and poststructuralist conceptions of identity in cyberspace as multiple, fluid, disconnected from offline identity and part of so-called identity play. Turkle (1997) was one of the pioneers who took a postmodern approach and suggested that a fluid, multiple, fragmentary, disembodied and rather playful identity liberates the user on the Internet and allows plenty of space for identity play and experimentation. For Turkle, this is because the Internet allows the development and expression of ‘identity as multiplicity … a self by cycling through many selves’ (Turkle 1997: 178). Virtual worlds have been an interesting case of identity experimentation for studies in this area. Virtual worlds are ‘text- or graphics-based environments that allow multiple users to come together, socialize, and interact. Virtual worlds employ some sort of spatial metaphor, and offer affordances and constraints based on the technologies and ideologies constructing the space’ (Consalvo

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2011: 328). In this way, virtual worlds can accommodate multiple personas or selves, with selves and bodies not necessarily being bound together in a one-toone correspondence: ‘the technosocial space of virtual systems, with its irruptive ludic quality and its potential for experimentation and emergence, is a domain of nontraumatic multiplicity’ (Stone 1995: 59–60). Consalvo remarks that the identity play in virtual worlds is not always a purposeful or well-motivated activity and does not necessarily reflect ‘individuals intent on exploring hidden aspects of the self, or expressing one of their many selves’; instead, such activities can often be construed as ‘mundane uses of multiple identities, for aesthetic, strategic, as well as possibly experimental reasons’ (2011: 336). Multiuser domains (MUDs) and MOOs (MUD, object-oriented), for instance, are multiplayer real-time virtual worlds that involve role-playing games, interactive fiction and online chat, in a way offering to the user fantasy worlds populated by monsters and fictional rivalries and with dungeons, elves and killing for money being key components. Both MUDs and MOOs develop interesting dynamics of identity construction, play, transformation and expression, often constituting community spaces or spaces where community feelings can develop. In studying MUDs, Turkle argued: On MUDs, one’s body is represented by one’s own textual description, so the obese can be slender, the beautiful plain, the “nerdy” sophisticated … The anonymity of MUDs … gives people the chance to express multiple and often unexplored aspects of the self, to play with their identity and to try out new ones. MUDs make possible the creation of an identity so fluid and multiple that it strains the limits of the notion. (1997: 12)

Over the past decade there has been an increasing trend for more modest approaches that challenge the postmodern theses of the 1990s on the multiplicity of online identity and its dissociation from offline identity. Actually, even before the twenty-first century, one can find accounts that highlight the links between online and offline identity. For instance, in her early study of the MUD BlueSky, Kendall (1999: 68) stressed identity continuity and interpersonal responsibility and suggested strong links between offline social structures and online behaviours and identity orientations. Nevertheless, according to Ess (2012), a growing body of empirical research in the new century has begun to recognise the blurred boundaries between online and offline identity. While most of the literature in the 1990s was focused on the elements, tools and affordances of identity play online and the effects of identity play on offline identity development and alteration, quite recently emphasis has been placed on the complex connections and dynamics between online and offline identities. This switch of focus brings up an emerging consensus on the need to oppose dualisms such as that of online versus offline and real versus unreal in order to understand online identity a little better (Bakardjieva and Gaden 2012, Cohen J.E. 2012, Ess 2012, Rodogno 2012, Schechtman 2012). In reality, such a middle-way and increasingly popular position aims to underline

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the ‘continuities between our online and offline expressions of identity’ (Ess and Dutton 2013: 9). In the edited special issue of Philosophy & Technology in 2012, Ess reported on contemporary cross-disciplinary research on identity that brings together philosophers and scholars in Internet studies. As he notes, such research favours the ‘continuities between online and offline senses and experiences of selfhood’ (2012: 275) and thus challenges ideas of disembodiment, identity fluidity and multiplicity as well as the existence of radically different identities in cyberspace. Cohen J.E. (2012) specifically challenges the idea of disembodiment and suggests that users remain embodied and located within real geographies when they form communities online. For Cohen J.E., virtual space is inhabited by real people who do not disappear into the virtual world but rather remain present and situated in the offline world, thus proving the wrongness of the dualism between the virtual and offline worlds and the importance of the ‘embodied perception’ of experiences within cyberspace. Along similar lines, Rodogno’s (2012) ‘attachment identity’ (see above for a brief discussion) is perceived as much affected by the context, since what we attach ourselves to is affected by the context within which we position ourselves and the ‘objects’ of attachment. Rodogno challenges those who think that online spaces and the disembodied interaction that occurs in them constitute a new ‘context’ and create a sui generis personal identity. On the contrary, he argues from a philosophical point of view and on the basis of the tenet of narrative identity15 that ‘it is, in most cases, misguided to think that the same individual may have distinct online and offline identities. There are, however, instances in which extended online activities may have interesting repercussions on our personal identity in one or the other sense’ (2012: 322). Using the example of Facebook, Rodogno (2012) argues that personal identity is affected by online contexts but that these do not shape a different personal identity to that in offline spaces. This is because, he continues, the amount and quality of information we provide about ourselves online is associated with our offline personal identity and does not generate or amount to a new form of identity. In studying Second Life, Schechtman (2012) similarly suggests that avatars constitute an extension rather than a disruption of the creator’s or the adopter’s offline identity, as they constitute part of the broader narrative of selfhood. In their empirical paper, Bakardjieva and Gaden (2012) take a Foucaultian approach and analyse Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking sites and blogs. They argue that the Internet holds an identity-liberating potential, which, however, obtains its significance through the offline material-based bodily identities and associated constraints. They suggest that what exists is an ‘interplay between liberty and domination, ethical choice and imposition set in motion by the Web 2.0 technologies of the self’ (2012: 405). 15 Rodogno defines the tenet of narrative identity as ‘our interpretation of ourselves’ and considers it ‘constitutive of who we are’ (2012: 326).

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On the whole, balanced accounts of the links between online and offline identity rightfully challenge one-sided postmodern theses about the revolutionary effects of the Internet on personal identity and the supposed liberation of the individual in cyberspace. However, even such accounts cannot escape a number of limitations. For instance, Rodogno’s thesis seems to offer a rather narrow – though elaborate – account of personal identity that presumes authenticity of self-representation on the Internet and thus suggests the inevitability of connection between online selfhood and offline identity. Self-representation can be multifaceted and can take different forms online from those offline as often Internet users experience online life and virtuality not in direct association but rather in parallel with offline living and experiences. In this way, Rodogno and others in the same camp overlook the existence of fake or pseudonymous identities on the Internet, or simply of identities that are barely associated with the visible elements of the offline personal identity (e.g., presenting oneself online as ‘something else’ for the sake of fun, play or experimentation). This is not to reject Rodogno’s main premise but to suggest that other possibilities can coexist, thus shedding some light on the liberating or transformative identities that people adopt in cyberspace. Attachment identity is often not expressed or accomplished offline due to personal or systemic constraints and it can find space for fulfilment through practices in cyberspace that in turn can differ from offline acts and life experiences. We often identify internalised identities with those evident in offline spaces, but indiscernible aspects of identity can actually hold more significant meaning and stronger standing than those visible to others. Internet users are frequently involved in online acts that seemingly contrast offline identities, whereas in reality they can reveal hidden or invisible aspects of those identities. Think, for instance, of a paedophile with no obvious paedophilic behaviour offline who adopts a ‘child’ pseudo-identity on the Internet so as to be in touch with children online. This user presents a fake online identity that, however, says a lot about hidden or invisible aspects of his offline self. At the same time, this is not to say that the Internet is the cause of new, multiple or alternative identities; it is only a space with its own distinct rules, tools and affordances that can enable self-expression and identity liberation to a greater degree than offline spaces. Online identity does not necessarily dismiss, contrast or extend offline identity, since, from this perspective, all possibilities are open and worthy of exploration. At the same time, it is important to empirically study cyberspace affordances in relation to user selfpresentation and self-interpretation, such as global scope and multimodality of online communication; multilayered and ever-expanding forms of interactivity; anonymity; and lack of physical presence. Research faces difficulties not only in defining and demarcating the concept of identity but also in disentangling the complex dynamics and processes involved in identity formation and development in virtual spaces. To make a better sense of identity in a virtual context, I am currently undertaking research (in collaboration with Gillian Youngs) to associate identity and identity alterations with use of technology, associated forms of literacy and the interaction between technology

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and the user.16 What this ongoing research aims to demonstrate is that the way the individual interacts with technology during use and the resulting discourses, practices and lessons involve established as well as unsettled elements of user identity and entail the formation of a sort of digital identity or a digital aspect of identity: ‘Identity exists before use of and interaction or engagement with technology. Thus it influences the user-technology interaction and resulting literacies while also being affected by new, enhancing or contrasting identities and associated experiences, knowledge and ideas online’ (Tsatsou 2013: 57). In this respect, I endorse Fuchs’ argument in support of the two-way influence between online and offline identity, since anonymity in online communication ‘enables the construction of identities online. These identities are based on and connected to offline life; they are a continuously changing product of online activity and they feed back onto the offline world’ (Fuchs 2008: 314). Today, it is Web 2.0 and its affordances for user interaction through social media, online communities, blogs and wikis that have ‘led the way to the explosion of do-it-yourself content and conversation media and alwaysthere personal networks’. Such ‘novel technologies of the self’ (Bakardjieva and Gaden 2012: 405) and chiefly online community spaces elucidate the existence or absence of intersections between online and offline identity (and so between online and offline community living), also highlighting associated benefits and matters of controversy. Before I commence the discussion of virtual communities, I suggest that, in order for studies of identity and the Internet to reveal the full potential for identity enhancement online, the following questions should be explored further: 1. What is the empowering potential of the Internet and its affordances for user self-expression and identity-shaping not only within cyberspace but also offline? Instead of asking whether online identities derive from offline identities or not, research could place its starting point in the online context and consider that context’s implications for offline identity formations. 2. How possible is it to empirically distinguish the differences and similarities between online and offline identity and the associated dialogue between the individual user, the techno-system and the broader systemic conditions? 3. When can identity elements constitute a coherent identity whole and when – if at all – can they lead to identity fragmentation? Accordingly, what is the role of the Internet? Communities in the virtual Tightly connected to the notion of virtual identity is that of virtual community, which suggests identity similarities among people who form a community in 16 For more, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/discovering-digital-me.

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cyberspace. Virtual communities constitute one of the key components of virtuality and considerably affect the shape and traits of virtual reality. In general, community is a ‘highly ambiguous and nebulous term, which needs to be treated with caution and care’ (Worley 2005: 486). For Kendall (2011), to define community is to define the undefinable, since community members embrace empathy, affection, support, interdependence, consensus, shared values and proximity, and often their opposites (e.g., aggression, dispute, conflict, diversity of ideas). The fuzziness of this concept and the abundance of its definitions feed both simple and complex approaches to the actual manifestation of community online and offline. Fernback remarks that ‘the concept of community, online or offline, has become increasingly hollow as it evolves into a pastiche of elements that ostensibly “signify” community’ (2007: 53). More specifically, as Delanty (2003) has remarked, in disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, community can be defined as tradition, a moral force or a symbolic construct. The third of these reflects Cohen A.P.’s (1985) argument that community should be understood more as a symbolic construct than as a social or institutional formation. Tyler identifies ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ communities, with the former being ‘a synonym for people’ and the latter being centred on symbolic or interest communities (2006: 23–24). Tyler (2006: 24) contends that in the latter form community ‘is making a play for power’, for example through ‘groups asserting identity, not on the ground of locality, but in terms of some form of common origin’ or ‘other shared, inherited characteristics’ or even by sharing ‘commitment or vocation’. These ‘strong’ forms of community are also reflected in the concept of ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 2006) and strongly determine the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. An increasingly salient theme in the conceptualisation of community has been the role of technology in reshaping existing social relations and potentially providing the catalyst for the emergence of new forms of social relations: ‘The varied ideas about communal existence depict an evolutionary and dynamic construction of community that is globally relevant given the proliferation of online communication technology’ (Fernback 2007: 50). By the same token, the study of community (in cyberspace) has become a prominent topic in the study of the Internet: ‘it is safe to say that the concept of community is as central to presentday studies of the Internet as it was during the earlier years of sociology. The main difference seems to be redirection of emphasis from geographic place to a feeling or sense of collectivity’ (Jankowski 2002: 37). Theories discussed in Chapter 3 and specifically the concepts of agency, power and identity are important for making sense of how technology affects community. Especially, discussions concerning online identity and the links between online and offline identity, such as those presented above, have influenced the study of how technology can challenge conventional processes of community formation and pave the way for a new community landscape in which mediatisation, deterritorialisation and imagination prevail (Appadurai 1997, Tomlinson 1999).

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According to Yuan (2012: 2), ‘discussions of online community in new media studies are typically influenced by the liberal and modern tradition in Western sociology that relegates community to the past, as an antiquated social formation’. In a way, the main question in today’s scholarship is whether ICTs have ‘created powerful new expressions of community that go far beyond all hitherto forms of community’ and have offered people ‘new possibilities for expression’ (Delanty 2003: 167). There are numerous studies on the formation of online communities, their traits,17 their distinctiveness from traditional communities and their role in empowering the individual (e.g., Baym 1998, 2000, Bakardjieva 2003, Feenberg and Bakardjieva 2004a, 2004b, Fernback 1999, 2007, Fox 2004, Jones 1995, 1998, Kendall 2011, Rheingold 2000, Ward 1999, Wellman and Gulia 1999).18 Theoretical and empirical work on online communities has also raised questions regarding ‘the good and the ill, the promise and the danger inherent in this new form of social life’ (Feenberg and Bakardjieva 2004b: 38). However, the use of the term ‘community’ for describing social relationships on the Internet has not been accepted by everyone. For instance, it has been claimed that the notion of community is actually illusory when applied on the Internet and that doing so allows space to para-social rather than real phenomena (Calhoun 1991). As early as 1999, Fernback was concerned with the problems in conceptualising and framing the term ‘community’, and ‘cybercommunity’ in particular. He separated definitions of community into functional (which refer to physical and tangible communities – e.g., those formed by geographical proximity) and symbolic (which refer to ideas, values or identity as the substance of community – e.g., religious, philosophical or virtual communities) (1999: 204). He suggested that both categories encounter challenges, such as the inescapably variable elements and boundaries of communities over time: ‘community has an elastic character as it expands and contracts to accommodate fringe elements, to incorporate new symbolic meanings into its lexicon, and to withstand threats from outside its boundaries’ (1999: 205). The building of new spaces and types of human connection in cyberspace posed for Fernback new challenges to how community is understood, defined and framed. Especially, the bodilessness and placelessness in cyberspace challenge, according to him, the way we understand social relationships and community-building processes and seriously invite us to re-evaluate the importance of (symbolic) meaning versus – strictly speaking – the form- or structure-related attributes that are assigned to a community when emphasis is placed on its physical or material standing (1999: 210). Much later, Fernback’s (2007) qualitative work suggested a symbolic-interactionist approach so as to free research of the controversy and structural-functional baggage of the term ‘community’. In addition, Bakardjieva’s ethnographic study referred to the concept of ‘community’ in a ‘virtual togetherness’ context as normatively charged 17 A list of characteristics or ‘qualities’ of virtual communities can be found in Fuchs (2008: 314). 18 A review of studies of virtual communities is offered in Fernback (2007).

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and vaguely defined, since ‘whatever definition one may choose to give it, would then be one possible form of virtual togetherness among many’ (2003: 294). The problem of defining and consequently researching virtual communities greatly lies in the notion of place, since ‘definitions of community largely have centered around the unproblematized notion of place, a “where” that social scientists can observe, visit, stay and go, engage in participant observation’ (Jones 1998: 15). The notion of ‘place’ is substantially problematised in online settings, with researchers being concerned with how to delimit, observe and thus research virtual community sites. This creates a tension between the virtual and the real and poses the question of whether the virtual is actually real. The difficulty in spatially demarcating and physically manifesting communities in cyberspace and thus in defining the boundaries of socially constructed spaces on the Internet poses the question of whether cybercommunities exist or not. While often the real is placed against the virtual, ‘is it necessary to be able to conceive of cyberspace in spatial terms in order for it to be real?’ (Fernback 1999: 213), or is it possible for a community to exist across space and in fleeting and constantly negotiated locales such as those embraced in cyberspace? What has largely been acknowledged is that the symbolic dimensions of a community (e.g., explicit community goals, concrete forms of community-driven communication and action, shared identity and values among community members etc).assign meaning and substance to virtual communities regardless of the lack of physical or spatial specification – ‘substance rather than form, meaning rather than structure’ (Fernback 1999: 215). In considering more carefully the particularities of the symbolic standing of virtual communities, imagination and subjective perception of community existence and belonging appear as critically important for legitimating the real status of virtual communities. For Watson, the perceptive or imaginative dimension of online communities disentangles the controversies arising from the term ‘virtual’ and the fact that this term is often conflated with the ‘unreal’: ‘the entailments of calling online communities “virtual” include spreading and reinforcing a belief that what happens online is like a community but isn’t really a community’ (1997: 129, italics in original). For others, to study communities in cyberspace one has to adopt an interpretive methodology that will approach cybercommunity as ‘an entity and a process … an arena in which passions are inflamed, problems are solved, social bonds are formed, tyranny is exercised, love and death are braved, legacies are born, factions are splintered, and alliances dissolved’ (Fernback 1999: 217). This suggests that, through observation, reflexivity and other ethnographic conventions,19 research can critically disentangle the dynamics, agency, roles, 19 As part of Internet researchers’ aim to overcome past popular dualisms in the study of the Internet (e.g., online versus offline; real versus unreal; technology versus society; good versus bad), the study of online communities has evolved not only with respect to how virtual communities are conceptualised and framed but also with regard to the methodologies employed and the way researchers attempt to examine the ‘virtual’ alongside the ‘real’ and the ‘online’ together with the ‘offline’. As Kendall remarks from a methodological point

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power and ideological struggles and alliances within a virtual community setting. In addition, if we apply Feenberg and Bakardjieva’s (2004a: 5) five attributes of a community – symbols and ritual practices, common rules, mutual aid, mutual respect, authentic communication – to the study of virtual communities, we can address the question of the existence of those communities. Case-study research in particular can track the online space or spaces where communities are fostered and test whether Feenberg and Bakardjieva’s five attributes – among others – exist in the communication, interaction and broader collective activity that take place online. This research field is marked by questions concerning not only the existence of virtual communities but also their distinctiveness from and effects on offline bonds of connection. Here debates go beyond questions of placelessness and physical presence. Anonymity, lack of spatiotemporal constraints, lack of visual or physical cues, time flexibility in communication, membership mutability and volatility of forms and rules of communication all are matters that have seized the attention of scholars who study the distinctiveness and effects of virtual community. Yuan contends that ‘the general tendency in new media scholarship seems to abolish the concept of community and all its “utopian” yet “conservative” assumptions in favor of a progressive individualistic conception of social interaction and social order’ (2012: 5). It has broadly been argued that what prevails online are flexible and individual-centred community formations that have completely changed the traditional realm of community networks and living: ‘Communities can no longer be conceived as homogenous values and ways of life of groups that allow identification, solidarity, and togetherness’ (Fuchs 2008: 307). Studies have pointed to fluidity as one of the structural characteristics of virtual communities, suggesting that loose and time-insensitive or asynchronous relationships are formed in cyberspace given the online-bounded character of such relationships and the low level of effort required for online community maintenance: The connection is not time sensitive. Messages are not necessarily sent in real time and can often remain on listservs or in digests for months or years … it takes little time or structure to create community on-line, and therefore the effort to maintain structure and community is not as highly valued … On-line messages can be sent at any time and to anyone and can be responded to when time is available. This level of access does not transfer to face-to-face situations where different social, personal, and community rules exist. (Costigan 1999: xxii)

At the same time, scholars early on contended that what distinguishes virtual communities from traditional communities is the fact that virtual communities are intentionally created by people who share some interests and revolve around of view: ‘In recent research on community and the Internet, the emphasis is shifting from ethnographic studies of virtual communities, to studies of people’s blending of offline and online contacts’ (2011: 320).

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texts or tropes introduced from nonvirtual venues (Lindlof and Shatzer 1998). Lindlof and Shatzer suggested that, contrary to traditional communities, virtual communities require initiative, attentional focus and dedicated use (1998: 174). Essentially, these are pre-requisites for sustaining a virtual community, since ‘when members can easily come and go, when many “members” do not even post, and when identities cannot be verified beyond the current situation, the power of a community ethos may be weakened considerably’ (1998: 184). Wellman and Gulia echoed this by arguing that: People on the Net have a greater tendency to base their feelings of closeness on the basis of shared interests rather than on the basis of shared social characteristics such as gender and socio-economic status. So they are probably relatively homogeneous in their interests and attitudes just as they are probably relatively heterogeneous in the participants’ age, social class, ethnicity, lifecycle stage, and other aspects of their social backgrounds. (Wellman and Gulia 1999: 185)

In considering such remarks on the distinctiveness of virtual communities, one could argue that, in today’s globalised world, traits of virtual communities such as fluidity (i.e., they can come and go at any time) can be met in offline communities as well (e.g., in transnational and purpose-specific communities). Also, it is questionable whether online communities are reliant on purely loose relationships, while, in the current time of rapidly spreading mobile communication, synchronicity in communication has become possible and mostly dependent on user preference and selection. In addition, the efforts required for maintaining an online community vary and, when a community has a specific purpose of existence, scale of membership, degree of activism and level of effort can have enormous effects on its growth and sustenance. Finally, online communities are inspired by offline connections while they increasingly feed new forms and types of offline connectedness, community-building and collective activism. Accounts of the effects of online communities on the growth of offline networks provide fertile terrain to illustrate the entwining of online and offline communities. In an overview of the research field of the sociability effects of the Internet, van Dijk (2006) concluded that – though in the 1990s much scholarship considered Internet use a factor of social isolation, loneliness and even depression or a reason for low-quality social interactions (e.g., Kraut et al. 1998, Nie 2001, Nie and Erbring 2002) – from the end of the 1990s onwards a growing wave of research has shown that evidence is mixed. Van Dijk (2006: 167) inferred that virtual communities lack the coherence and stability required to be sustained in the long term and that the Internet rather reinforces existing trends in socialisation and possible disparities in community participation: ‘The Internet is a powerful tool that … supports those already strong in social contact, civic engagement and sense of community and it enables those weak in these things to further isolate themselves’ (2006: 169). Thus, he challenges the argument concerning ‘interest

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sharing’ and ‘homogeneity’ within virtual communities and opposes the idea that virtual communities can make up for the weakening of traditional offline communities. Although he does not dismiss virtual communities, he contends that they will increasingly function as components of offline communities and so he proposes the term ‘communities online’ instead of ‘online communities’ or ‘virtual communities’. In addition, Fuchs (2008) dismisses the argument that social alienation is dominant in virtual community spaces. He counter-argues that alienation is a broader phenomenon and that online ‘communes’ can provide an alternative for the ‘construction of new social relationships’ (2008: 308). Besides, qualitative research has shown that appropriation of the Internet involves a rich repertoire of activities and provides room for new, unimaginable and also empowering technological practices, inviting us to revisit the dichotomy between virtual community and real/genuine community (Bakardjieva 2003). In such a modest spirit of argumentation, a body of research has attempted to discard both optimistic accounts of novel community living in virtuality and gloomy perspectives on the social isolation that Internet users presumably undergo in cyberspace: Online forums stage superficial fun, deeply spiritual experiences, and practically useful exchanges without discrimination. In defiance of both optimists and prophets of gloom, they are rarely either uplifting or degrading and much more often simply amusing, instrumental or inconsequential. They give rise to specialized relationships, not all embracing solidarities. They are driven by fleeting interests, not unconditional commitments. In short, they have colonized a technical system that is intended for information exchange by implanting within it a staggering variety of old, hybrid, and brand new forms of human sociality. (Feenberg and Bakardjieva 2004b: 39)

Accounts of the effects of online communities mostly involve questions concerning the quality of online communities, the kinds of bonds we form online and those bonds’ broader implications in offline spaces (Kendall 2011). A key idea echoed in debates steered by these questions is that of ‘networked individualism’ (Wellman 2002, Wellman et al. 2003) or ‘me-centered’ networks (Castells 2001: 128) (discussed in Chapter 3). The notion of networked individualism defies the foundations of traditional community-centred and collective-oriented networks, also inquiring Internet users’ sociability in general and the role of the Internet in community formation and evolvement in particular. Whereas studies of offline communities refer to ‘group dynamics such as assimilation, acculturation, adaptation, and participation’ as well as ‘the opposite: expulsion, expatriation, and exile’, online communities are discussed in terms of ‘posting, cross-posting, reading, lurking, and flaming, which don’t imply being part of a whole’ (Lotfalian 1996: 118). While for offline communities scholars examine communal activity and acceptance by the community as prerequisites for the standing of the community, the discourses around online communities are largely centred on the individual

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and the level of activism and degree of positive or negative action demonstrated by individual community members. Furthermore, communicative practices on the Internet and whether feelings of intimacy, solidarity and connection are present online have largely shaped debates around virtual community effects. For Rheingold, feelings and bonds of emotion are inescapable in virtual communities: ‘Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on … public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace’ (2000: xx). Rheingold highlighted the importance of shared meanings and contexts of connection on the Internet, but this has been opposed by more pragmatic accounts, according to which online communicative practices bring with them the traits of offline communication practices, thus not always accommodating shared contexts of connection and meaning-shaping. For instance, Fernback’s qualitative interviews showed that members of virtual communities ‘speak of mutual respect and caring, but demur at the notion of true closeness’ and that ‘continuity and sustained interaction tend to be rare in online groups’ (2007: 63). Fernback’s interviewees confirmed the lack of genuine communal sentiments in their online relations (2007: 62). In this way, he concluded that ‘online social relations provide opportunities to explore new avenues of community building, but few have committed deeply enough to the endeavor to move beyond that metaphor of convenient togetherness without true responsibility’ (2007: 63). In turn, Fuchs20 (2008) identifies three levels of virtual communities: the technological, wherein a common technological infrastructure is made available to users/members of a virtual community; the social or communicative, wherein continuous communication takes place thanks to the sharing of general interests or topics of communication among community members along with the availability of a common technological infrastructure; and finally the cooperative, wherein virtual-community members develop cooperation and competition for meaning generation and ‘shared meanings and joint meaning production’ can be developed (2008: 312). The third level is the highest that virtual-community practices can reach and, although many never reach it, this level is important for the development of ‘a feeling of togetherness and belonging, shared meanings and beliefs, constructed new meanings, common values, intimacy, emotional commitment, bonds, emotional ties, consent values, and interpretations’ (2008: 313).21

20 Fuchs (2008: 310) adopts an integrative approach, according to which dynamics and processes in virtual communities stem from the dialectical relationship between broader social (and community) conditions and the technological systems that offer space and context to virtual communities. 21 According to Fuchs (2008: 319), Wikipedia is an example of a self-organising, dynamic virtual community in which cooperation, shared feelings and goals, and a sense of togetherness are all present. This is the case due to technological, economic, social, cultural

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In addition, virtual-community research addresses the course and internal dynamics of virtual communities over time and in relation to identity and offline community spaces. Specifically, research addresses the ‘formation and demise of virtual communities; conflict, cooperation, and social control; and identity, including both the possibility for online identity deception, and the connection between offline social identities and online interactions’ (Kendall 2011: 314). Matters concerning the life course and identity appear to be of greater interest to those studying online communities than to those studying offline communities. This may be because the history of online communities is still short and rather insufficiently explored, while the conditions of their birth and demise appear intriguing due to the joint power of emerging technology and the ever-present human need for communication, bonding and connectivity. From a critical political economy perspective, Fuchs considers the driving role of forces of individualisation and erosion of collective identities in today’s capitalist structures of socio-economic life and contends that ‘many individuals feel alienated and search for new communities that function according to principles that transcend the dominant logic of competition and capitalism that today causes feelings of alienation’ (2008: 308). In this sense, conflict and collaboration in offline spaces are ever present on the Internet, making cyberspace a contested terrain where community formations embrace various levels, degrees and qualities of struggle and cooperation (Fuchs 2008: 313). At the same time, conflict and cooperation within online communities appear to acquire forms and dimensions not often met in offline communities. Virtual communities are vulnerable to conflict and dispute mainly due to the rule-and-control vacuum often experienced online and also because of the anonymity and identity fuzziness that online communication is marked by. As Kendall (2011: 317) observes, power disparities in online communities, as expressed through software programming and management in particular, can constitute a source of conflict and breach. This is not to say that power imbalances are a new phenomenon in community functioning but that in online spaces such imbalances acquire new forms, involve technological expertise in role allocation and somehow extend power struggles that are intrinsic to human nature and present in the offline world. The above issues entail questions with regard to whether virtual communities can exist independently of offline communities and as long as Internet-facilitated interaction, communication and shared interests are in place (Kendall 2011: 310). Kendall makes a case for the overlaps between online and offline communities: ‘Even in virtual communities that primarily exist online, participants often seek to meet one another face-to-face. Meanwhile, many offline groups seek to enhance their communities through online participation’ (2011: 320). Nevertheless, the debate between those for and those against online communities and their role in offline communication is inexorable, with some researchers portraying virtual and symbolic structures that enable cognition, communication and cooperation processes in this community. For a discussion of Wikipedia, read Fuchs (2008: 315–320).

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communities ‘as liberating, equitable and empowering’ and with critics supporting ‘an idealized notion of “real” community signifying a state of immediacy and locality of human relationships that resists technological mediation’ (Bakardjieva 2003: 293). Diverse and often conflicting research evidence does not place us in a sufficiently good position to reach confident conclusions on the role of online communities and online communication more broadly in offline communication and community engagement (Kendall 2011: 321). Concluding remarks Drawing on the complex phenomenon of virtuality and the potential benefits of virtual living for the user, identity in cyberspace and virtual communities comprise an area of excitement and, not surprisingly, acute debate for researchers. As regards identity, some scholars support the masking of identity or the adoption of multiple identities online, others regard online spaces as liberating of identity and others highlight the continuities between online and offline identity. My position is that online spaces and practices can enable identity flexibility, identity ‘trials’ and various combinations of well-established and emerging identity elements. Online identity can serve the user’s need for expression and selfidentification or it might be steered by the user’s desire to tailor personal identity to systemic (and often technological) requirements and developments. However, studies in the field have not yet come to clear and consistent conclusions about the benefits and harms that may arise from identity formations on the Internet and the level of sustainability, flexibility and fluidity of online identities. There is also a lot of space for further study on whether virtual identity can be completely or partly separated from offline identity and the extent to which online and offline function complementarily to each other. Regarding cybercommunities, Internet users who perceivably share some identity features can shape various types of collective interaction, communication and action online, with some researchers suggesting that this constitutes community spaces and with others challenging the community status of groups in cyberspace. Virtual communities pave the way for scholars to propose highly debated and continually evolving typologies of community spaces in an attempt to reflect on the interplay between human and technological actors. In such typologies the concept of identity is at the core, with the possibility for self-expression, identity flexibility and identity multiplicity being significant factors for the shaping of patterns of behaviour and action within and across virtual communities. While identity can be considered a driving force of communities in cyberspace, virtual dynamics and their affordances complicate identity and in turn affect people’s decision to socialise and participate in cybercommunities. The debate between virtual and real is intensely present in relation to virtual communities, since some consider virtual communities unreal while many others consider their presence constitutive of an increasingly complex community mosaic. Similarly, the importance and effects of virtual communities yield diverse and continually evolving evidence, illustrating the complexity of the phenomenon of virtual communities and the

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implications the phenomenon can have on people’s sociability, community living in offline spaces and other aspects of their lives. My position is that research into virtual communities must involve more systematic, longitudinal and both generic and case-study work to better understand the role of technology in community living as well as the internal dynamics in community spaces in cyberspace and, maybe more importantly, the intertwined relationship between virtual and offline communities and their evolution over time. There is clearly a need for more and more consistent, comprehensive and long-lasting research that will address pending questions and yield insights into issues such as: 1. Technological platforms and services and how they can foster communities, as well as what sorts of communities they support. Also, how various forms of technology can variously determine the intersection between online and offline community spaces and activities (Kendall 2007, 2011). 2. Control versus connection in online communities and the tension between the two: ‘competing desires for control and connection … directly impact the ability to form or enhance online communities’ (Kendall 2011: 322). 3. Online communication and its implications for the enhancement of both online and offline social capital. Does the increase of social capital online entail a similar enhancement of offline sociability? Does offline social capital influence how Internet users socialise and become connected online? The study of the virtual and specifically that of virtual identity and virtual community illustrates the relevance of some of the theoretical concepts that hold a prominent place in Internet studies, such as those discussed in Chapter 3. Specifically, apart from the self-evident centrality of the concept of identity in the study of virtual identities and communities, agency and the division between individualism and collectivism constitute integral conceptual elements of this area of study. Research aims to tackle the extent to which virtual identity comprises the triumph of individual agency versus the often restrictive and constraining spatial, social and cultural structures outside cyberspace. Based on the idea of the interplay between structure and agency in high modernity, Giddens (1991: 5) describes the self as a ‘reflexive project’, continuously revised, though coherent, through the diversity of options given. In addition, the concept of agency sheds light on purposeful and individual-centred networks on the Internet and how they can be turned into meaningful and largely dynamic communities that can complement or even, in some cases, substitute collective- and systemic-driven formations in offline environments. In this respect, emphasis can be placed on the concept of networked individualism, which has significantly informed the study of virtual communities. According to Wellman et al. (2003), each individual personalises his or her own community on the Internet and this is ‘neither a prima facie loss nor gain in community, but rather a complex, fundamental transformation in the nature of community’. Similarly, agency matters in relation to the prominence of

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human or technologically embedded agents in the formation and functioning of virtual communities. Finally, the study of virtual identity and virtual community has implications for how we conceptualise and capture instances of power, with the networked individual being considered able to form selfhood online and to engage in novel forms of sociability through joining virtual communities that overcome spatial and cultural barriers. Virtual communities are often presented as empowering for the individual and challenging for old, traditional community formations, with the power of the individual contrasting with the power of structural and collective forces. At the same time, critics challenge such an optimistic approach and consider minority or malevolent forces empowered on the Internet through creating pseudoidentities and fake or malicious community formations in cyberspace, thus putting users’ security, privacy and their entire Internet-use experience at risk. The Internet and its Risks Digital divides: meaning, causes and the future One of the major areas of critique and controversy concerning the ‘dark’ side of the Internet is that of digital divides. Digital divides signal the disparate presence of the Internet and associated digital technologies in people’s lives. They pose questions about the degree to which people are digitally included and whether exclusion from Internet technologies, content and services may exacerbate social inequalities and disfavour parts of the population in social, cultural, economic and political terms. Complex, ever-shifting and multifaceted digital divides have been extensively studied in the field of Internet studies for more than two decades (e.g., Bradbrook and Fisher 2004, Cammaerts et al. 2003, DiMaggio et al. 2004, Epstein, Nisbet and Gillespie 2011, Hargittai 2002, Livingstone and Helsper 2007, Min 2010, Norris 2001, Peter and Valkenburg 2006, Selwyn 2004, Tsatsou 2011a, 2011b, 2012, 2013, Tsatsou et al. 2013, van Deursen and van Dijk 2010, van Deursen, van Dijk and Peters 2011, van Dijk 2005, van Dijk and Hacker 2003). Digital divides have been embedded in systems of social, cultural, economic and policy activity and similarly their study has been undertaken in various disciplines. Studies have aimed to understand the nature and drivers of inequalities in the access to, use of and effects of use of the Internet and the repercussions of such inequalities for social inclusion of individuals or population groups. Research has largely demonstrated the existence of gaps and disparities in the access to and use of the Internet and their restricting effects on people’s endeavours to take advantage of the potential benefits of the Internet, such as those discussed in the previous section (i.e., civic mobilisation and participation in virtual living). Studies have also highlighted the continuing presence of social marginalisation and exclusion risks for those who find themselves digitally excluded. This section discusses works on digital divides and brings forward a rather sceptical account of whether the Internet is actually for all; whether it comprises a

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fully inclusive technology of information, communication, networking, activism and collaboration; and the present and future role it can play not only through its presence but also through its absence or restricted appropriation into people’s lives. I conclude this section with suggestions on how Internet studies could (and maybe should) address digital divides in the future so that the shifting causes and persistently debated effects of digital divides are presented in a timely and informative way. Digital divides: beyond access to and use of technology Initially understood in the singular – as ‘the’ digital divide – conventional definitions of the phenomenon have focused mainly on access and use/nonuse divisions (Castells 2001: 248, van Dijk 2005: 3, Wilson 2004: 300). Research into the phenomenon commenced in the 1990s and involved the study of inequalities ‘created between those individuals, firms, institutions, regions, and societies that have the material and cultural conditions to operate in the digital world, and those who cannot, or cannot adapt to the speed of change’ (Castells 2001: 270). Essentially, it involved the study of ‘the gap between those who do and those who do not have access to computers and the Internet’ (van Dijk 2005: 1) and of ‘any and every disparity within the online community’ (Norris 2001: 4). The study of digital divides can be split into three phases (Livingstone 2005). In the first phase, from the early to the mid 1990s, studies (e.g., Benjamin and Blunt 1992, Dertouzos 1991, Samuels 1994, Wresch 1996, Winner 1993) mostly drew on a diffusion rhetoric, rooted in the diffusion theory of the 1950s and 1960s (Tsatsou 2011a: 320) and greatly upheld by Rogers’ (1995) technology diffusion approach. The diffusion rhetoric served to examine binary gaps in the access to computer and Internet technology and to drive ambitious policy plans for the closure of digital gaps in the future. From its outset, the study of the phenomenon involved research into ‘unequal access to technologies or digital exclusion at an international as well as at a local level’ (Cammaerts and van Audenhove 2003: 7). The concept of access – namely, access to computers and the Internet – was at the heart of early studies and formed the basis for the majority of those studies to summarise the phenomenon as ‘the uneven spread of the new media’ (Mansell 2002: 407). Thus, initial research mostly identified the manifestation of digital divides with the lack of access to technological equipment in its attempt to make sense of, to measure and to explain the phenomenon. Early research largely ignored qualitative nuances in the use of technology and the effects of use, while it supported dualisms along the lines of ‘information haves’ and ‘information have-nots’ and ‘inclusion versus exclusion’. Such dualisms went hand in hand with quantitative (i.e., numeric and highly descriptive) accounts of digital divides. As Lengsfeld (2011) suggests, quantitative studies are primarily concerned with access indicators as opposed to Internet use and do not go beyond binary divisions to consider disparities in actual levels of use. Major contributions in this first phase (e.g., Rogers 1995) espoused narrow and quantitative accounts of the phenomenon, measuring diffusion of technology and overlooking qualities

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of technology diffusion and the contexts wherein diffusion takes place. Such a quantitative outlook examined the split between access and nonaccess to digital technology and between use and nonuse of it, as well as the role of economic and other quantifiable factors such as socio-demographics. The majority of early studies reported on the division between ‘haves and have-nots’ alongside socioeconomic and demographic disparities and aimed to report on socio-economically and demographically disadvantaged categories of the population who were less likely to have access to computers and the Internet. Socio-economic and demographic disparities were considered main drivers of the gap between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, thus largely explaining ‘the differential access to and use of the Internet according to gender, income, race and location’ (Rice 2002: 106). In the second phase, from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s, a growing body of literature (e.g., Compaine 2001, Katz and Aspden 1998, Katz and Rice 2002, Lax 2001, Livingstone 2002, Murdock 2002, Norris 2001, van Dijk 1999b, van Dijk and Hacker 2003, Warschauer 2003, Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002, Wyatt, Thomas and Terranova 2002) followed the pulse of technological development, considering how this generated new divides and closed older ones. In this phase, access became less of a problem compared to in the past, while quality of access and the technological platforms through which people use the Internet became central issues on the research agenda. This sent warning signs about the emergence of new access and use divides that partly invalidated earlier binary accounts and called on researchers to assess the interplay of access to and use of technology with a range of material, economic, technical, social and cultural factors. For instance, van Dijk (1999b) categorised access into mental (or psychological, as I would call it), material, skills and usage types. He contended that as soon as people’s psychological barriers to basic Internet experience – such as anxiety, lack of confidence and lack of interest (i.e., mental access) – are overcome and their access to technological equipment (i.e., material access) is ensured, inequalities in people’s abilities to search, select, process and apply information from an abundance of information sources online (i.e., skills access) will exacerbate and lead to acute usage gaps (i.e., usage access) (van Dijk 1999b). Also, Norris (2001: 4) referred to the multiple dimensions of the phenomenon, distinguishing between the global divide (i.e., inequalities between industrialised and developing countries), the social divide (i.e., inequalities between the information-rich and information-poor in a society) and the democratic divide (i.e., gaps in the availability and use of digital resources for public engagement, mobilisation and participation). Such discourses in turn problematised action plans for the closure of divides, challenged the goal of universal equality and drove the rise of more focused and better contextualised – though highly unsustainable and unsuccessful – initiatives aimed at communities that were excluded or vulnerable to exclusion (e.g., the elderly, the poor). Nevertheless, part of the research agenda in this second phase remained interested in the longitudinal study of the role of sociodemographics and economics in the course of digital divides. For instance, crossnational research in the field (e.g., Dewan, Ganley and Kraemer 2004) pointed to

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technology access, socio-economics and cost factors as common drivers of digital divides and Internet adoption in particular. The third phase of the research into digital divides, from the early 2000s and especially from the mid-2000s onwards, has shifted focus towards ‘digital inclusion’. In this phase, digital inclusion has been proposed as an alternative concept to digital exclusion in order to highlight variations in the use of digital technologies and to confirm that access to such technologies has become less of an issue for the majority of the population in the most developed parts of the globe. Variations in use have been presented by Livingstone and Helsper as gradations in digital inclusion – ‘a continuum of use’ (2007: 682) that allows the detection of inequalities in use, an exploration of the efficiency and benefits of use, and the identification of the reasons underlying nonuse. The idea of gradations in digital inclusion supports the staged process of going online (2007: 683) and invites reflection on the various factors that influence gradations in Internet use in particular. In this phase, research has examined digital inclusion and its associations with other forms of inclusion or exclusion (e.g., economic, social) alongside questions about quality of access, ‘meaningful use … the social contexts of use, and … people’s motivation and levels of skill’ (Livingstone 2005: 8). This is to say that the focus has moved from ‘technology to the users’ and away from ‘traditional accessoriented thinking’ and measures of divides ‘such as ownership, availability, and affordability of infrastructure’ (Barzilai-Nahon 2006: 269). This change of focus has also suggested that the closure of digital gaps could practically occur when initiatives place emphasis on the needs and particularities of user communities, since ‘social context, social purpose, and social organization are critical in efforts to provide meaningful information and communication technology (ICT) access’ (Warschauer 2003: 201). Thus, researchers have begun to explore more nuanced, multiple levels of access, use and appropriation of digital technologies in order to capture the multifaceted character and often opaque aspects of digital divides and to better understand their driving factors as well as their implications (e.g., Barzilai-Nahon 2006, Bradbrook and Fisher 2004, DiMaggio et al. 2004, Hargittai 2010, Hargittai and Hinnant 2008, Livingstone and Helsper 2007, Selwyn 2004, Tsatsou 2011a, 2011b, 2012, van Deursen and van Dijk 2010, van Deursen, van Dijk and Peters 2011, van Dijk 2005, van Dijk and Hacker 2003, Verdegem and Verhoest 2009; Wei and Hindman 2011, Witte and Mannon 2010; Zillien and Hargittai 2009). More specifically, in seeking to understand the complexity of digital inclusion, the researchers have increasingly focused on ‘complex questions of levels of connectivity in terms of the capability and distribution of the access concerned’ (Selwyn 2004: 348) and have problematised simplistic accounts of access to technology. Van Dijk and Hacker (2003: 316) recognised that digital divides are ‘a complex and dynamic phenomenon’ and referred to the ‘multifaceted concept of access’ (2003: 315), following van Dijk’s (1999b) earlier categorisation of access, to suggest that attention should be called to nuances and effects of access that

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go beyond the provision of material equipment and infrastructure (i.e., material access). Somewhat later, Wilson (2004) identified eight aspects of the ‘access’ divide – physical access/access to ICT devices; financial access/cost of ICT services; cognitive access/ICT skills; design access/usability; content access/ availability of content; production access/production of one’s own content; institutional access/availability of institutions that enable access; and political access/access to governing institutions determining digital inclusion – and associated these aspects with demographics. As said above, from the mid-2000s onwards, research started to pay increasing attention to parameters such as effective use and the requisite skills, knowledge and support for use (van Dijk 2005). This signified a movement of researchers’ attention to education, training, skills, information and other relatively intangible resources required for digital inclusion. This shift was reflected in both the theoretical premises and the research agenda and could be explained by parameters such as ‘technological evolution and related developments, changes in collective and individual living [and] the maturation of research in the field’ (Tsatsou 2011a: 319). Recent research has treated qualitative differences in usage as important elements of digital divides and has identified numerous ‘usage gaps’ (Hargittai and Hinnant 2008, van Dijk 2005, van Dijk and Hacker 2003, Zillien and Hargittai 2009). As van Dijk and Hacker (2003) advocated, access-focused initiatives have been limited in effect due to negligence of usage and skills gaps that involve breadth of use, ability to use equipment, skills to search for and find information, and capability to strategically and beneficially use information and content (namely, instrumental, informational and strategic skills). Van Dijk and Hacker underscored the need to understand usage and skills gaps as key dimensions of digital disparity and prescribed that ‘the fundamental task of future society will be to prevent structural inequalities in the skill and usage of ICTs from becoming more intense’ (2003: 324, italics in original). Hence, an increasing range of factors has been reported by research over the past few years in an attempt to comprehend and explain digital divides. For instance, DiMaggio et al. (2004) considered multiple divides and were concerned about nuances of inequality such as autonomy and flexibility of use, inequalities in skills and literacies needed for use, actual variation in use and purposes of use, and variation in the social support available from experienced users. In 2004, Bradbrook and Fisher proposed the ‘5 Cs’ as a framework for the study of phenomena associated with digital inclusion: connectivity (access and its various forms); capability (skills and employability); content (quality or community-focused content); confidence (self-efficacy or motivation); and continuity (continuous and ongoing usage). The 5 Cs mostly underscore ‘self-efficacy’, namely the ‘belief that one can successfully perform a distinct set of behaviours required to establish, maintain and utilize effectively the Internet over and above basic computer skills’ (Eastin and LaRose 2000: 2). Self-efficacy strongly determines people’s impetus to use the Internet and their trust in the benefits that may be reaped by using the

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Internet in the long term, and it is one of the many factors that recent study has emphasised to explain persisting digital gaps. The focus of the next subsection is the driving forces of digital divides in general and the parameters that shape gradations in digital inclusion accordingly. Digital divides and their driving forces Research has illustrated the complexity of digital divides by drawing upon multiple factors and shedding light on the multidirectional ways in which they can shape divides. To date, the study of the Internet has reached varying conclusions about a combination of access, skills and literacy factors, as well as people’s negative attitudes to the Internet, thus providing a quite intriguing picture of digital divides and their driving forces. For instance, Barzilai-Nahon (2006) has presented a conceptual model of the causal relationships between various ‘factor indices’ identified by the research literature, such as affordability (e.g., infrastructure, software, content); infrastructure access (e.g., communication channels and capacity, computers, websites, internet service providers); accessibility (e.g., special-needs populations); use (e.g., frequency, purpose, time, skills); socio-demographics (e.g., age, education, gender, socio-economic status, religion, language); and social and government constraints/support (e.g., training, funding, active support). Although this model is far from exhaustive, each of these ‘factor indices’ may influence divides not only in direct ways but also indirectly through developing a series of internal causal relationships, with one relationship involving two or more factors. For example, affordability can influence access and access can influence use and all three can both directly and indirectly influence the status and quality of divides (2006: 273). Since technological equipment and access to it are less of an issue nowadays, skills and the relevance of technology to users’ lives and interests are the two parameters that have mostly attracted researchers’ interest in the past few years. On the one hand, research has explored the role of skills or capabilities in determining people’s self-efficacy or actual ability to use digital technologies (DiMaggio et al. 2004, Hargittai 2002, 2010, Livingstone 2007, Min 2010, Punie et al. 2009, van Deursen and van Dijk 2010, van Dijk 2005, van Dijk and Hacker 2003). For instance, Hargittai (2002) measured people’s ability to find content online and concluded that there are considerable differences in people’s abilities and in the time they require in order to find the sort of content they are looking for. Eight years later, she (Hargittai 2010) found that even among young adults, the ‘net generation’, there are considerable differences in Internet skills and the incorporation of the Internet into everyday life, with socio-economic status being correlated with young people’s differences in Internet ‘know-how’ and use. Van Deursen and van Dijk (2010; see also van Deursen, van Dijk and Peters 2011) pointed out that effective and goal-directed use of the Internet is highly dependent on the user’s ability to handle technology (i.e., medium-related skills) and to find and use the needed information and content (i.e., content-related skills).

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On the other hand, people’s attitudes, and especially phenomena such as resistance to technology and self-exclusion, have drawn researchers’ attention in this area. Early on, research showed that some categories of people can develop uneasy relationships with certain media technologies (Haddon 1994, Haddon and Silverstone 1995, Lodziak 1986). Haddon’s (2000) study of single parents and young elderly revealed that people’s needs, cultural backgrounds, customs and everyday lives can affect their assessment of ICTs. With regard to the Internet, there has already been a large volume of research looking at issues such as selfexclusion, the existence of ‘internet resisters’ (Wyatt, Thomas and Terranova 2002) and the lack of interest in the Internet (e.g., Dutton and Di Gennaro 2005: 53, Ofcom 2004). For example, Stanley (2003) emphasised the role of psychosocial obstacles, such as relevance, fear and self-concept. Recently, Reisdorf (2011) concluded that nonusers of the Internet in the UK and Sweden are characterised primarily by their lack of interest in the Internet and sceptical attitudes towards it. Work in this area showcases that, even if near-ubiquitous Internet access is ensured, people may still not use the Internet to the desired extent and with the desired outcomes, as usage and its efficiency are dependent not only on economic and practical parameters but also on socio-psychological ones (Selwyn 2004: 349). The attention given to people who do not want to use the Internet, to resisters and to those who are self-excluded (e.g., Bauer 1995, Haddon 2000, Lenhart and Horrigan 2003, Selwyn 2006, Verdegem and Verhoest 2009, Wyatt, Thomas and Terranova 2002) seriously challenges the importance of supply of technology and economics as standalone factors. Along these lines, research has proposed a typology of nonusers that includes categories such as ‘incapable refusers’, ‘self-conscious indifferents’, ‘the willing but incapable’, ‘skilled ICT lovers with limited access’ and ‘price-sensitive pragmatists’ (Verdegem and Verhoest 2009). Also, I recently noted how ‘restricted users’ are an interesting group since they do not adopt the latest developments in technological services and applications. Restricted use may be caused by users’ low self-efficacy and limited skills or their conscious decisions and other attitude-related parameters (Tsatsou et al. 2013). In addition, a growing range of studies aim to better understand the driving forces of digital divides by placing the phenomenon into a broader context and associating it with other forms of division or exclusion in society. Work has underlined the need to explore digital divides in context if we wish to address their challenging and ever-shifting nature (Gunkel 2003, Haddon 2004: 13–30, Tsatsou 2011a, 2011b, 2012). This scholarly position has been influenced by socioconstructivist (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch 1987, Bijker and Law 1992) and critical (Feenberg 1991, 1999) theses on society and technology (see the discussion in Chapter 3). Such theses stress the role of ordinary people and the dynamic role of the web of social actors in the shaping, development and spread of technology. In this respect, society’s ideas, values, dispositions, practices and processes matter for how the Internet is used, adopted and integrated in particular socio-cultural milieus.

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More specifically, research increasingly places the study of the drivers of digital divides in concrete socio-spatial contexts in order to assess the role of socio-cultural factors in particular (e.g., Baron and af Segerstad 2010, Erumban and de Jong 2006, Kvasny 2006, Lim and Soon 2010, Robinson 2009, Selwyn, Gorard and Furlong 2005, Smoreda and Thomas 2001, Thomas and ManteMeijer 2001). For example, Kvasny studied technology trainees in a low-income neighbourhood in the US and found that ‘culture is useful for understanding how groups conceptualize, use, and react to ICT’ (2006: 166). Robinson (2009) examined the role of life qualities and disparities in the quality of Internet access and thus, in turn, in the breadth of Internet use and skills. Baron and af Segerstad (2010) explored the role of culture in mobile phone usage in an international context (Italy, Japan, Korea, Sweden and the US). In the US context, Lenhart and Horrigan (2003) found that those who express some sort of ‘social contentment’ and feel they can turn to many other people for support are more likely to be online than those who do not express contentment. Finally, some scholars have spoken about communities with a distinct culture that adapt or even reshape ICTs and their usages to the culture and norms of the community (e.g., Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai 2005). I recently conducted an empirical study of digital divides in the European context and specifically of the Western-Southern divide in Europe (Tsatsou 2011b). In that study I found that, through contextualising digital exclusion in a wider setting of inequalities wherein socio-cultural parameters as well as policy matter, one can explain digital gaps and dissimilar technological dynamics between different country contexts. Specifically, I found that the Western-Southern European divide is a ladder of divides influenced by a complex set of socio-cultural and policy/ regulatory factors in the countries involved. I argued about the profoundly sociocultural and political nature of the Western–Southern divide and highlighted its implications for the European information society as a whole (Tsatsou 2011b). That study essentially strengthened the proposition I made earlier the same year (Tsatsou 2011a) for revisiting digital divides and their research in order to ‘emphasize the critical role of socio-cultural and decision-making dynamics in structuring the adoption of ICTs in both qualitative and quantitative terms’ (Tsatsou 2011a: 326). That proposition in turn was heavily reliant on the idea that ‘the web of cultural traits in a society, with its own gaps and disparities, as well as policy and regulation dynamics, are in a constant dialogue with technology, together influencing social inclusion and participation’ (Tsatsou 2011a: 326–327). Also, in a recent collaborative project funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme,22 I and my collaborators from two Welsh universities reviewed evidence on the digital exclusion of minority communities. We found 22 The AHRC–funded project ‘ICT use and connectivity of minority communities in Wales’ aimed to develop a better understanding of the impact of ICTs on changing cultures and patterns of connectivity within and among minority communities. It used Wales as a test–bed and focused on black and minority ethnic communities and people with

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that a series of physical, economic, educational/skills, psychological, cultural and political barriers prevent communities of people with disabilities in particular from fully appropriating ICTs and enhancing their social capital and sense of connectedness. We identified evidence that suggested that the cost of purchasing adaptive technologies as well as negative feelings towards the Internet constitute barriers against people with disabilities positively accessing and advantageously using the Internet, thus linking digital exclusion with other forms of marginalisation that disabled people experience (Tsatsou et al. 2013). Digital divides, their continuing significance and their closure Scholars in this study area aim not only to capture the dimensions and forces of digital divides but also to offer accounts of how digital disparities affect individuals and entire communities and what can be anticipated as to their future course and closure. Regarding the significance of digital divides, alongside their shifting character and features, works in this area have recognised their prominence (Cammaerts et al. 2003, Castells 2001, Codagnone 2009, Katz and Rice 2002, Mansell 2002, Norris 2001, Punie et al. 2009) and, therefore, the importance of their study. The question of why digital divides should be studied has in turn been closely linked with the question of how divides are perceived and evaluated within the broader socio-economic, cultural, political and technological context (Tsatsou 2011a: 318). More specifically, the significance of digital divides has mostly been associated with social exclusion, social deprivation and marginalisation, and people’s social capital (Haddon 2000, Kavanaugh and Patterson 2001, Mansell 2002, Selwyn 2004, van Dijk 1999b). Social exclusion and the risk of socioeconomic disadvantage are usually the concepts used by researchers to answer the question of why digital inclusion remains important. It has broadly been argued that Internet technologies are (among other technologies) increasingly important to life, work and entertainment, and ‘even more important if certain groups and areas are systematically excluded’ (Norris 2001: 10). In this regard, digital inclusion is often regarded ‘as a practical embodiment of the wider theme of social inclusion’ (Selwyn 2004: 343). At the macro level, information and communication resources – today largely made available through the Internet – are imperative for information provision, for enabling participation and for the exercise of citizenship. Research has come to terms with the fact that deprivation of access to or nonuse of such resources can prevent people from taking advantage of information, communication and collaboration opportunities, thus exacerbating existing forms of social, economic and political exclusion (Cammaerts et al. 2003, Mansell 2002). Access to and use of Internet technologies have been valued as ‘a prerequisite for overcoming inequality in a society whose dominant functions and social groups are increasingly disabilities. It involved a literature review and a systematic review of existing research data, both completed in 2011.

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organized around the Internet’ (Castells 2001: 248). Although such positions identify some of the links between digital and other inequalities and make valid points about the influence of the former on the latter, they can be considered rather techno-deterministic. This is so because they suggest a rather rigid, prescriptive and normative approach that lacks flexibility and is heavily reliant on value-laden accounts that favour supposedly powerful and decisively influential technologies (for more, read Tsatsou 2011a). On the other hand, it is often acknowledged that digital technologies are not able to fully remove social disparities and so they do not suffice to create a ‘more harmonious and egalitarian society’ (Cammaerts and van Audenhove 2003: 8). On the contrary, some have argued that other forms of inequality in society can shape technology and the way it is accessed and used, thus determining digital inequality and disparity (Norris 2001). From a political economy perspective, Fuchs suggests that digital divides, namely the ‘unequal patterns of material access to, usage capabilities of, and benefits from computer-based information and communication technologies’, are rooted in pre-existing ‘stratification processes that produce classes of winners and losers of the information society, and of participation in institutions governing ICTs and society’ (2008: 215). From a nonuser point of view and based on the decision of a number of nonusers not to adopt the Internet due to limited need or interest in doing so, some have also argued that ‘maybe some people will not use it at all and – hard though it might be to accept – maybe its lack does not have to be a source of inequality and disadvantage’ (Wyatt, Thomas and Terranova 2002: 25). This is to say that, from a sceptical perspective, one can question whether digital divides create new social disparities or whether they merely comprise a reflection or even the outcome of existing social divisions. Today’s world is far from inclusive and, regardless of the rapid pace of socio-economic and technological development in the Western part of the globe in particular, large parts of the population remain disadvantaged and excluded. This inevitably affects technologies and their propagation to the social web, with some people being positioned in a more advantageous position than others in accessing, purchasing and efficiently using technologies. At the same time, arguments that dissociate digital inclusion from social inclusion shrink technology to unimportance and, therefore, are equally linear, simplistic and normative (Tsatsou 2011a: 323). Research must disentangle the complex dynamics between digital divides and the broader context (of which social and other inequalities are part), as well as between digital divides and the individual user, so as to better comprehend their effects at both the micro (i.e., individual, domestic) and macro levels: Digital inclusion is not a solution to the multi-dimensional problem of social exclusion and should be seen as a facilitator or result of the dialogue and interdependencies between socio-cultural traits of and policy and regulatory practices in the information society. (Tsatsou 2011a: 326)

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While the complexity of digital divides and the difficulty of reaching definite conclusions about their significance are quite evident, numerous bottom-up and top-down initiatives at the local, regional, national and international levels have aimed at their closure. Similarly, studies have debated closure (e.g., Compaine 2001, Facer and Furlong 2001, Katz and Rice 2002, Norris 2001, Peter and Valkenburg 2006, van Dijk and Hacker 2003). Closure itself has been challenged for insufficient realism (i.e., is it feasible to guarantee universal and optimal digital inclusion?) and for being framed by largely normative claims (i.e., is it necessary for all people to adopt digital technologies?). Norris noted that the disparities in today’s postindustrial society and the dominant social stratifications make it very unlikely that digital inclusion will be guaranteed for all: ‘Even if the basic digital divide shrinks gradually over time, it is naïve to believe that the virtual world can overturn fundamental inequalities of social stratification that are endemic throughout post-industrial societies’ (2001: 17). Van Dijk and Hacker (2003) stressed the dynamic nature of digital divides and that, while old divisions retreat, new ones appear and prevail. They suggested that the phenomenon of digital divides should be seen as shifting along with technology and as reliant on relative differences and inequalities (2003: 324) and, thus, they problematised the vision of an all-inclusive information society in the future (2003: 325). Pessimistic accounts of the present and future of digital divides refer to deepening digital divides, contrasting decreasing width with increasing depth of existing divisions and inequalities (van Dijk 2005). Others take an effects perspective and problematise the impact of the growing spread of access to ICTs: ‘it is rapidly becoming apparent that “access” to the Internet and ICTs is insufficient in itself to significantly improve the life-chances of populations at risk from on-rushing technology change’ (Gurstein 2004: 226–227). Also, Peter and Valkenburg (2006) have challenged the argument that the Internet is ubiquitously adopted among young people and found that the ‘digital differentiation approach’ describes digital divides more adequately than the ‘disappearing digital divide approach’, since adolescents’ reasons for use of the Internet (e.g., whether it is used for information or for entertainment) are affected by the socio-economic and cognitive resources they have at their disposal. Peter and Valkenburg found that adolescents with greater socio-economic and cognitive resources use the Internet more frequently for information and less often for entertainment than their peers with fewer socio-economic and cognitive resources. Research has also been quite critical of actual policy and other initiatives aiming at the closure of digital divides. One of the first initiatives – indicative of the spirit of policymaking in the area – was Clinton’s political plan to wire all American schools before the year 2000. Such initiatives have led researchers (e.g., BarzilaiNahon 2006, Stevenson 2009) to note that decision-makers have conventionally taken a techno-deterministic approach to the closure of digital inequalities, namely an approach that focuses on technological equipment and considers access to equipment critically important for inclusion. Looking at early initiatives for the closure of digital divides in the US, such as the Falling Through the Net series and

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Bill Gates’ philanthropic action for wiring public libraries, Stevenson (2009: 15) argues that policy has persistently emphasised ‘universal access’ to the Internet and located the problem in limited, minority socio-demographic categories of the population, thus treating the phenomenon as a rather measurable and resolvable technological issue that affects a small and highly specific demographic. Such policy trends can partly be explained by the fact that decision-makers have been under immense pressure to generate ‘objective’ benchmarks that assess the state of digital divides at the regional, country and international levels and that allow comparisons and cross-assessments to be carried out. This makes policy agendas heavily reliant on fairly fixed indices23 that produce comparable benchmarks of achieved digital inclusion results but ignore context and corresponding contextual particularities. This is to say that attempts at closing digital divides have largely overlooked the importance of contextual factors for the sake of producing a comparable and broadly recognisable picture of the state of digital divides. What Barzilai-Nahon (2006) suggests, in this respect, are contextual indices of digital divides that reflect local or contextual structures and the non-neutral social and political nature of the Internet in particular. Strover (2003) and others with a similar angle (Servaes 2003, van Dijk and Hacker 2003, Warschauer 2003) have argued that access to equipment or even training not only are inadequate initiatives to close digital divides but also, in a way, reflect the existence of wider, deeper gaps and inequalities in society, failing to substantially transform a largely dysfunctional and disparity-driven system of socio-economic development. Specifically, Strover (2003) argued that policy, institutional, market and community attempts to increase access to computers and the Internet and to provide training have been opportunistic responses to digital divides that lack validity, supporting evidence and sufficient consideration of processes and likely outcomes. What Servaes has suggested is the replacement of prominent corporate-driven initiatives by user-driven, content-concerned and culture-sensitive action (Servaes 2003: 19). In a similar vein, sociological insights and the historical course of past and present forms of digital divides have called on stakeholders to ‘confront the challenge of taking differential perceptions of digital divides into consideration, also accounting for the phenomena of self-exclusion and resistance to digital technology’ (Tsatsou 2011b: 38). Van Dijk and Hacker contended that decision-makers and other stakeholders often tamper with matters concerning digital divides from the perspectives of social inclusion and equal distribution of resources (2003: 326). This means that policymakers and other elite actors adopt an approach that is fairly similar to that of much of the early research in this field in order to practically address digital divides and to ensure that Internet technologies and related resources are distributed equally. 23 Some of the most well–known indices are the Digital Divide Index (Hüsing and Selhofer 2004), the European Index of Digital Inclusion (Bentivegna and Guerrieri 2010), the ICT Development Index (ITU 2010) and the ICT Diffusion Index (United Nations 2006).

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This is to say that policymakers optimistically endorse the rhetoric that digital inclusion can secure citizens’ democratic communication rights and entitlements and so constitutes a strong tool to encounter social exclusion and disadvantage. For instance, from an international perspective, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has emphasised the importance of initiatives that aim to close digital gaps for international development: ‘Monitoring of the digital divide is essential for policy debate at both the international and national levels. It is also required to track progress towards achieving international development goals, such as the WSIS targets and the Millennium Development Goals’ (2010: 4). In commenting on the outcomes of the 2003 and 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) for digital divides (see the next section for a discussion of the WSIS), Hamelink (2012) argues that official decision-making bodies as well as representatives of the civil society and other stakeholders did not question whether digital divides and universal access can actually be resolved within the dominant development paradigm. Hamelink contends that there has been inadequate understanding of the information society as a whole and of its potential benefits and risks. Hamelink’s critical assessment voices the view that both conceptual and empirical reassessment of the status and future of divides is needed. Thus, he questions how we think about and conceptualise digital inclusion and calls for a more serious approach to the dominant socio-economic development model and the barriers it poses to inclusion and equality. The latter presents a macro perspective and invites a political economy approach that challenges the power dynamics of today’s development model and demonstrates that gaps in the access and use of digital technologies are deeply embedded into the socio-economic and political marginalisation that individuals, groups and whole countries experience in today’s competitive, finance-driven and highly divisive capitalist system. A political economy perspective on the closure of digital divides has been taken by Fuchs. As noted above, Fuchs (2008) considers digital divides an expression of the competition for participation and domination, reinforcing capitalism-grounded inequalities and associated instances of marginalisation/exclusion. For him, stratification processes consist of social hierarchies (such as gender, age, family status, ethnicity, language and geography) as well as of disparate allocation of economic (material), political (power) and cultural (meaning and competencies) capital. These factors determine people’s access to and capability to use and benefit from technology: ‘The reason why there are gaps in access, usage/skills, benefit, and participation concerning ICTs is the multidimensional class structure of modern society that creates structural inequalities’ (Fuchs 2008: 216). This leads Fuchs to propose that, in order for digital exclusion to be eradicated, class struggles and the deeper capitalist structures of the distribution of economic, political and cultural capital must be overcome. He rejects what he calls reductionist and onedimensional approaches (e.g., wait until the market and technological development make access to technology affordable for developing countries; provide cheap and less advanced technologies to the Third World; increase access as soon as market and profit development is in place in developing countries). He considers that

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such proposals maintain the South’s dependencies on the capitalist centre/West and do not ensure equal wealth and power distribution between West and South. On the contrary, he argues that what is needed is a more integrated approach that goes against the dominant capitalist logic and addresses technological, economic, social/community and literacy/educational setbacks for digital inclusion: ‘an integrative strategy of fundamental redistribution mechanisms, free public access, educational and health programs, a gift economy, open source and open access technologies seems most promising’ (2008: 224). From a similar critical perspective, some have taken a discursive and rhetorical approach to the closure of digital divides (e.g., Stevenson 2009). According to this approach, the term ‘digital divide’ induces a rather technical and administrative solution that conceals the historical social class struggle that underlies the problem as well as the undermining of social growth that resulted from the shift from the Keynesian model to the neoliberal support of individual economic success. Specifically, Stevenson proposes a theoretically and ideologically rich elaboration of the causes of digital divides so that action plans for their amelioration have some chance to succeed: ‘analysis of the digital divide from the perspective of shifting class relations and the new social relations of production provides some powerful tools with which to engage in that struggle’ (2009: 2). From his perspective, the prevalence of information capital coupled with the dominance of neo-liberalism and market imperatives explain the widening of wealth gaps, whereas existing initiatives for encountering digital gaps arguably constitute a source of legitimation of today’s capitalist system and its objectives of capital accumulation and market development (Stevenson 2009). According to Stevenson and Fuchs, today’s neoliberal system camouflages the deeply social class struggles that drive digital divides and that have given market forces the leading role in ‘solving’ the problem. For them, this is why there is increasing emphasis being placed on the responsibility of the individual to be included rather than on the system as a whole to encourage inclusion, while capitalist forces and existing wealth gaps are largely disregarded in considerations of the underlying forces and the ongoing reality of digital divides. Even though research has mostly dedicated its efforts to the evaluation of past and ongoing attempts to fulfil digital inclusion, there are projects (boosted to a significant extent by academic research) that aim to contribute to the realisation of an inclusive and participatory civil society in a rich and continually developing digital media environment. An example is E-Democracy.org’s Inclusive Social Media and Inclusive Community Engagement Online24 initiatives in the US. Specifically, the Inclusive Social Media project aimed to reach out to people from communities that are racially, ethnically and socio-economically underrepresented on neighbourhood online forums and to enhance what it called ‘digital inclusion for community voices’. The project’s pursued outcomes were: first, to develop outreach and information leadership structures and techniques so as to attract and 24 See http://pages.e-democracy.org/Inclusion.

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retain forum members in high-poverty, high-immigrant neighbourhoods; second, to increase forum membership and establish diversity in forum content and services, taking into consideration the varied cultural backgrounds of participants and the complex power dynamics developed within those forums; and third, to engage community organisers, community organisations and elected officials in order to encourage forum growth and sustainability as well as citizen engagement and accountability (E-Democracy.org 2011). Nevertheless, many have seriously questioned optimistic or complacent accounts of the future of digital divides. For instance, James has argued that there is widespread complacency in the literature, with optimistic accounts of digital divides giving an erroneous message to decision-makers (2008: 54). According to James, complacency provokes the following undesirable slips: first, it promotes a static view of digital divides, failing to account for new, unexplored and ongoing facets of inequality; second, it foresees the future of digital divides by comparing the past and the future of the phenomenon and neglecting to account for new technologies, conditions and circumstances that may draw a different picture of the phenomenon in the future. James (2008) argues that complacent views of digital divides reflect misconceptions of the phenomenon that overlook its deeper roots in the early concentration of technological innovation and related capabilities, resources and trade in rich parts of the world, unavoidably leading to persistent and growing inequalities across borders. This early and enduring concentration of innovation has led developing countries to a progressively deteriorating situation that brings them increasingly further behind the rich, developed parts of the world. Precisely for this reason, James is quite pessimistic about the future of digital divides, challenges complacent approaches and calls for more active and seriously designed governmental intervention in this area. In any case, an in-depth understanding of digital gaps by those who pursue their bridging is needed; that is to say, stakeholders of all kinds – including researchers – ought to understand the complexity of the phenomenon (e.g., psychological, material, skills and usage gaps in the take-up and appropriation of the Internet) and its multifaceted and dynamic character before they design their planning and decide upon their priorities. Also, they must consider both societal matters and market technology design, which determine the availability, accessibility and usability of technology and particularly how technology fits people’s identities, intentions, lifestyles and broader cultural and social contexts of life and experience. Barzilai-Nahon (2006) argues that, to practically address digital divides, decisionmakers (and researchers and other actors) should move beyond single-factor or monotopical approaches to the drivers of digital exclusion and must consider integrative frameworks and holistic measurements of the phenomenon to best deal with how it is encountered now and in the future. Concluding remarks Existing diverse evidence and the continually changing research agenda illustrate the challenges in the study of digital divides. On the one hand, there is an

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acknowledgement of the overcoming of old, mostly access-related digital gaps. On the other hand, research has identified new forms and drivers of digital divide within a framework of other inequalities and divisions in today’s society: New divides in the quality, scope and effects of appropriation of digital technologies are making their appearance, while old access and use divides continue to be addressed and resolved within a social milieu where a host of other divisions and inequalities of socioeconomic and power-related forms are present. (Tsatsou 2013: 52)

A significant part of the existing research recognises the need to shed light on the role of socio-cultural and other systemic factors, as well as to depart from accounts that simplistically equate people’s social empowerment with digital inclusion. At the same time, studies in this area are yet to produce balanced accounts of the following matters: 1. The diverse factors that drive digital exclusion. 2. People’s right not to use technologies, as long as they wish to do so in an informed way and because of cultural, everyday life or other factors. Normative accounts that express contempt for people’s decision not to use the Internet must be problematised and revised accordingly. 3. The implications that arise from Internet nonadoption for people’s financial, professional, social and other aspects of living. 4. Internet use, its features and its evolution over time. There is a need for spatially and temporally consistent research that focuses on the use of digital technologies and specifically on the nature of users’ interactions with technology. Currently there is a lack of systematic and consistent research into the diverse and varying use of digital technologies and the parameters that may explain such variability, as well as the (accordingly) diverse effects of use. Overall, the digital landscape is far from homogeneous and corresponds with an even more heterogeneous and often contradictory range of human activities and practices. To be in a good position to draw conclusions about the levels, qualities, traits, drivers and, consequently, effects of digital exclusion, one must go deeper into human practices in association with technology and the ways in which humans, as individuals or groups, perceive and appropriate technological advancements in their life settings. In summary, the discussion in this section has aimed to show that the study of digital divides sheds some light on the so-called ‘dark’ side of the Internet while also inviting us to consider digital divides as part of the broadly controversial, multifaceted and dynamic presence and role of the Internet in people’s lives. In addition, the discussion in this section has indicated the pertinence of the theoretical concepts discussed in Chapter 3 to the study of digital divides. As regards the concept

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of power, digital exclusion has traditionally been identified with disempowerment and marginalisation and, similarly, digital inclusion has commonly been perceived as equivalent to empowerment and enablement. However, to consider those who are digital included empowered is to understand power as resulting from technology and as being operationalised through use of technology for the benefit of the user and, more broadly, for strengthening citizenship and democracy. In the study of digital divides, user empowerment is mostly found in the potential gains arising from technology usage, whereas nonusers are broadly considered to be disempowered, as if technology exclusion or self-exclusion rules out all possibility of empowerment. As mentioned above, such one-sided, monolithic approaches must be challenged, while they raise questions on the concept of agency. Techno-deterministic accounts have been quite prominent in the early study of digital divides and have assigned to technology attributes equivalent to those of dominant agency. How social agents position themselves in the broader structure has appeared as dependent on technology and, in this way, human agency has been seen through the lens of technology adoption and as highly determined by technology. However, in the past few years, an increasing volume of studies have placed the assessment of digital divides and their drivers into context. They have shifted attention to social practices and people’s cultures and have recognised that agency also lies within social factors and the diverse forms that human agency can take in relation to technology adoption. Finally, the concept of identity is critical for the study of digital divides. The broad meaning of identity and the various settings in which it lies are key parameters for explaining people’s decision to adopt technologies, as long as systemic barriers to adoption have been overcome (which is usually assumed to be the case in the majority of settings in the West). Internet Governance: Developments, Critiques and Uncertainties The second study area of the so-called ‘dark’ side of the Internet is Internet governance, which involves the persistent challenges in governing the Internet and applying policies and regulations that foster its beneficial role and future development. The discussion of challenges and difficulties in governing the Internet completes the series of reflections in this chapter and brings the real-life examination of the Internet and its study to a close. In general, Internet governance and its study have been shaped by two antagonistic views: on the one hand, the view that opposes any form of law and regulatory provision and espouses the vision of a law-free, anarchic and unobtrusively creative cyberspace; on the other hand, the view that the existence of a reasonable number of rules can ensure the smooth, democratic and beneficial functioning of the Internet. The former is seen as ‘emblematic of a very different period: when the internet was in its “infancy”’ (Freedman 2012: 97), whereas those in support of Internet rules appear to put forward some timely and influential propositions: ‘“Light-touch” regulation, but regulation nonetheless, was, and remains, the preferred approach’ (Freedman 2012: 105). Although this fundamental

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debate – some rules or no rules at all – appears to have somehow been resolved, incessant debates on the level, volume, direction, forms, actors, scope, spirit and driving principles of Internet governance and its outcomes (e.g., norms, rules, laws, policy provisions) continue to exist and problematise the present role of the Internet as well as its future development. Such debates not only touch upon the specifics of Internet governance but also highlight the catalytic presence of power battles between competing economic, political, social and ideological interests and of highly dynamic relationships between stakeholders, such as technology experts, industry players, governments and civic actors: Governments seeking to safeguard or subjugate their citizens; enterprises wanting to dominate or more fairly compete in Internet markets; users seeking benefits or protection from certain Internet applications; and experts striving to maintain the integrity of the architecture or undermine it maliciously. (Dutton and Peltu 2007: 71)

This section presents a selected series of studies in the field and their understanding of how the Internet has been monitored, controlled or liberated by decisions made by key governance bodies for more than two decades. It discusses works that problematise the role of the Internet from a governance perspective and show that the nature and structure of the Internet as well as its cross-boundary presence pose a range of challenges to governance bodies. Specifically, it casts light on debates concerning policies and regulations in two governance areas: censorship/intellectual property rights and net neutrality. The discussion of approaches to Internet governance in these two areas is coupled with a quite detailed account of pertinent facts and developments. The section concludes by acknowledging that Internet studies has been concerned with the continuing difficulties in governing the Internet and formulates some recommendations on how scholars should evaluate Internet governance in the future. Internet governance: agendas, debates and dilemmas What is Internet governance? ‘Internet governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet’ (WGIG 2005: 4). This simple and sufficiently broad definition denotes that Internet governance involves ‘a complex mix of interrelated and multidimensional issues’ that ‘affect the development of and access to essential information infrastructure, as well as sector-specific applications’ (Satola 2007: 50). The complexity and wealth of Internet governance issues have resulted in the involvement of multiple actors and associated levels of governance: ‘technical design decisions, the policies of private industry, the decisions of new global institutions, and the policies of national governments’ (DeNardis 2012: 722).

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More specifically, Internet governance institutions and associated processes and debates have led to a multi-stakeholder governance framework that was formally brought together for the first time in the two-phase WSIS.25 At the WSIS, governments and the Internet community (e.g., scientists, engineers, industry actors, analysts, users and activists) began to discuss the emergent Information Society and its governance facets. The Working Group on Internet Governance26 (WGIG) remarked before the second phase of the WSIS that there is ‘a vacuum within the context of existing structures, since there is no global multi-stakeholder forum to address Internet-related public policy issues’. Thus it recommended the creation of ‘a space for dialogue among all stakeholders’ that ‘could address these issues, as well as emerging issues, that are cross-cutting and multidimensional’ (2005: 10–11). In its recommendations, the WGIG emphasised the need for all stakeholders to participate on an equal footing in the various arrangements for Internet governance and contended that multi-stakeholder activity should involve delegates from developing countries so as to foster capacity-building (e.g., knowledge, as well as human, financial and technical resources) in the less developed parts of the world (Kummer 2007: 8). The WGIG recommendation for a multi-stakeholder public-policy dialogue forum was accepted by the Tunis Summit and the ‘Tunis Agenda for the Information Society’ invited the SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations to convene this new forum, which was called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).27 The IGF holds annual meetings to facilitate 25 The first phase took place in Geneva from 10 to 12 December 2003 and the second phase in Tunis from 16 to 18 November 2005, after the endorsement of the UN General Assembly Resolution 56/183 on 21 December 2001. In Geneva the stated objective of the involved actors was to put forward political will and develop concrete actions for the establishment of an Information Society for all. This first summit involved more than 11,000 participants from 175 countries and produced the ‘Geneva Declaration of Principles’ and ‘Geneva Plan of Action’. The second summit aimed to put the ‘Geneva Plan of Action’ into force and to reach agreement on various Internet governance issues. More than 19,000 participants from 174 countries attended this summit and the ‘Tunis Commitment’ and ‘Tunis Agenda for the Information Society’ were adopted. The full texts of the ‘Geneva Declaration of Principles’ and ‘Geneva Plan of Action’ and of the ‘Tunis Commitment’ and ‘Tunis Agenda for the Information Society’ can be accessed at http://www.itu.int/wsis/ index.html. 26 The WGIG was formed by the Secretary–General of the United Nations at the end of the Geneva Summit to prepare the terrain for the Tunis Summit and specifically to fulfil the following tasks: to develop a working definition of Internet governance; to identify the public–policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance; and to develop an understanding of the various roles and responsibilities of public and private stakeholders in both developing and developed countries (WGIG 2005: 3). 27 The IGF met for the first time in Athens, Greece, between 30 October and 2 November 2006. Its mandate is to be a forum for multi–stakeholder dialogue on public– policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance so as to promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes. For more information on the IGF, see http://www.intgovforum.org/cms.

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democratic and open exchange of views and to stimulate collaboration and joint initiatives on Internet governance, and aims to involve stakeholders and vested interests from both developed and developing countries. Other international institutional frames and processes that Internet governance is composed of include the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),28 an international body of network designers and other experts concerned mostly with the architecture of the Internet; the Internet Society (ISOC),29 a cause-driven international organisation of Internet experts that aims to provide leadership in Internet policy, technology standards and future development and to ensure that the Internet develops as an open platform that fosters innovation, economic development and social welfare; the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),30 an international organisation that, led by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, works to develop web standards; the ITU,31 the United Nations’ specialised agency for ICTs, with 193 member states and wide-ranging membership of ICT regulators, academic institutions and about 700 private companies; and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),32 a nonprofit private organisation that coordinates the domain-name system (DNS), Internet protocol (IP) addresses, space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) top-level domain-name system management and root server system management. All these and other institutional bodies and forums influence Internet governance in parallel and in collaboration with traditional and innovative, public and private players, such as national governments, the European Union, the United Nations, internet service providers (ISPs), ICT vendors, content providers, investors, consumer groups, regulators, citizens, special-interest groups, activists, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), academic and research organisations, individual experts and so on. This array of actors33 has formed the so-called multi-stakeholder Internet governance regime, which has substantially been necessitated and driven by complex issues and multiple levels of Internet governance. Specifically, Internet governance encompasses a range of intertwined and continually evolving – in number and content – issues that challenge previous and existing governance schemes and pose questions for all involved stakeholders. Van Eeten and Mueller (2013) have argued for the need to broaden the study of Internet governance so 28 See http://www.ietf.org. 29 See http://www.internetsociety.org. 30 See http://www.w3.org/Consortium. 31 The ITU allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, develops the technical standards for interconnection of networks and technologies, and aims to improve ICT access worldwide. For more information, see http://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx. 32 The services provided by ICANN were originally performed under US government contract by other entities such as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which now operates under ICANN. For more information, see https://www.icann.org/en/about. 33 For a list of players shaping Internet governance, read Dutton and Peltu (2007: 74).

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as to grapple with the full range of issues that determine the design, content, implementation and use of the Internet and to take a wider perspective on associated governance institutions and actual decisions.34 Needless to say, this section offers insufficient space for a comprehensive and in-depth discussion of Internet governance actors, concrete issues and governance schemes that address such issues. For the purpose of the discussion here, it is worth drawing on the three-tier typology of Internet governance issues proposed by Dutton and Peltu (2007). According to this typology, the top tier includes ‘Internet-centric’ issues concerning the core Internet infrastructure and web standards and protocols; the middle tier includes ‘Internet-user-centric’ issues concerning the use or misuse of the Internet and related legal or illegal, appropriate or inappropriate, harmful or beneficial behaviours online; and, finally, the bottom tier includes ‘non-Internetcentric’ issues (e.g., copyright, censorship, social inclusion), namely policy issues not primarily concerning the Internet, which, however, appear (in the same or in different forms) online and, therefore, require Internet-specific policies and rules (Dutton and Peltu 2007: 64). This three-tier categorisation of Internet governance issues illustrates the often fragmented and inconsistent picture drawn with regard to what Internet governance consists of, its key actors and the governance schemes (yet to be put) in effect. Similarly, the WGIG has identified four main clusters of Internet governance issues: first, issues relating to infrastructure and critical Internet resources (e.g., the DNS, IP addresses, the root server system, technical standards and telecommunications infrastructure); second, issues relating to the use of the Internet (e.g., security, cybercrime, spam, privacy); third, issues pertinent to the Internet but with a wider impact (e.g., intellectual property rights, international trade); and fourth, issues relating to the developmental aspects of Internet governance (e.g., capacity-building in developing countries) (2005: 5). Regarding levels of governance, Satola (2007) has drawn upon the legal element of Internet governance and identified the following governance layers: the international layer, consisting of treaties (e.g., the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime of 2001) and treaty-based organisations (e.g., the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and its convention on e-contracting); the national layer, consisting of primary laws, secondary legislation (e.g., decrees), regulations and judicial decisions; and the layer of codes and technical standards set by the industry and other private bodies (e.g., ICANN, IETF, W3C). 34 Van Eeten and Mueller (2013) remark that, currently, only a few governance institutions (e.g., the IGF) and their roles are addressed by studies in this area, and that very little attention is paid to the study of institutions and forums that make technical decisions about the Internet (e.g., standards bodies), despite the fact that these decisions effect on society and the way the Internet is used. These authors also challenge the way national decision makers are studied and they contend that scholars should pay more attention to the ways such decision makers regulate the Internet through content control and user surveillance.

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These three parameters – actors, issues and levels of governance – have constituted ‘the emerging Internet governance mosaic’ (Dutton and Peltu 2007), with multi-stakeholderism being placed in the centre of this mosaic and largely determining the agendas, processes and outcomes of Internet governance. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) contends that multi-stakeholderism is necessary, since ‘multi-stakeholder processes have been shown to provide the flexibility and global scalability required to address Internet policy challenges’ (2011: 4). Dutton and Peltu (2007) in turn have recommended a series of governance principles to satisfy the technical and design characteristics of the Internet35 and, accordingly, the need for democratic and open multi-stakeholder Internet governance. Specifically, they (2007: 71) have recommended: • A light regulatory touch in order for the core architecture and design of the Internet not to be harmed. Regulation needs to respect the minimal character of the core architecture of the Internet, which allows the accommodation of new applications and technological innovations as well as adaptation to unforeseeable change. • No dominant stakeholder. Because of its decentralised design, the Internet demands no central control or gatekeeping and therefore it requires devolved, self-governing, bottom-up and accountable decision-making, with no dominant stakeholder. • Transparent multi-stakeholder processes. The open character of the Internet requires the public availability of core Internet standards and protocols. Pluralistic, transparent, collaborative processes, with multiple (both public and private) stakeholders are needed. • Prioritisation of the end-to-end (e2e) principle. e2e interoperability is a key principle of the Internet’s design and so, in order to ensure unrestricted transfer of data packets, interoperability barriers should be avoided and the e2e principle should be protected. • Multiple governance models and sufficient coordination. Because of the range and complexity of the governance issues arising from the Internet’s design and infrastructure, there is no single comprehensive governance

35 Dutton and Peltu suggest that the technical design of the Internet challenges governance and makes the future uncertain. For instance, they discuss the lack of sufficient control or technical mechanisms to prevent distributed denial of service (DDoS) and its detrimental effects (i.e., the disruption of website services) (2007: 67). They also discuss the long–existing DNS and the rise of new naming systems such as digital object identifiers. Given that many Internet organisations currently rely on DNS, the introduction of alternative naming systems will require substantial support and facilitation from governance mechanisms (2007: 67). In addition, they argue that the emergence of embedded sensor networks allows new possibilities for intrusion onto privacy (e.g., in the case of locationinforming sensors) (2007: 67).

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model. At the same time, coordination between governance actors and processes is required to avoid fragmentation. • No threat to sustainable Internet operations. Because the way the Internet is designed requires the stability, security and efficient operation of its core architecture, governance will need to support the integrity and performance of architecture. However, multi-stakeholder Internet governance structures have not been received entirely in a positive light and criticism has been put forward in the relevant literature. For instance, Zittrain (2008) contends that such structures do not alleviate the Internet from lockdown, suppressive and counter-innovative policies and regulations. This is so because they exclude the community of computer scientists, hackers and geeks, who, through coding, programming and innovation, could find positive solutions to numerous malicious phenomena online that cannot be resolved through restrictive regulation. For Zittrain (2008), the security and other problems inherent in technological innovation cannot be resolved through tightly controlling innovation but rather through promoting positive innovation that engages users and all stakeholders in a better understanding of what technologies such as those embedded in Internet communication can do for individuals and societies. Freedman has recently argued that multi-stakeholder Internet governance does not offer magical solutions to deep-rooted state and corporate power and so what is required is the participation of nonstate and nonmarket bodies who will go beyond procedural matters and will develop an alternative agenda to those of the most powerful states and companies (2012: 112–113). Even Dutton and Peltu have suggested that there should be ‘better coordination between the different agencies, structures and processes dealing with the … specific parts of the bigger picture’, since ‘the relationship between users at large, governments and technical and business communities is still a process of continued re-definition of roles, rights and duties’ (2007: 64–65). These authors have additionally argued that the need for better coordination of roles, rights and duties among governance stakeholders is reinforced by the fact that ‘the innovative nature of Internet technology and use keeps extending and changing critical issues of all three Internet governance types, and the dynamics of the interplay between them’ (2007: 64–65). Furthermore, national governments and public authorities have expressed their discontent with the multi-stakeholder structures of today’s Internet governance regime, especially with the way such structures are manifested in the IGF setting. Accordingly, they have emphasised the critical role that public policymakers should have in making decisions about the Internet to ensure good service of the public interest as opposed to vested private interests. At the same time, other voices have questioned the actual effectiveness and outcome of the IGF, asking whether a dialogue-only forum can lead to decisions that advance Internet governance and respond to vital questions around the Internet and the numerous phenomena associated with it (Nordicom 2011a).

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In this multi-stakeholder milieu the traditional governance actor, the state, is far from being the only qualified decision-maker for issues such as monitoring of Internet content, allocation of domain names and protection of privacy online. Selfregulation and co-regulation appear to be two increasingly powerful terms and sets of practices in regulating the Internet. Self- and co-regulation assign responsibility to market forces and, according to some, shield the open and free character of the Internet while empowering the user (Freedman 2012: 100). However, a range of critical voices has mounted around the guiding principles and spirit – as well as the practical function, suitability and effects – of self-regulatory schemes (see Ang 2008 and Zittrain 2009, quoted in Freedman 2012: 110). As early as 1997, Sinclair argued that self-regulation is not the opposite of or an alternative to staterun, command-and-control regulation and that it should instead be seen within a continuum of regulation wherein a number of ‘regulatory variables’ exist. Sinclair (1997) suggested that a combination of self-regulation and command-and-control regulation in most circumstances provides the best regulatory outcome. Although Cannataci and Bonnici (2003) did not discard the potential benefits of selfregulation, especially when rules are needed but the state is not eager to intervene due to fiscal, political or social costs, they pointed out that self-regulation has demonstrated a range of weaknesses and areas of failure. In assessing ISPs’ self-regulatory practices, mechanisms and outcomes, they concluded that selfregulatory practices mostly apply within narrow national boundaries (whereas online communications are inherently transnational), and that they lack efficient sanctions, public accountability and actual monitoring and review systems. Such critiques can be placed within the long-standing competition between public- and market-oriented norms, rules and laws, and point to the continuing power battles of competing interests in a multi-stakeholder and apparently open Internet governance regime. Scholars either support a free, competitive, marketoriented Internet environment or take a public-welfare approach to the Internet and its governance (e.g., Bauer 2002, Calabrese 1997, Calabrese and Burgelman 1999, Freedman 2008, 2012, Pauwels and Burgelman 2003). Freedman favours the importance of public (versus private or state) policy and argues that: The internet is itself a creature of public policy and it is entirely legitimate to propose that fully democratic states – and not outsourced private interests, partisan administrations, authoritarian governments or opaque supranational bodies – should regulate the internet as a public utility that is accessible and accountable to all their citizens. (Freedman 2012: 98)

Bringing technology design to the core of this debate, Lessig’s highly influential work suggests that regulation is not purely external to the technology and, specifically, that the Internet is regulated by its own code, which is ‘the instructions embedded in the software or hardware that make cyberspace what it is … It is its “architecture”’ (2006: 121). The code conveys a series of affordances and restrictions to the user or cyber actor that essentially reflect the cultures,

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ideas, norms, rules, configurations and interests embedded in the code. Thus, for Lessig, architecture (i.e., ‘code’) regulates – together with laws, social norms and the market – the Internet (2006: 123) and is becoming an increasingly important regulatory actor: ‘code writers are increasingly lawmakers. They determine what the defaults of the Internet will be’ (2006: 79). Nevertheless, according to Lessig (2006), code itself is far from independent of market and state forces, since closed or commercial code serves large, minority market interests and allows an indirect effect of state coercion, thus challenging the democratic functioning of cyberspace. Furthermore, Internet governance takes place at the transnational level, adding complexity. The issue at stake is how norms, values, actual policies, rules and laws will successfully correspond with the Internet’s borderless, open, decentralised and constantly evolving nature. This has challenged national sovereignty and has given rise to ‘a network of organisations … composed primarily, but not exclusively, of intergovernmental agencies organized around the United Nations’, enabling a series of ‘non-state actors from both the private sector and civil society’ to be ‘central to the development and enforcement of contemporary information policies’ (Freedman 2012: 99–100). Quite early on, Cox (2002) foresaw the loss of national sovereignty in trade law for electronic commerce and considered it a result of the international nature of online transactions, namely of transactions that have no physical presence. He noted the need for international coordination and adoption of norms in electronic-trade law-making and stressed the increasing role of NGOs and transnational bodies such as the EU and the UN. At the EU level, the first time the EU institutionally acknowledged the importance of ICTs and the need for related policy and regulatory action was in 1993 (European Commission 1993). The European Commission made its vision of the Information Society more concrete in the Bangemann Report in June 1994 (Bangemann 1994). This report proposed telecommunications regulation (e.g., liberalisation, normalisation of tariffs) and measures in domains such as intellectual property, privacy and security, and also promoted mobile and satellite communications. Approximately two decades on, many of these matters remain key policy and regulatory issues greatly forming today’s Internet governance agenda. In the early 2000s, the European Commission started to realise that Internet governance is a multiple-player arena. Via the eEurope 2005 Action Plan, proposed in 2002 for the establishment of an Information Society for all, and with i2010 (2005–2010), which aimed to boost the growth of telecommunications,36 the Commission stressed the significance of an open dialogue with nonpolicy actors so as governance to respond to the challenges of the upcoming broadband society and to effectively enforce policies and regulations across the EU territory.37 36 More information on eEurope 2005 and i2010 can be found at http://europa.eu/ legislation_summaries/information_society/strategies/index_en.htm. 37 The current ‘Digital Agenda for Europe’ was proposed in 2010 under the rubric of fast and ultra-fast Internet access across Europe. It sets as its chief goal achieving ‘download rates of 30 Mbps for all of its citizens’ across Europe, with ‘at least 50% of European

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Given that Internet governance is far from a static field of debate, action and development and moves on alongside rapidly evolving technologies and societal systems, the current Internet governance regime in the EU emphasises multistakeholderism to a greater extent than five or ten years ago. In September 2011, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers adopted a ‘Declaration on Internet Governance Principles’, which set out the need for national policies to respect the following principles: protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law; multi-stakeholder governance; responsibility of states; empowerment of Internet users; universality of the Internet; integrity of the Internet; decentralised management of the Internet; preservation of the open standards, interoperability and end-to-end nature of the Internet; maintenance of the Internet as an open network; and cultural and linguistic diversity (Nordicom 2011b). Although not legally binding on member states, this declaration set the key governance aims and principles while planning and acting for the Internet of the future. In line with this declaration, the Council of Europe has set out its Internet governance strategy for the period 2012–2015, which concentrates on the following action areas: protection of the Internet’s universality, integrity and openness; strengthening rights and freedoms for Internet users; data protection and privacy; effective laws and cooperation against cybercrime; democracy and cultural diversity; and protection and empowerment of children and young people. On the international level, in December 2011 the OECD Council published its ‘Recommendation on Principles for Internet Policy Making’ and suggested 14 timely policy priority areas to determine Internet policies on a global level in the immediate future. These priority areas include global free flow of information; the open, distributed and interconnected nature of the Internet; investment and competition in high-speed networks and services; cross-border delivery of services; voluntarily developed codes of conduct; consistency and effectiveness in privacy protection; individual empowerment; creativity and innovation; limiting Internet intermediary liability; and cooperation to promote Internet security (OECD Council 2011). In the remainder of this section the focus is on two of the timely governance issues brought forward by the Council of Europe and OECD: censorship and the specific case of intellectual property rights (IPRs), and net neutrality. The households subscribing to internet connections above 100 Mbps by 2020’. To attain this, it stresses the use of EU funding instruments and capital gain for broadband investments through credit enhancement; clear and effective regulatory measures for competitive next– generation access networks that enable access to high–speed Internet; operational national broadband plans by 2012 that meet the coverage, speed and take-up targets of the ‘Digital Agenda’ programme; and employment of unused structural and rural development funds for the roll–out of high–speed networks (for more, see http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/ en/our-goals/pillar-iv-fast-and-ultra-fast-internet-access). For instance, in October 2011 the European Commission proposed spending about €9.2 billion from 2014 to 2020 on pan-European projects to give EU citizens and businesses access to high–speed broadband networks and services (Nordicom 2011b).

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discussion of these two issues presents debates on the complexity, importance and implications of Internet governance and the involvement of technological, usage and economic matters, and also highlights inexorable interdependencies between technology, the user community and leading economic and political interests. The choice to discuss these two complex and multifaceted governance issues does not imply the unimportance of Internet governance issues such as technology and infrastructure provision (Dutton and Peltu 2007, WGIG 2005); digital inclusion (Barzilai-Nahon 2006, ITU 2010, Servaes 2003, Stevenson 2009, Tsatsou 2011a, 2011b, van Dijk and Hacker 2003); online security and privacy (Acquisti and Gross 2006, boyd and Hargittai 2010, Freedman 2012, Grimmelmann 2007, King 2003, OECD 2011, Satola 2007); and Internet market development (Bauer 2002, Calabrese and Burgelman 1999, Cave and Crowther 1996, ERG and IRG 2006, Esser and Noppe 1996, European Commission 2005, 2007, 2009a, 2010a, 2010b, 2012a, European Council 2012, Goodwin and Spittle 2002, Harcourt 2005, ITU 1996, OECD 2011, Servaes 2002, Simpson 2000). On the contrary, the focus on censorship and IPRs and on net neutrality mostly aims at a critical discussion that highlights inexorable interdependencies between technology, the user community and leading economic and political interests rather than an exhaustive account of single technological, usage or market issues that have long been at the core of discussions, research and actual decision-making. In this respect, the next two subsections offer a far from all-inclusive and thus unavoidably a highly selective overview of Internet governance in the two defined thematic areas, so as to provide some signposting of the perplexity of the issues, the multiplicity of the actors, the contested nature of interests, and the multiple levels of action involved in Internet governance as a whole. Hence, complexity and the highly unforeseeable future of Internet governance and its study are two of the key ideas brought up in the remainder of this section. Censorship: copyright and the protection of IPRs Generally speaking, debates around the market-oriented or public-driven features of Internet governance are tightly related to and often motivated by discussions regarding censorship on the Internet. Censorship is commonly associated with state practices of suppression and surveillance, but it can also derive from industry-driven restrictions on online communications and is commonly regarded as jeopardising user privacy and freedom of expression. It can be exerted on the content of communication, on the applications employed for communication or even on the infrastructure and the actual technology used. It can be exerted through technical, regulatory and policy means, or even, in some cases, through violence and outright communicationrights violation. Although censorship is an inherent element of public or personal mediated communication, the advent of the Internet has changed many of its practices and outcomes and has determined much of our understanding and evaluation of it. In what follows, I discuss approaches to Internet censorship actors, mechanisms and decisions and the example of IPRs.

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Censorship actors: state- versus industry-driven censorship Studies of Internet censorship have distinguished between state-run and marketdriven censorship. State-run censorship has mostly been associated with nondemocratic or authoritarian regimes and their governments, which have shown a long-standing inclination towards censoring the content disseminated and the information exchanged online (Boas 2006, Deibert and Rohozinski 2010a, MacKinnon 2011, Pearce and Kendzior 2012). Boas (2006: 361) notes that, in 2003, during the December WSIS in Geneva, countries such as China and Saudi Arabia declared their objections to a laissez-faire approach to Internet communication. Arguably, China and Saudi Arabia have used both ‘control-facilitating technological’ (Boas 2006: 363) and institutional means to censor the Internet. Technological and institutional Internet-control mechanisms echo Lessig’s (1999) mechanisms for controlling Internet use: law, social norms, the market and architecture. Boas calls the first three institutional mechanisms and explains that they can enforce control of the Internet since ‘laws threaten punishment for prohibited activities, violators of social norms may incur ostracism, and the market can encourage or discourage particular activities based on their cost’ (2006: 363).38 On the other hand, authoritarian regimes can ‘adapt this malleable technology for their purposes, embedding technological measures of control within the national computer networks that connect their citizens to the Internet’ (Boas 2006: 367). For instance, they can control a national network or gateway through which citizens access the Internet, while simultaneously controlling technical or service decisions and related constraints.39 38 Authorities in Saudi Arabia and China have applied the institutional means of law, norms and the market to control and censor the Internet, with punishment, ostracism and cost being employed as the mechanisms to restrain Internet use. For instance, in Saudi Arabia ‘social norms against viewing material deemed offensive to Islam’ are in place, while ‘ISPs are required to keep records on the identity of users and provide such information to authorities if requested’ alongside constraining ‘market conditions (such as the high price of dialling into an ISP outside of the country)’ (Boas 2006: 375). In China, institutional constraints on Internet use have been more extensive and mainly consist of ‘legal regulation of users’, profiling, and identification and often punishment of individuals who are involved in politically prohibited communication. In China, market operators have good ‘working’ relationships with the state authorities, thus assisting ‘legal regulation’ and restraining access to politically and socially sensitive Internet content (Boas 2006: 375–376). 39 In Saudi Arabia, although multiple, privately owned ISPs operate, the entire traffic to the global Internet has been filtered by proxy servers managed by the Internet Services Unit of the country’s governing authority for the Internet, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. This has allowed the authorities to control Internet communications and to block the transmission of information that is not in accordance with the social, political and religious values and rules of the country. In China, Internet control mechanisms are more developed and vary in types, such as website-blocking systems, interconnecting networks

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Studies have remarked that, besides authoritarian regimes, in recent years there has been normalisation of state-run cyberspace controls in democratic regimes (Deibert and Rohozinski 2010b, Howard, Agarwal and Hussain 2011). Specifically, states have taken a ‘security first’ approach to Internet governance to protect themselves from cyberterrorism and to protect vulnerable populations such as children from exploitative and abusive content. In this respect, it is argued that states increasingly control and police unwanted online content and so Internet censorship becomes ‘a global norm’ (Deibert and Rohozinski 2010b: 5). State-driven censorship is not the only possibility. As studies in the field note, third-party intermediaries such as private industry can apply censorship and control measures through their terms of service and their data-retention and data-use policies, as well as by putting into effect take-down notices and other commercial compliance and service measures (Deibert and Rohozinski 2010b). Intermediary censorship is part of today’s self-regulatory regime, which allows state authorities to censor online content and users indirectly, via assigning to intermediary actors such as ISPs responsibility for the enforcement of agreed codes and rules. According to the OECD, there is ‘increasing national and international pressure from governments, intellectual property rights-holders, and some consumer groups, to enlist the help of Internet intermediaries to control copyright infringement, child pornography, improve cyber security etc.’ (2010: 3). However, the OECD has remarked that, in order for innovation, creativity and free flow of information to be fostered, limitation of Internet intermediaries’ liability is needed. This suggests minimising burdens and legal uncertainty for intermediaries on the one hand, and facilitating intermediaries in educating users, in assisting copyright holders with enforcing their rights, and in reducing illegal content on the other (OECD 2011: 6). Along these lines, it has been noted that the regime of intermediary censorship is usually not happily accepted by industry actors such as ISPs, since it can make them legally liable for user activity, places additional workload and responsibilities on them, and restricts their economic openness by assigning to them the role of gatekeeping certain products, services and users (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1148). At the same time, industry actors such as ISPs and online service providers (OSPs)40 can lead censorship practices themselves by blocking or restricting Internet access and by removing Internet content (Zuckerman 2010). As has been argued, industry actors are conscious of the fiscal and legal costs that can incur when hosting controversial information or granting access to ‘troublesome’ users (e.g., users who attract DDoS attacks, users who become the target of copyright or trade complaints). Due to their need to interpret and follow regulations and to achieve an operating profit, such corporate actors can ban entire nations,

for filtering Internet traffic and control of the Internet market through regulation (Boas 2006: 370–372). 40 OSPs host social networking services, blogs, and websites.

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communities or individual users from accessing services41 while making spaces suspected of offering controversial information subject to control and scrutiny. Such corporate filtering or intermediary censorship is considered to be undergoing a ‘steep and sudden rise’ (Zuckerman 2010: 81). Censoring means and technologies It is rather ironic that the urge towards technological development that fosters open, transnational communication and exchange often involves the invention of technologies that restrict certain types and facets of communication. A significant number of studies have looked at how censorship can be exerted through technology. Monitoring and filtering technologies, digital rights management (DRM) and restricted device hardware (Deibert et al. 2010, Gillespie 2007, Zittrain 2008) are some of the technological means for Internet censorship. In addition, it has been noted that, behind seemingly innocent technical decisions, what often exists is a concerted effort to control online content and information flows (DeNardis 2012). Technical architecture lies beneath applications and content and out of public view (and understanding) and allows political and economic actors to intervene in (and thus to control and restrict) elements of that architecture, such as protocols (e.g., TCP/IP), critical Internet resources (e.g., IP addresses), the DNS and network-layer security (DeNardis 2012: 721). One of the most widely used technological platforms for censoring communication traffic and content transmission on the Internet is the so-called deep packet inspection (DPI). This is a technology used by ISPs independently or to serve industry and state interests. It is regarded as enabling the ‘surveillance and discrimination of data packets moving through the [Internet] network’ and thus ISPs who make use of this technique can ‘monitor, speed up, slow down, block, filter, or otherwise make decisions about the traffic of their users’ (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1143). The DPI technology is programmed to make decisions on how to handle packets, thus enabling networks to classify and control traffic based on the user, the content or the application (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1144). Accounts of this surveillance mechanism note that it is tightly interconnected with the issue of net neutrality42 and has significant implications for major Internet governance issues such as user privacy, free flow of information, intellectual property protection and network security (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1143). More analytically, the DPI technology is primarily employed by ISPs to serve their own business and commercial interests. This is the case when ISPs use DPI to protect network security (e.g., to detect viruses, Trojans, worms and other malicious

41 Such was the case when, in late March and April 2009, LinkedIn.com began blocking Syrian users. 42 See the discussion on net neutrality in the next subsection.

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codes) or to manage bandwidth43 (e.g., to monitor traffic so that quality-of-service (QoS) standards are maintained and excessive traffic caused by peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) is prevented). Also, ISPs employ DPI to block access to online content that is considered illegal or harmful (e.g., child pornographic) or to promote purely commercial activities, such as the injection of advertisements into websites. At the same time, ISPs often – either through enforcement or willingly – use DPI to serve the interests of copyright holders and for the detection and blocking of unauthorised sharing of copyrighted material online (more about copyright below). Finally, through DPI, ISPs can help governments conduct real-time surveillance of Internet communication (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1145–1146). Critical voices argue that these usages make DPI a ‘disruptive technology’, since it violates three cornerstones of Internet communication: the e2e principle, according to which packets should be transferred from the sender (one end) to the receiver (the other end) without the network controlling or disrupting the transfer for content or security-check purposes; ISPs’ nonliability for users’ actions, so as to empower users, enhance their freedom of expression and protect their privacy while also discharging ISPs from legal liability; and, finally, user privacy, which is seriously harmed when DPI technology is employed (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1146–1148). In addition, it is argued that today’s political and economic forces have shifted their attention to the control of infrastructure and have invested efforts and resources in driving the politics of Internet architecture to control information flows: ‘Internet architecture can be a direct proxy for battles over content. Battles over the control of information online are increasingly fought at the level of Internet infrastructure’ (DeNardis 2012: 721). DeNardis (2012) discusses how control over infrastructure places constraints on and controls production, flow and exchange of information to protect IPRs. She contends that this can happen through infrastructure-access technologies that allow the gradual termination of Internet access of a user who repeatedly downloads or shares copyrighted material. Also, the Internet’s DNS can stop websites from using and selling copyrighted content, since a website’s domain name can be seized and the website be redirected to another page, where a law-enforcement message is displayed, essentially making the entire website’s content vanish (DeNardis 2012: 726–729). Governments often apply ‘kill-switch’ practices to control infrastructure and, through this, to stop information transmission online. Particularly in times of public unrest, governments have attempted to cause outage in channels of information exchange and communication, especially mobile telephony, Internet and telecommunications. Recent examples of such censorship tactics include the Iranian government’s decision to block online communication in the aftermath of the controversial 2009 election, and the decision of the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, in January 2011 to cut off mobile phone and Internet 43 Bandwidth management has been heatedly criticised by those favouring net neutrality. See the relevant discussion on net neutrality in the next subsection.

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communication for five days in his attempt to stop social unrest and attacks on his regime. Other earlier instances of ‘kill-switch’ practices come from Burma in 2007, when the government restricted Internet connectivity to stop information from being sent to the outside world about human-rights violation and violent suppression of anti-governmental activism in the country, and from the Nepalese government’s decision to cut off international Internet connections in 2005 when martial law was declared by the king (DeNardis 2012: 729–731). A highly debated example of infrastructure censorship is the termination of financial services and web hosting to WikiLeaks, aiming to prevent leaking of clandestine official documentation and sensitive political information. When in 2010 WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables involving the US Department of State and diplomatic missions, a furious debate started around the organisation and its functioning. On the one hand, WikiLeaks’ supporters raised issues concerning freedom of expression, freedom of the press, government accountability and the right of the public to know what governments keep secret. On the other hand, WikiLeaks’ opponents, mainly consisting of governments and authorities, argued that anonymous leaking of confidential diplomatic information could result in serious risks for the security of the US and of countries with which it has diplomatic relations. Key commercial players disrupted the operation of WikiLeaks and supported the official diplomatic and state authorities’ decision to prevent similar events in the future. Specifically, Amazon terminated the hosting of the sites wikileaks.org and cablegate.wikileaks.org and Mastercard, PayPal and Visa interrupted their funding to WikiLeaks (DeNardis 2012: 731–733). The case of copyright and IPRs Copyright and IPRs constitute a major example of Internet censorship. They showcase the diversity of censorship actors, targets and means; the complexity of censorship; and the challenges censorship sets to studies in the field as well as to actual governance schemes. Copyright has long been a key item on the agendas of national authorities and associated regulatory bodies, but since the advent of the Internet it has shaped a new domain of debate and battle between competing interests and specifically between governments, copyright holders, users of the Internet, and Internet service and content providers. User interests are contrasted with industry and/or state practices and online communication affordances can be restricted by censoring technologies and regulations as well as by industry actors and dominant business models. For these reasons, it is a widely debated issue in the relevant studies. Studies note that copyright involves two levels of infringement: the individual level and the content level (DeNardis 2012: 727). At the individual level, national regulations dictate the graduated termination of Internet access if a user repeatedly downloads or shares copyrighted online content, after the relevant ISP sends to the user a number of warnings. For instance, France’s three-strikes law and the UK’s

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Digital Economy Act (Section 9) take such an approach. However, studies have noted that this approach raises concerns over ‘privacy, freedom of expression, due process, the possibility of cutting entire households off from the Internet, and the role of private industry versus the courts in prosecuting intellectual property infringement’ while posing questions about the ‘undue burden ISPs must bear in detecting, enforcing, and resolving these copyright infringement cases’ (DeNardis 2012: 727). The latter is of particular concern to IPSs, since copyright owners often demand intermediary censorship and the use of DPI technology by ISPs to detect and prevent downloading or sharing of copyrighted material online. For instance, since 2004 the European entertainment music industry has attempted through lawsuits to oblige ISPs to use technology (e.g., Audible Magic) to detect and block unauthorised use of copyrighted music. This is to save using resources to chase and sue individual users; however, ISPs have resisted such a prospect given the resulting extra cost, burden and customer dissatisfaction (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1153–1154). Similarly, in the US, copyright owners began in 2007 to attempt to get ISPs involved in the battle against copyright infringement on the Internet, something that ISPs refused. However, in the US, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,44 signed into law by President Clinton in 1998, mandates a strong notice and take-down policy for copyright protection, but, through the ‘safe harbour’ provisions (section 512) in particular, it limits ISPs’ liability for copyright-infringement incidents of which they are not aware. Thus, copyright owners in the US have been called on to search for other actors’ contributions to setting up technical measures against copyrighted material-sharing online (e.g., the higher-education sector) (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1155). At the content level, national legislation and associated initiatives conduct domain-name seizure to stop the use or selling of copyrighted content through specific websites. In this case, the domain name of the website is seized – the actual content and the server are not confiscated – and, as outlined above, the website is redirected to another page. This is a practice employed in the US, where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an inspective law-enforcement authority of the Department of Homeland Security, has been in charge of domain-name seizures. In the US there have been attempts to strengthen this practice further via the proposals of the Protect IP Act (PIPA)45 and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)46 (DeNardis 2012: 728), but the controversial content of these proposed Acts made the Senate and House Judiciary Committee announce in January 2012 the postponement of the plans to proceed with the SOPA and PIPA bills until wider 44 The content of the Act can be accessed at http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/ dmca.pdf. 45 The text of the Bill can be found at http://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ BillText–PROTECTIPAct.pdf. 46 The text of the Bill can be found at http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/112%20 HR%203261.pdf.

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consent on a solution to copyright infringement on the Internet is reached (Condon 2012). Studies contend that this strategy of copyright enforcement is not free of problems either, and it raises concerns over the ‘functionality and universality of the DNS’ as well as its actual effectiveness since ‘content can easily rematerialize on a different website, potentially using a different top-level domain, registrar, and registry’ (DeNardis 2012: 728–729). Technology and technology design are also largely used for content-level copyright purposes. For instance, encryption technologies, the dissemination of which copyright holders aim for, ‘allow content owners to decide who gets access to their work … how, when, and where that content can be used, rules that will be honored automatically by the devices we use to consume it’ (Gillespie 2007: 7). Essentially encryption is a DRM technique that allows digital content to be encrypted to restrict access to it. At the same time, accounts of such encryption technologies suggest that technology design alone cannot enforce copyright to the desired extent, since a web of legal, political, economic and cultural structures and processes must be factored in: ‘Alongside the new technologies come new laws to back them, new institutional and commercial arrangements to produce and align them, and new cultural justifications to convince legislators and users to embrace them’ (Gillespie 2007: 15). An example of this necessary alliance of factors to enable copyright protection is the Content Scramble System encryption technology, a forty-bit encryption algorithm that operates as a lock and determines whether DVD film content is accessible or not depending on whether the DVD player used is authorised by the movie studios. This requires commercial agreement between the movie industry and software and hardware manufacturers, the appropriate legal basis to support that agreement on restricting access (e.g., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States) and of course an entire cultural and ideological platform to defend the need to protect copyright and through it to safeguard film production and the entertainment industry as a whole (Gillespie 2007: Chapter 6). Looking into more detail at the official policies and regulations in this governance area, it must be noted that the US has demonstrated plenty of legislative attempts to empower copyright holders against pirates in cyberspace (Freedman 2008: 189). The Digital Millennium Copyright Act aimed to empower and extend copyright by banning devices and applications that circumvent control of access to copyrighted content, imposing higher penalties for copyright infringement and exempting ISPs from liability for such infringement. This was followed by numerous attempts to tighten copyright laws in the country, such as the 1998 Copyright Right Term Extension Act, which extended copyright protection from 75 to 95 years. Four years later, the 2002 Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act aimed to make digital hardware include copy-protection systems, while the 2004 Piracy Deterrence and Education (PIRATE) Act pursued five-year prison sentences for users of p2p platforms who make 1,000 or more songs available for download. Subsequently, the 2004 Inducing Infringements of Copyright (Induce) Act aimed to grant copyright holders the right to sue companies that prompt users to make

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unauthorised copies of copyrighted material. The latter three regulatory attempts did not pass through Congress but in 2005 the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was signed off by President George W. Bush, enabling the criminalisation of the use of camcorders in cinemas as well as the imprisonment for up to three years of those involved in illegal distribution of any unreleased film, music or software (Freedman 2008: 190). In addition, the postponed anti-piracy SOPA and PIPA bills (see above) attempted to further enforce copyright by ordering legal action against those offering or facilitating the streaming of copyrighted material such as music and films and by allowing ISPs, payment network providers, Internet search engines, Internet advertising services, advertisers, and domain-name registries and registrars to block access to or terminate their financial affiliation with a website on the basis of credible evidence that the site is liable for copyright infringement. Two of the most hotly debated and widely known troublesome copyright cases in the US concerned Grokster and Napster in the early 2000s. Grokster offered p2p technology, while Napster involved a file-sharing service. Napster offered a centralised service in which music file-sharing was made possible through Napster’s server, whereas Grokster’s p2p operations did not require a centralised server and every user’s computer made information directly available to other users in the network. Nevertheless, they were both challenged by the American law on a number of occasions and had to abort their operations either temporarily (Napster did so in 2001) or permanently (Grokster shut down in 2005). The statement on unauthorised downloading or sharing of copyrighted material made by motion-picture and music companies in the country as part of their file brief for the US Supreme Court review of the Grokster case is indicative: ‘The Groksters of the world are not innovators … They are parasites who hide behind technology as they steal from the artists that create entertainment; they jeopardise the incentives to create new artistic works for society to enjoy’ (RIAA 2005). On the other hand, the European Union has appeared less eager, or better to say more sceptical, about giving in to the pressures of the copyright industry and to its demand that ISPs and OSPs take action against potential copyright infringements and punish users who commit them. The EU copyright regulation has consisted of the 2000 E-Commerce Directive, the 2001 Directive on Copyright and Related Rights and the 2004 Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. This regulation has aimed to protect IPRs and to harmonise national regimes concerning IRP protection across the EU, without, however, taking aggressive action against IPR enforcement or taking forward the demands of copyright owners for content and service providers to be rendered liable when copyright infringement takes place (Deibert et al. 2010: 281–283). Hence, on 24 November 2011, the European Court of Justice issued a ruling that EU law precludes the imposition of a requirement on ISPs to install a filtering system with a view to preventing illegal file downloads (Nordicom 2011b). In a similar vein, the UK has historically made lesser and less systematic efforts to build an anti-piracy regulatory framework than the US and some sort of balance between the user community and market interests has been sought.

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Nevertheless, British governments have repeatedly shown willingness to protect IPRs in digital communications and to take advantage of market development and the economic benefits arising from copyright. Specifically, the British Labour government introduced the 2002 Copyright, etc. and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcements) Act, which increased the maximum prison sentence for copyright infringement and also assigned more powers to the police to search for pirated material. Furthermore, the UK was one of the first EU members states to implement the 2001 Directive on Copyright and in 2004 it created a forum on intellectual property that aimed to echo and empower the voices of those representing creative industry interests (Freedman 2008: 190). The Digital Economy Act of 2010 endorses the disconnection of users who persistently commit unlicensed downloading and demonstrates the increasing tendency of copyright legislation in the country to support corporate interests. In this sense, it could be argued that there has been an increasing influence of content industries and that decisionmakers attempt to assist, through legislation, ‘IP industries to maximize their revenue’ (Freedman 2008: 192). In general, measures and legislations on combating online piracy have provoked angry reactions among commercial Internet players, users of the Internet and even official and consultancy policy bodies, who consider such initiatives attempts to stifle free circulation of information and the open Internet. For instance, 115,000 websites and more than 13 million Internet users protested online in January 2012 against the proposed PIPA and SOPA bills in the United States. Also, online protests, boycotts and ‘Internet blackout’ actions of Internet websites and services such as Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and social media players, as well as physical demonstrations, have led (as mentioned above) to the postponement of the SOPA and PIPA bills until wider consent is achieved (Condon 2012). In Europe, although the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)47 was initially voted for unanimously by the EU Council in December 2011 and was signed in January 2012 by the European Commission and 22 of the 27 member states, it did not come into force as EU law. The European Parliament voted against ACTA on 4 July 2012, after tens of thousands of citizens in about 200 cities in Europe went out and participated in a massive pan-European protest against it in February 2012. Also, policy players and policy consultancy bodies in Europe expressed their concerns over the extent to which the reinforcement of IPRs on the Internet, as aspired by ACTA, could put fundamental freedoms and privacy under threat through increased processing of personal data by ISPs (Nordicom 2012: 2–4). Scholarly accounts adopt a critical outlook on the purposes and interests served through IPR-protection rules for the Internet. For scholars, the problem lies in both 47 ACTA is a multinational treaty that aims to set international standards for the enforcement of IPRs through an international legal framework for targeting copyright infringement on the Internet and a new governing body. The ACTA text can be downloaded from http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/trade-topics/intellectual-property/ index_en.htm.

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the normative and practical (effects-related) state of such rules. From a normative perspective, the state-industry partnership sets up a fairly undemocratic stage of decision-making wherein creativity and technological innovation are stifled, since intellectual property rules in cyberspace ‘undermine new and innovative applications of technology’ while ‘the emergence of new digital services and business models … penalize, rather than reward, innovation’ (Freedman 2008: 195). In this way, it has been argued, copyright regulations and the alliance around them of technical, policy, industry and cultural forces preclude ‘the use of new communication technologies in ways that could powerfully shift … cultural production in a more egalitarian direction’ (Gillespie 2007: 19). From a practical point of view, copyright legislation on the Internet has not led to increased revenue in the entertainment industry and has ‘failed to “monetize” music fans and induce them away from P2P sites’ (Freedman 2008: 194). It is worth saying a little more about the normative approach to copyright regulation and the implications of such regulation for involved actors and interests. In his polemic of neoliberal media policies, May (2006) has interrogated IPR policies and has concluded that ‘anxiety’ has an important role in the politics of knowledge in general and in the politics of IPRs in particular. Specifically, he has argued that copyright policies signify the presence of two types of anxiety: anxiety about personal welfare and anxiety about control, with both influencing decisions concerning the scope, applicability and costs of copyright. May suggests that these forces of anxiety must be resisted. Freedman (2008) takes a political economy approach and argues that neoliberal market forces have formed a powerful pole of interests and thus government regulations of copyright violation operate in the context of market pressure and the demand of creative industries, such as the music industry, not lose revenue to illegal downloads. Focusing on the West, Freedman argues that governments in the UK and the US completely neglect the ‘public’ and ‘cultural’ character of creative, online communication and services, treating them like any other commercial product and forming a sort of partnership with industry players and copyright owners. Gillespie (2007) remarks that copyright does not benefit the creators, artists or authors but serves the distributors of content, namely the corporate interests that make revenue through cultural product distribution and sale. This can be thought of as undermining the democratic, open and creative nature of Internet communication while supporting a liberal political economy approach to cultural production, exchange and consumption. Such arguments boost the claims of those in favor of the free sharing of cultural goods and services, such as Lessig’s (2004) ‘free culture’ and ‘creative commons’ vision.48 48 In his work, Lessig (2004) mostly draws on his experience from the US context to remark on the increasing intellectual property control that has been exerted by concerted state and industry forces over the past few years and the disadvantages stemming from such control for open competition, creativity and sharing of products that could make a difference in all domains of living. On the whole, he takes a practical approach to the problem and focuses on the possible solutions that ‘creative commons’ could offer in this respect. In

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From a sociology-of-law perspective, scholarly work (Feldman and Nadler 2006, Jensen 2003, Moohr 2003, Schultz 2007, Svensson and Larsson 2012) has pointed out a gap between copyright regulation and social norms, especially with regard to the Internet, as music- and film-downloading and file-sharing online are broadly considered acceptable practices and do not seriously contradict prevalent social norms. Jensen (2003) has argued that such a gap obstructs attempts to create a self-enforcing – namely a society-driven – digital ‘copyright norm’. For example, regarding file-sharing on the Internet, Feldman and Nadler (2006) found that legislation against file-sharing that does not entail sanctions for those breaking the law does not affect young people’s perceptions of illegal file-sharing. Similarly, in a recent study of the 2009 copyright regulation in Sweden and young people’s perceptions of file-sharing, Svensson and Larsson found that, although actual illegal file-sharing has declined due to the fear of legal punishment, the 2009 regulation in Sweden has not managed to close the gap between copyright law and social norms, since social support for copyright remains remarkably low (2012: 1159). Svensson and Larsson consider this a major issue as to the legitimacy of law, since law must be supported by society and echo society’s needs in order to yield effects. In addition, these authors consider that adoption of copyright law that disagrees with social norms can provoke anti-measures, such as the expansion of technical means for online anonymisation, thus undermining legal enforcement and effective implementation of law. Hence, they conclude that: A serious chasm is truly opening up between the legal system and the social norms of society … copyright and the dilemma of unauthorized file sharing may represent a socio-legal challenge that is greater than the one that merely indicates copyright regulation in a digital context. (Svensson and Larsson 2012: 1160).

In focusing on the field of music education, Thibeault (2012) summarises some of the above normative critiques of copyright regulation and counterproposes a creative-rights approach. Specifically, he identifies a few weaknesses of the copyright-law compliance approach, such as ignorance of the norm-law gap discussed above; infeasibility, since compliance is nearly impossible to achieve due to the inherent ambiguity of copyright; and disablement of the creative practices that should be encouraged in the field of education in particular. Thus, his creativerights approach allows, among other things, the production of transgressive works that embrace innovation and creativity and that connect creative work with the digital world. For many scholars, creativity and innovativeness in the digital age are equivalent to the ability to reuse, remix and repurpose online creative content. 2001, he contributed to the creation of Creative Commons, a nonprofit organisation that offers a series of copyright licenses to the public free of charge so as to allow sharing of creative work under various terms and conditions, ranging from the default ‘all rights’ to ‘some rights reserved’. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org.

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For McGrail and McGrail (2010), it is precisely the characteristics of content lying in the digital environment – ease of replication, ease of transmission and multiple use, plasticity and ease of manipulation, compactness, nonlinearity, intangibility and mixability – that create the necessity for new laws so as creators and consumers can interact, interplay and mutually benefit from remixed, repurposed and reused content. Hence, according to McGrail and McGrail, today’s copyright regulation corresponds to the needs of the analogue age and can benefit the old media actors, but it does not respond to the attributes, conditions and content of today’s digital milieu. The open Internet and net neutrality Linked to the areas of Internet infrastructure, Internet use, Internet market development, censorship of the Internet and related risks and challenges is the governance area of net neutrality. Net neutrality raises questions on how best to ensure the Internet’s beneficial use, guarantee fair market competition, respect the open and nondiscriminatory character of the Internet and protect users’ freedom of communication and privacy. This is a much-debated issue (Nordicom 2011b) involving decision-makers, industry players and particularly ISPs, as well as the massively expanding user community and their frantically heterogeneous range of uses of the Internet. Net neutrality refers to the need for online information, content or services to be treated impartially regardless of their source or destination, with users deciding on the applications and services they desire to use. This means that ISPs are not to block, limit, filter or prioritise certain content or services on the Internet for competition or profit purposes (e.g., to disfavour applications offered by other providers or to favour business costumers). So, the basic policy problematic is associated with the possibility of ISPs promoting, in a non–neutral way, the delivery of their own content more than that of other Internet content. This issue has been flagged up in policy discussions, documents and forums and has generated diverse proposals, touching upon business models, economic competition, power battles and freedom-of-expression debates (DeNardis 2012: 725). In the US context, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acted on net neutrality in December 2010, although in a fairly modest manner. Although in principle the FCC regulation was in favour of net neutrality, it exempted wireless devices after strong lobbying and angry reactions of market and antiregulation political and activist voices in the country. Industry forces sued the FCC for regulating network traffic, while the US Senate rejected the proposal of the Republican side to lift these regulations before they took effect in November 2011 (McCullagh 2011). It has been suggested that the FCC accepted ‘reasonable network management’ (i.e., reasonable bandwidth management by ISPs) to protect QoS, in a way demonstrating the necessity for transparency and nondiscrimination against independent service providers (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1152). In contrast, EU authorities have sent stronger messages in support of net neutrality. Decision-makers in the EU appear to be greatly supportive of the

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open Internet and the associated principle of net neutrality, and their upkeep of free-market competition aims, inter alia, to enable consumers to make free and informed choices from a range of high-quality and reasonably priced online content and services. Specifically, the amended EU electronic communications regulation of 2009 demands that national regulatory authorities promote user access to and distribution of information and allow users to run applications of their choice. In addition, the EU regulation sets out transparency requirements visà-vis consumers to enable them to be informed about the quality of services and any associated restrictions on content or applications. At the same time, it makes provisions for customers who intend to switch service provider, ensuring that the conditions and procedures for contract termination do not constitute disincentives against switching (European Commission 2011: 4–5). The EU authorities have repeatedly expressed their support for the open Internet and network neutrality. In the Declaration of the Committee of Ministers, Council of Europe, in September 201049 it was pointed out that ‘non-transparent traffic management, content and services’ discrimination or impeding connectivity of devices’ can put net neutrality at risk and subsequently violate ‘users’ right to access and distribute information online and the development of new tools and services’. The Committee of Ministers explicitly declared its ‘commitment to the principle of network neutrality’ and invited the Council of Europe to provide ‘guidance to member states’ and/or to assist the ‘elaboration of guidelines with and for private sector actors in order to define more precisely acceptable management measures and minimum quality-of-service requirements’. In addition, the European Commission declared in 2011 that the core of the net-neutrality issue is ‘how best to preserve the openness of this [Internet] platform and to ensure that it can continue to provide high-quality services to all’, while it highlighted the associated issues and debates around ‘traffic management, blocking and degradation, quality of service and transparency’ (European Commission 2011). Thus, the European Commission stated its intention to continue looking into and taking necessary action on the following net-neutrality matters: ‘barriers to switching …, practices of blocking, throttling and commercial practices with equivalent effect, transparency and quality of service as well as the competition issues relating to net neutrality (e.g. discriminatory practices by a dominant player)’ (2011: 9). Net neutrality is one of the priority action areas set out in the Council of Europe’s Internet governance strategy for 2012–2015. In order to protect the Internet’s universality, integrity and openness, the Council advocates that all stakeholders must develop ‘human rights policy principles on “network neutrality” to ensure Internet users have the greatest possible access to content, application [sic] and services of their choice as part of the public service value of the Internet and in full respect of fundamental rights’ (Council of Europe 2012: 3). It is indicative that in May 2012 the vice-president of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, 49 The Declaration can be found at https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1678287.

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proposed further action on net neutrality on the basis of the data made available by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC)50 (European Commission 2012b). The BEREC data have shown that at least 20 per cent and up to half of EU mobile broadband users have contracts that allow their ISPs to restrict services such as Skype or p2p file-sharing, and another 20 per cent of fixed operators restrict p2p volumes at peak times. In addition, although the market is providing choice, there is a need for further action to make it easier for consumers to switch service providers and to choose the market offer that suits them best (European Commission 2012b). Thus, Kroes identified a problem regarding effective consumer choice in Europe and proposed action in the direction of the provision of transparent information on the quality of services (e.g., actual broadband speeds, Internet data or volume ceilings and associated costs or restrictions, exact content of the service). Kroes warned that the Commission will continue to monitor the Internet market to safeguard net neutrality and the socioeconomic benefits arising from it (European Commission 2012b). BEREC has been supporting net neutrality since 2010 and has published a number of documents to account for the barriers to net neutrality and to suggest future policies to promote net neutrality. In its November 2012 overview document,51 which summarises its activities in this area, what is emphasised is the continuing importance of the openness of the Internet and of net neutrality for innovation, economic growth and social welfare coupled with recommendations for how regulators could further enhance and secure net neutrality. BEREC argues that, while free-market competition is a precondition for net neutrality, competition requires transparency of terms and conditions – so that customers can distinguish between unrestricted and restricted Internet-access services – and mechanisms to enable consumers to switch service suppliers with low cost and effort. Also, BEREC recommends that ‘regulators continuously monitor the quality of Internet offers on the market’ so as to detect ‘degradations of service’, ‘availability of affordable unrestricted Internet access offers’, ‘the evolution of specialised services’ and ‘traffic management practices’. Finally, BEREC takes a look ahead and states that, whereas the existing regulatory tools in Europe enable regulators to address net neutrality, we need to bear in mind that market structures, consumer behaviours and legal systems vary in the EU member states and, therefore, national regulators will have to adapt regulatory intervention in order to most effectively address net neutrality in the national context.

50 BEREC was established on 25 November 2009, as part of the telecom regulatory reform, and replaced the European Regulators Group for electronic communications networks and services. More information on BEREC can be found at http://berec.europa. eu. 51 This overview document can be accessed at http://berec.europa.eu/files/document_ register_store/2012/12/BoR_(12)_140_Overview+of+BEREC+approach+to+NN_2012.11 .27.pdf.

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Nevertheless, this has been a highly debated and controversial issue in the Internet governance field. On the one hand, prominent figures – such as the creator of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee (2010) – support the democratic need for net neutrality in order for users not to be subject to discrimination of services and for the universal and open character of the Internet to be respected. On the other hand, key Internet operators and service owners (e.g., Google, Verizon) are opposed to net neutrality and consider it a form of unjustified censorship of the market. What is certain is that the complexity and multiple layers and levels of network discrimination raise serious challenges and require cautious action from net-neutrality advocates and policymakers. From a scholarly perspective, studies have noted that network discrimination is a complex issue and can take various forms, some technologically driven and some business driven (Felten 2006). Specifically, Felten (2006) explains that there are minimal and nonminimal forms of discrimination: discrimination in the form of a time delay (affecting when a packet is delivered) is minimal when the time delay is technologically necessary and nonminimal when it happens even if the necessary link is available. For instance, time delay can be technologically necessary when network providers deal with bandwidth management and monitor traffic and packet transfers (through DPI technology) so as the shared, scarce resource of bandwidth is managed as appropriate (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1151–1153). Yet, it is noted that delay discrimination can be particularly harmful for applications such as online gaming and Internet telephony, since interactive, real-time communication are crucial elements of these applications (Felten 2006: 2–5). At the same time, it is acknowledged that ISPs that rely on cable-modem technology (cable networks have more download capability than upload capacity) often discriminate against p2p traffic in their attempt to economise on bandwidth. This was the case with the US cable network Comcast, which, using DPI equipment, disrupted p2p traffic to such an extent that in 2007 it attracted negative publicity, complaints and petitions to the FCC, and a class-action lawsuit, and was thus prompted to retreat from its bandwidth-management strategy (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1152). Negative reaction and complaints were also ignited in Canada when in 2008 Bell informed its wholesale customers about its use of DPI for traffic-management purposes, with the Canadian Radio-Television Commission adopting a similar ‘reasonable bandwidth management’ approach to that of the FCC (Bendrath and Mueller 2011: 1153). Studies remark the difficulty that regulators encounter attempting to detect when discrimination is the network provider’s deliberate effort to disfavour applications offered by other providers or is a necessity imposed by objective criteria such as network speed, crowdedness of traffic, availability of links and so on: ‘Can regulators distinguish this kind of stratagem from the case of fair and justified engineering decisions that happen to cause a little temporary jiiter? … Net neutrality regulation, even if justified, will inevitably lead to some difficult linedrawing’ (Felten 2006: 5). In the case of deliberate and unjustifiable discrimination on the part of network providers, it has been suggested that users and applications

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will be impacted in somewhat unpredictable and harmful ways (Felten 2006: 7). On the other hand, net neutrality opponents argue that, in cases in which QoS is required in order for a network provider to guarantee the speed and data-transfer time necessary for applications such as video, net neutrality rules could be harmful and act as a sort of obstacle to QoS (given that all traffic would be treated the same). Although such a view has been challenged by the argument that QoS is not required as often and is less important than network providers themselves argue (Felten 2006: 9), net neutrality remains a complex issue. Hence, it has been acknowledged that there is a risk of producing error-prone and barely reinforced net neutrality regulations (Felten 2006: 10). Questions concerning how, when, under what circumstances and with what exceptions net neutrality should be guaranteed problematise net neutrality alongside positions that unquestionably support a certain level of differentiation, deviation or discrimination in the access to and use of Internet services. As regards the latter (i.e., the need for some differentiation), Yoo (in Wu and Yoo 2007) argues that market competition and innovation can best be served if network owners are allowed to deviate from the principle of net neutrality and to pursue their own approaches to routing traffic. He contends that such diversity would better serve the intense and heterogeneous demands of the user community and correspond to a rapidly changing landscape of Internet applications and patterns of communication. Specifically, he proposes that traffic associated with time-sensitive applications (i.e., for synchronous communication) such as Internet telephony and video streaming should be prioritised over applications such as email and web browsing, which are far less time sensitive. Apart from user satisfaction, this deviation from net neutrality could also serve market competition, allowing even small networks to sustain themselves by offering a specific range of services and thus targeting well-identified segments of the user market. In this respect, Yoo considers that net neutrality forces all market players to compete merely on the basis of price and network size, something that favours oligopoly and the big players in the market (in Wu and Yoo 2007: 575–577). Drawing mainly on the US context, he argues that net neutrality encounters implementation difficulties while failing to give incentives to market players to invest and take competition a step further (2007: 589). Similar implementation difficulties are mentioned by Downes, who argues that the architecture of the Internet is such that neutrality is an intrinsic characteristic and thus neutrality regulations are rather ‘ignored, thanks to the Internet’s ability to treat regulation as a network failure and reroute around the problem’ (2009: 137). Finally, scholars such as Freedman problematise the focus and central vision of net neutrality regulations, as ‘policy makers have sought to limit what should be a discussion about how best we should organise and facilitate the circulation online of information, media and culture to a much narrower pre-occupation with ill-defined notions of transparency, competition and “openness”’ (2012: 109). In summary, governance bodies and scholars frame the need for net neutrality through a normative rhetoric that is strongly based on the concepts of equality

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and transparency in the user experience and market competition. However, such rhetoric is yet to respond to questions concerning the actual feasibility of net neutrality as well as associated challenges relating to its often problematic applicability and the rather uncertain benefits it can yield for users and the market. Concluding remarks The discussion of Internet governance and specifically of the governance areas of censorship, copyright and net neutrality demonstrates the highly uncertain role and implications of the Internet for ordinary users as well as for the market. Complicated debates on Internet governance mostly dedicate their efforts to normative deliberation on and laborious unpacking of the complexity of Internet governance. On the one hand, studies illustrate the multiplicity of interests, actors and issues involved and increasingly suggest that we should capitalise on ‘the Internet’s style of fluid governance through open, adaptable and devolved bottomup decision making by a loosely-linked network of individuals and institutions with efficient international coordination’ (Dutton and Peltu 2007: 77). On the other hand, works in this area barely say enough about the possible state of Internet risks and opportunities in the future and the future outlook of their governance. Overall, studies of the structures, actors and decisions of Internet governance are confronted with the challenge to conduct further work so as to inform us on: 1. the decentralised structure of the Internet, its open and innovation-driving character and the conditions under which its management by governance bodies can turn it into either an opportunity or a jeopardising factor for users and the market; 2. the ambivalence of regulations and policies that aim to guarantee user security and serve market profitability while, at the same time, being regarded as violating freedom of expression and other democratic communication rights; 3. the relentless power games and vested interests lying beyond ideological orientations and associated structures, processes and decisions concerning Internet governance. Power games and competitive interests appear to have been barely resolved in today’s multi-stakeholder governance regime and their evolution and role deserve more systematic examination. Hence, studies in this area should reverse Froomkin’s (1997) early question of whether the Internet is a ‘modern hydra’ for regulators and policymakers and instead address the question of whether governance decisions, structures and actors can operate as a ‘hydra’ that incessantly manipulates (at best) and stifles (at worst) the potential benefits of the Internet for users and the market. Harcourt’s (2005) criticism of the institutional politics of media governance in Europe and the problematic results it delivers for both the public interest and the market is still valid and tightly linked to the far-from-resolved role of vested interests in Internet governance. We cannot but acknowledge the long-standing presence of contested

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and controversial agendas in Internet governance and thus question the way those agendas will shape the domain of Internet communication in the future. In closing this penultimate section of the chapter, I must acknowledge the relevance of the study of Internet governance to the theoretical concepts discussed in Chapter 3. As regards the concept of power, multi-stakeholderism is supposed to challenge deep-rooted state and corporate power, on the one hand, while, on the other, it constitutes a constant reminder of the importance of dominant power dynamics and relations in Internet governance. Multi-stakeholderism increases the complexity of Internet governance, gives new momentum to debates between public-driven and market-oriented governance mechanisms and clearly points to the continuation of power battles of competing socio-political and economic interests in today’s multi-stakeholder and apparently open and transnational governance system. Along these lines, the concept of agency becomes more complicated, with new agents (e.g., NGOs, citizen bodies, technology experts, Internet activist bodies) increasingly entering the field of Internet governance and challenging – sometimes to a great extent, sometimes less significantly – the governance structure as it used to be defined by well-established state and corporate interests. Finally, identity is a concept of importance to the study of Internet governance, as the identity of Internet stakeholders and their associated ideas, values and interests define the Internet governance agendas and more or less determine related decisions and practices. At the same time, governance regimes have their own identity and either implicitly or explicitly espouse some ideas, principles and interests while disfranchising others (e.g., neoliberal versus socialwelfare governance traditions). Concluding Remarks: The Future Study of the Multifaceted Role of the Internet At an early point in the development of new media, Elliott (1986: 106) argued that ‘communication changes have vast implications for the organization of work, the economy, the roles which people are able to play in society, their relationship to that society and the polity’. Much later, Fuchs contended that the study of the ‘Internet and society’ is crucial mainly due to the omnipresence of the Internet in social reality and the consequent questions that scholars, researchers and practitioners are called to address, such as: ‘how has this system [the Internet] transformed our lives and our society? What are the positive effects? What are the negative ones? Which opportunities and risks for the development of society and social systems are there?’ (2008: 1). In this chapter I have tried to address some of these questions and to inform the reader concerning a series of major long-standing debates on the role of the Internet in the shaping, development and evolution of real-life settings On the one hand, this chapter focused on the role of the Internet in the enhancement of civic activism and in democratisation as well as on the employment of virtual platforms and tools in community-building and identity (trans)formation.

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It initially labelled these phenomena as examples of the ‘bright’ or positive role that the Internet can play in people’s lives. At the same time, it discussed studies and evidence that largely highlight limits on and barriers to the democratising and community-building potential of the Internet. Thus, it concluded with recommendations on how these two areas of study should be explored in the future. Then, in aiming to offer a balanced account of the real-life role of the Internet, I presented arguably problematic aspects of this role, such as people’s nonadoption of the Internet and the Internet’s control and governance by vested interests. This part of the discussion was initially labelled as reflective of the ‘dark’ or negative role that the Internet plays in real-life contexts. At the same time, I pointed out that contrasting evidence shows that digital opportunities might not be for all, while Internet governance can potentially benefit users and the market even though it often privileges certain interests. Accordingly, I concluded with recommendations on the future study of digital divides and Internet governance. This chapter illustrated that the boundaries between ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ or ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ are far from clear when it comes to the Internet and its effects. Sufficient evidence suggests that such boundaries are partly normative and arbitrary and that their rigid demarcation can have adverse implications for the value of the study of the role of the Internet in real-life settings. Specifically, this chapter demonstrated that theoretical and empirical studies in all four thematic areas – citizen activism, virtual identity and virtual communities, digital divides, and Internet governance – have put forward inconclusive views and have reported diverse findings that mainly inspire debates and prompt us to consider: first, the need for further research on the role of the Internet in people’s lives; and, second, the need to understand every aspect of the real-life role of the Internet as complex, relative, subject to change and also highly vulnerable to the researcher’s point of view and to subjective judgement. Hence, it can be argued that the departure from normative and valueladen arguments on the role of the Internet is an imperative in gaining a better understanding of the dialectic the Internet develops with its users and nonusers as well as with phenomena that predate and/or move hand in hand with it. Along these lines, the discussion in this chapter accommodated debates around Internet effects from a dialectical point of view, taking into account theoretical perspectives on the social embeddedness of technology, the political economy of the Internet and the Internet-enabled network society (all discussed in detail in Chapter 3) as well as the associated concepts of agency, power and identity. As regards the first theoretical perspective – the social embeddedness of technology – and the concept of agency, some studies have formulated celebratory accounts of the Internet and its potential to revolutionise society while others are sceptical and consider the affordances and constraints of the Internet in association with human agency. Broadly speaking, the Internet is socially embedded not only when the actual technology is designed but also throughout its use and appropriation, while its effects are dependent on the interaction between the user and the technological artefact. The discussion in this chapter leads me to suggest

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that future studies take a dialectical position on whether the Internet is part of the broader structure or dependent on the agency of the user/nonuser. The Internet should be considered another form of agency acting alongside human agents and the broader social structures. Such a dialectical approach to the positioning of the Internet in the agency-structure dilemma can enable future studies to craft arguments that refrain from presenting the Internet as a structurally driven agent that disfavours supposedly passive human actors or, alternatively, as a fullyfledged and structurally independent agency that empowers humans. Furthermore, studies of the Internet’s positioning in real-life settings are very reliant on theoretical assumptions on power, with power struggles in the offline world being transferred, reproduced and transformed or even completely overturned in cyberspace. Optimists support the empowerment of the user and refer to phenomena such as grassroots mobilisation and community-building online. Others are critical of the Internet and draw upon political economy and other critical approaches to suggest that power imbalances and the oligarchy of the capitalist class continue to exist on the Internet. The latter position problematises the Internet, referring to those excluded from its opportunities while posing questions concerning the vested interests served by Internet governance. In this chapter I reached the understanding that questions of power, participation and politics of representation are far from easy to address and that, therefore, they must be elaborated on the basis of consistent, longitudinal and both theoretically and empirically informed work. Finally, much of the study of Internet effects in real-life contexts is rooted in the concept of identity and the idea that the Internet constitutes a dynamic, open and ever-expanding information, communication and collaboration network that can accommodate, affect and challenge people’s pre-existing identities or even give shape to new, emerging identities. Identity is largely considered a driver of online phenomena such as virtual communities and can explain the features of online activist groups or initiatives while also feeding discussions on digital exclusion and the way the Internet is controlled by stakeholders with various identities. On the one hand, identity is used to equip celebratory accounts of the Internet and its potential to liberate and empower users. On the other hand, studies have considered identity in cyberspace quite problematic, questioning the level to which online and offline identity are identical and posing questions on the possible risks arising from digital identity. However, the broad concept of identity deserves an analytically rich and empirically systematic exploration so that scholars may obtain a better understanding of its role in the shaping of the various phenomena of concern and interest to Internet studies. Nevertheless, all four themes in the study of the role of the Internet in real life employ multiple and diverse concepts, ideas and debates and voluminous amounts of study and research have been produced accordingly. All four themes are vast areas of controversy and involve scholars from a range of disciplines, such as media and communication, cultural studies, political science, political communication, social psychology and social analysis/sociology, with individual

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studies casting light only on tiny parts of each theme. Needless to say, this chapter has only scratched the surface and has left out significant study examples and evidence relating to the four discussed themes. Besides, the role of the Internet in real-life settings spans social, economic and political living and continually inspires the production of a range of discipline-specific as well as interdisciplinary studies. In summary, this chapter can claim some contribution to the unpacking of the successes and failures of the study of the real-life role of the Internet: • First, it presented some of the existing evidence in favour of and against the positive changes the Internet can bring to people’s lives and specifically to people’s engagement in politics and community membership. Similarly, it presented some evidence in support of and in opposition to the harmful effects that can derive from digital exclusion and an unjust and ineffective Internet governance system. In this regard, this chapter has illustrated the varying and often contradictory arguments and the need for continuous reflection, updates and both theoretically and empirically informed study. • Second, it critically read and commented on existing studies and evidence on the supposedly bright and dark sides of the Internet and put forward some critical ideas so as to contribute to the design and conduct of future study. • Third, it specified topics that studies must consider in the future. For example, considerations of online and offline spaces must be involved in the study of forms of online civic activism, virtual community-building, digital inclusion and Internet power/control. At the same time, the boundaries between online and offline are barely clear and more work on understanding the online and offline is needed. • Fourth, it demonstrated the highly interdisciplinary character of the four discussed themes and the blurred disciplinary boundaries between their study, with single pieces of study often incorporating multiple disciplinary origins and points of view. Such considerations are generally important for whether and how the field of Internet studies can evolve as a discipline and for its links with well-established and emerging disciplines in the future.

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Chapter 5

Research and the Internet: Fast-Growing Internet Research Besides the study of the implications of the Internet for real life, a rapidly growing area of development, deliberation and reflection is Internet research and the employment of the Internet as an object, tool and platform for research. Internet research is a growing subfield of Internet studies that is gaining an increasing importance and has remarkable implications for research ethics and the conduct of interdisciplinary research more generally. According to the definition offered by the AoIR in 2012, Internet research suggests research that uses the Internet as a ‘social phenomenon, a tool, and also a (field) site for research. Depending on the role the internet plays in the research project or how it is conceptualized by the researcher, different epistemological, logistical and ethical considerations will come into play’ (Markham and Buchanan 2012: 3). Specifically, Internet research suggests the use of the Internet as an object of research (e.g., research of blogs, social networking sites, virtual worlds, virtual communities, IM spaces), a tool for the creation of innovative methodological practices (e.g., use of the Internet for devising and employing methods of research such as online surveys, online interviews or virtual ethnography) or the actual space wherein research is positioned and from which it draws material and data (e.g., online datasets or repositories; search engines, data aggregators and automated means of data scraping). In this regard, Internet research utilises the Internet to explore people’s activities online and how they use the Internet; to study Internet software, technologies and services; or to collect data. It can also involve the study of webspecific content and interfaces and their related structures and forms (Markham and Buchanan 2012: 3–4). At the dawn of the Internet era, the Internet was mostly viewed as a research object that generated new questions and objectives. As Mitra and Cohen (1999: 180–181) have noted, researchers became concerned with the Internet by developing two main streams of work: first, ‘rating’ studies that aimed to capture and measure the usage of the Web at a time when the Internet was rapidly becoming a popular medium for information and communication; and second, studies of the content placed, generated and found online (e.g., messages, text or other online discourses), which users produce, share, exchange, disseminate or simply consume. However, the Internet often serves as the object, the tool and the venue of research within the same project. This is the case when, for instance, research involves online social networking sites, with sites, their content and their

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users all being part of the design, data-collection and data-analysis elements of the research (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). Furthermore, Internet research often suggests the collaboration of social and computer scientists, with knowledge elements from various disciplines being combined, influencing one another and boosting niche spaces for the operation of new knowledge networks and the generation of new fields of study (e.g., artificial intelligence). This leads to the deployment of new models (e.g., computational social science, agent-based models) and data, the pursuit of large-scale research and the initiation of new practices of collaboration. Internet research can involve collaborators such as technology experts, funders, creative practitioners, industry actors and ordinary people, as well as incentives of various kinds and complex practices of collaboration. The multiplicity of actors, the dynamic role of digital technologies in and for research and the interdisciplinary and often crossinstitutional nature of collaboration entail a complicated and constantly shifting set of power relationships, dynamics, constraints, possibilities and synergies in Internet research. At the same time, interdisciplinary collaboration in Internet research encounters difficulties in defining interdisciplinary goals, forming explicit interdisciplinary research frameworks, developing mutually shared communication codes and practices, and dealing with varied views on the use of technology and the appropriate use of data. On the whole, while pursuing creativity and innovativeness and aiming towards a balanced interdisciplinary partnership of researchers who operate within certain institutional constraints, the organisation, management, range of activities and communication practices in Internet research are largely influenced by this complexity of the actors, practices and visions involved. This chapter discusses the key novelties of Internet research, namely the introduction of new objects of research, new methods and venues of research, and interdisciplinary and collaborative research endeavours. Accordingly, this chapter has a three-fold aim: first, to shed light on accounts of the Internet as a relatively new object of study that influences research agendas and prompts researchers to revisit the study of ‘old’ research questions by considering the online milieu and phenomena in cyberspace; second, to discuss accounts of the Internet as a methodological platform broadly employed across disciplines and influencing methodological processes and practices in research; and, third, to draw on the implications of Internet research for established disciplinary boundaries and especially for the advancement of interdisciplinary and collaborative research. In the final section, I address the repercussions of Internet research for research ethics and discuss the ethical issues that Internet researchers encounter. I conclude the chapter by inviting those involved in Internet studies to deliberate further on the range of research and methodological issues discussed here.

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The Internet as an Object of Research Considerations of the Internet as an object of research occurred as early as the 1990s. They mainly put forward the premise that the Internet can both expand existing research interests and yield new themes and areas of investigation: ‘social science scholars tend to extend the methods and approaches of their home fields onto digital media as new objects. They assume that digital media are a natural extension of social scientific inquiry’ (Sterne 2005: 254). Quite early on, Costigan (1999: xviii–xix) remarked that, in handling the Internet as a new object of research, there are two main paths for shaping the research agenda: first, through engaging in the search for, retrieval and analysis of vast information databases online, widening the horizons of similar sorts of research conducted offline; second, by analysing unique communication and interaction phenomena online, such as email, chat rooms, MOOs and MUDs, hyperlinking and web publishing. The former possibility allows researchers to advance research by taking advantage of the large amounts of data and content online and by comparing their research outcomes with studies that employ offline data. The latter possibility gives shape to new areas of exploration and offers the opportunity to researchers to study topics that are unique to the Internet: ‘There is no existing parallel social construct, and in many ways, the Internet creates wholly new social constructs’ (Costigan 1999: xix). Of particular interest is how the Internet enriches and modifies traditional research endeavours by offering new topics and generating new research questions. Indicative examples are the study of content and graphical or technical features of websites, the study of online social networking sites and virtual community spaces, the examination of Internet applications and services, and the analysis of the features and advancements of Internet technology per se. In the past few years there have been numerous initiatives that have aimed to address the wide range of topics of research interest generated through and on the Internet. At the same time, such new topics can answer not only novel but also old research questions while often introducing new methods or, better to say, new techniques of research. For instance, hyperlinks have given rise to (hyper)link studies (e.g., De Maeyer 2013, Park and Thelwall 2003). De Maeyer (2013) suggests that the study of hyperlinks is present in various social science disciplines and that it can be split into two categories: the study of hyperlink networks and their properties so as to gain an understanding of the Web’s underlying structure; and the study of links as indicators of other social phenomena, namely the social significance of hyperlinks. The latter strand of hyperlink study adopts the idea that ‘a hyperlink is not simply a link on the web but has certain sociological meanings’ (Hsu and Park 2011: 364). De Maeyer (2013) reviews the following areas of social significance of hyperlinks according to how they have been discussed in (hyper)link studies to date: hyperlinks as indicators of authority, with heavily linked content being considered authoritative; hyperlinks as means to monitor aspects of academic performance and impact; hyperlinking styles and strategies of political actors as an

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important element of political communication and campaigning and also as a sign of ideological affiliation; hyperlinks as a means to trace public debates, ‘discursive affinities’ or ‘issue networks’ on the Web; and hyperlinks as a tool to make sense of large numbers of blogs and to gather them into clusters. Furthermore, the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI),1 in its attempt to research new objects of study that derive directly from the Internet, has dealt with hyperlinks as part of its study of ‘how an actor may be characterized by the types of hyperlinks given and received’, what types of associations an actor on the Internet can have and the ‘everyday politics of association’.2 Examples of empirical studies of the social meaning and power dynamics of hyperlinks include Wilkinson, Thelwall and Xuemei’s (2003) study of hyperlinks in relation to informal scholarly communication via the Web. As regards the role of hyperlinks in political communication, Ackland and Gibson (2013) studied hyperlink data from over 100 political parties in six countries and found that political actors use links as a new form of ‘networked communication’ to promote themselves to an online audience, to reinforce their policy message and to inflate the support they enjoy more than to criticise opponents and create negative affect toward them. Shumate and Lipp (2008) were concerned with the relationship between activism and hyperlinking and studied the hyperlink network structure of an NGO issue network and its role in connective collective action online. Chang, Himelboim and Dong (2009) studied the political economy of hyperlinks and, by using data randomly collected from online news media in 15 countries, found that, although the Internet is an open global network, the flow of news and information through outgoing hyperlinks between countries remains mostly closed. However, hyperlinks are not an easy object to study. It has been argued that ‘the universal nature of hyperlinking makes it a very difficult sort of artifact to understand’ (Halavais 2008: 43). De Maeyer (2013) contends that researchers struggle to treat links automatically and to work with them on a large scale, and in most cases mixed, ad hoc methodologies that combine quantitative counts of links, qualitative inquiries and valuation of field expertise to support link interpretation are required. The DMI has proposed software called ‘Issue Crawler’3 for hyperlink analysis; this allows actor profiling through analysing inlinks and outlinks as part of a network of actors. Although there is no perfect or one single univocal analysis and interpretation of links, understanding the context of links and the motivations for linking can arguably ease link analysis (De Maeyer 2013). 1 The DMI is a collaboration of the New Media TEMLab, University of Amsterdam, and the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, with support from the Mondriaan Foundation. It comprises a new media PhD (training) program as well as a new media research group and it is based at the University of Amsterdam. For more information, see https://wiki. digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiAbout. 2 For more information, see https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/ TheLink. 3 See https://www.issuecrawler.net.

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A more common Internet object of research is the ‘web archive’, which is formed by the archiving process and ‘embeds particular preferences for how it is used, and for the type of research performed with it’.4 Web archives allow the study of the history and content of the Web by time as well as by website type. For web archive analysis, tools such as the Wayback machine5 can be used to enable the construction of a narrative around website history. There are also studies that look at the phenomenon of web archiving per se and at associated processes and issues (e.g., Gresham and Higgins 2012, Wang 2007). At the same time, researchers are often interested in the analysis of one or more websites at a particular moment in time. Although content analysis seems to be the prominent method of website analysis, the study of websites can involve the examination of both website content and aesthetics (e.g., Das and Turkoglu 2009, McCluskey 2013, Ortega, Aguillo and Prieto 2006) and often aims at the better understanding of a specific (Internetrelated) phenomenon, such as e-democracy, online advertising, online advocacy and many others (e.g., Cai and Zhao 2013, Kingston and Stam 2013, Schweitzer 2008). In addition, research tackles the analysis of the ranking of search-engine results and the politics behind them (Granka 2010, Introna and Nissenbaum 2000a, 2000b, Mager 2012, Muddiman 2013, Segev 2008, van Couvering 2010). An example is the analysis of Google search-engine returns with Google Scraper.6 Other objects of research on the Internet are ‘spheres’ defined as distinct device-created spaces on the Web, such as Google News (newsphere), YouTube (videosphere), Delicious (tagosphere) and Technorati (blogosphere) (e.g., Jang and Stefanone 2011, Lomborg 2009, Reese et al. 2007, Shaw and Benkler 2012). Analysis of spheres, or cross-spherical analysis, can take place via technical tools such as Scrape Google News and the SVGCloud, used for the analysis of Google News and Technorati, respectively.7 Also, research is increasingly interested in the study of social networking sites and their post demographics (e.g., Hagger-Johnson, Egan and Stillwell 2011, Krämer and Winter 2008, Lorenzo-Romero, AlarcónDel-Amo and Constantinides 2012, Pfeil, Arjan and Zaphiris 2009) – that is, the study of user profiling that goes beyond socio-demographics and allows a better definition of self, tastes, interests, ‘likes’ and other profile characteristics. Analysis of user profiling and of user groups sharing the same or similar interests can take place via methods other than user participation, observation and surveying. For instance, analysis can be done via the Elfriendo.com tool.8 In addition, research often involves the study of networked content (e.g., Wikipedia) and the politics of 4 For more information, see https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/ TheWebsite. 5 This tool can be accessed at http://www.archive.org. 6 For more information, see https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/ TheOrderingDevice. 7 See https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/TheSpheres. 8 For more information, see https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/ PostDemographics.

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the creation, editing and history of such content. Analysis of Wikipedia content can take place through Wikiscanner and the results can be visualised in the form of lists and tag clouds.9 At this point, I will discuss in more detail two of the areas wherein the Internet has been employed as an object of research: social media and website/ web archiving research. Over the past few years, social media research has attracted the interest of a rapidly increasing number of researchers. This is the case mainly because social media are assumed to provide a range of alternative (online) platforms for the disclosure of public discourse and the opening of public debate that either derives from phenomena in the offline world or stimulates the actualisation of offline phenomena. Social media content, such as text, images and sound, is often treated as a new object of research. Whereas it frequently comprises a virtual version of pre-existing offline discourses and objects of research, the availability of multidirectional public dialogue, diverse conversations and even multiple threads of monologue in social media spaces poses new opportunities and challenges for researchers. Social media content can aggregate thousands, millions or even billions of discourses about one or many matters of interest, while bringing together discourses from various geographical locations and over an extended period of time. For instance, Thelwall (2008a) used automated tools to collect a large volume of data from MySpace in order to investigate contemporary practices relating to swearing on online social interaction and exchange platforms. However, this approach constitutes both an opportunity and a challenge for research. On the one hand, it offers researchers a vast database of discourses and content characterised by diversity in format, origins and time of production. For instance, the interdisciplinary Analysing Social Media Collaboration10 project has conducted sentiment and topic analysis of 2.6 million tweets from 700,000 individual accounts to understand the role of social media in events such as the summer 2011 riots in England. On the other hand, databases of discourse located in social media spaces complicate the research process, mostly as a result of issues relating to labelling and categorisation of content (e.g., too many different types of discourse under the same theme of interest), to archiving (e.g., how to resolve the temporary nature of online content) and to inclusiveness (e.g., what content is to be included in the analysis and what is to be left out). For instance, the microblogging platform Twitter quickly spread across the Internet user community and attracts the production of a significant range of user discourses concerning society, lifestyle, politics and so on. It is probably the social media platform with the highest number of posts (tweets) per second and the fastest renewal of content and streams of discussion. This has driven researchers to investigate content posted on Twitter and software experts to create 9 For more information, see https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/ TheNetworkedContent. 10 For more information, see http://www.analysingsocialmedia.org.

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tools and mechanisms for aggregating and analysing tweets. For instance, 140kit. com,11 developed by Devin Gaffney, enabled collection and analysis of Twitter user data. In another example, a live map of tweets accessible for free has been created online.12 In addition, Topsy.com allows hashtag tracking and can find deleted tweets if the relevant Twitter account still exists. DiscoverText is a cloudbased, collaborative text-analytics solution for capturing, filtering, deduplicating, clustering, searching, human coding and machine-classifying large numbers of small, unstructured units of text. It allows researchers to have access to Gnipenabled data streams for import and, in this way, to data from the full Twitter firehose.13 Arizona State University has put together a tool for aggregating and performing basic analytics called TweetTracker,14 while Martin Hawksey’s Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet (TAGS) allows the archiving of numerous tweets.15 YourTwapperkeeper allows data collection, and the statistical programming software R offers a Twitter package as well.16 While there are several analytical packages for Twitter,17 Gnip18 and Datasift19 are two options for accessing and analysing historical Twitter data. Besides Twitter, Facebook – the most widely used and debated social networking site – has provoked the interest of researchers and software experts alike. Researchers mostly use tools for extracting and analysing data from Facebook public pages and open groups. For instance, DiscoverText20 offers an ‘ActiveLearning’ classification engine for handling and analysing social media/ Facebook data, and it offers a 14-day free trial for archiving public Facebook content and metadata. Other tools for the analysis of Facebook and other social media data are SimplyMeasured,21 Socialbakers22 and PageData,23 among others. It is also worth mentioning WolframAlpha Personal Analytics for Facebook,24 which offers various tools for analysing and visualising Facebook usage and network 11 140kit shut down on 1 February 2013. 12 The map can be accessed at http://onemilliontweetmap.com. 13 For more information, see http://www.discovertext.com. 14 For more information, see http://tweettracker.fulton.asu.edu. 15 For more information and guidance on setting up and using this tool, see http:// mashe.hawksey.info/twitter-archive-tagsv5. 16 See http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/twitteR/index.html. 17 Other tools for tweet analysis can be found at http://tweetminer.eu, http:// twitalyzer.com, http://www.tweetvalue.com, http://twittsdaq.com, http://www.retweetrank. com, http://backtweets.com, http://www.twylah.com, http://www.twitterfall.com, http:// twittercounter.com, http://klout.com, http://tweetgrade.com and http://twitaholic.com. 18 See http://gnip.com/product_overview. 19 See http://datasift.com/?gclid=CPek1ralvrUCFUbMtAodGjEA8w. 20 See http://discovertext.com. 21 See http://simplymeasured.com/about. 22 See http://analytics.socialbakers.com. 23 See http://www.pagedatapro.com. 24 See http://www.wolframalpha.com/facebook.

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data, such as usage patterns and characteristics as well as clustering, global reach, popularity and structure of Facebook friend networks. Website content25 is also of major interest to researchers who study online content and, more broadly, view the Internet as a source of discourse and phenomena that drive the emergence of new research agendas. However, the ephemerality and continually changing nature of web content and URL address identifiers pose barriers to the undertaking of research as well as to the future testing of completed and the continuation of in-progress research endeavours. Thus, web-archiving services, such as the Internet Archive26 and its Archive-it service,27 as well as WebCite,28 have been introduced to solve the problems that commonly occur as a result of the largely temporary and mutable nature of online content. For instance, WebCite is an on-demand archiving system that aims to ensure that cited webpages, websites and other Internet-accessible digital objects remain available to readers in the future. WebCite creates an archived copy of the material, which is identical to the original content, and offers a link to the archived copy. The Internet Archive offers free access to a library of Internet sites and other digital content and artefacts, while its Archive-it service allows state and university libraries, federal institutions, NGOs, museums and other institutions to build and preserve their own archive of digital content and then to make it accessible to the public. Overall, web-archiving tools allow researchers to store website content in a verifiable form, while web crawlers are broadly used for crawling web content and ensuring the accessibility of that content, even if it disappears from the site or the URL address of the site completely changes. Web archiving allows researchers not only to retain the original material analysed but also to provide evidence and examples of it to other interested scholars, readers and publishers. Besides introducing entirely new research themes and questions, the Internet has enabled researchers across the social sciences and arts and humanities to study existing topics from new angles and to explore the way(s) online technologies can assign new nuances and traits to phenomena that have existed for some time. If we think of the Internet as highly embedded in our daily lives, it is legitimate to think of it as an extension of our lives or, if you prefer, as a platform where offline experiences and phenomena confirm their existence, extend or modify certain aspects of their existence or even undergo a metamorphosis. For instance, Wiliams (2006) conducted online participant observation and interviews to explore ‘straight edge’, a youth subculture that arose out of punk. Williams found that online forums 25 Researchers make use of an extensive range of tools for downloading or retrieving website content. Such tools are BlackWidow and BrownRecluse from Softbytelabs (http:// softbytelabs.com/us/products.html), Apache Lucene (http://lucene.apache.org), GNU Wget (http://www.gnu.org/software/wget), BootCat (http://bootcat.sslmit.unibo.it) and HTTrack (http://www.httrack.com). 26 See more at http://www.archive.org. 27 See http://www.archive-it.org. 28 See http://www.webcitation.org/index.

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have certain effects on community and identity building among straightedgers. Sillince and Brown (2009) studied the websites of English and Welsh policy constabularies to capture the rhetorical construction of the constabularies’ organisational identities. The researchers found that constabularies’ organisational identity, as displayed online, relies on rather conflicting and ambiguous rhetoric so as to establish legitimacy internally and externally. In that study, the topic was not directly derived from the Internet but the study of its online facets and manifestations allowed Sillince and Brown to approach it as a novel topic of research. Dorsey, Steeves and Porras’ (2004) study of ecotourism and cultural tourism online showed that Internet advertising of ecotourism and cultural tourism is not always consistent with the discourse of sustainable development; in this way, the authors extended earlier critiques of the commodification of culture in print advertising. Sullivan’s (2003) analysis of two US listservs that offered online support to cancer sufferers concluded that online cancer support groups provide patients with opportunities for support, but within Western society’s accepted forms of gendered communication. Orgad’s (2005) qualitative study of storytelling online by breast cancer sufferers aimed to offer some understanding of online communication as a socially significant activity by exploring how sufferers engage online and configure their experience into a story. Numerous other examples of research into online facets of communicating, expressing or even reshaping offline phenomena could be mentioned here. In any case, the study of the Internet and its content as well as of Internet-based or Internet-mediated phenomena is complicated and still in flux. As regards social media research, the research community is concerned with challenges relating to the collection and analysis of large amounts of social media data without having sufficient knowledge of the broader context and the qualitative differences between subsets of data within the larger data set for analysis. For instance, Bruns (2012) points to challenges for researchers who deal with large data sets extracted from Twitter in their attempt to make sense of how people use the platform in different contexts and for different purposes. Bruns acknowledges the need to develop tools (e.g., data-gathering, storage and preservation tools) that ease this type of research and enable researchers to place online data into a more informed research context so as to encounter associated challenges. With respect to website research, although studies of website content have mushroomed over the past few years, researchers are still encountering challenges concerning the mutability and ephemerality of web content, adversities in sampling barely identifiable or countable online material, and their own uneasiness in getting to grips with appropriate methods and techniques for researching the Internet (Bryman 2012: 655). The latter brings us to the discussion of new versus old methods employed in Internet research.

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Virtual and Novel Methods in Internet Research The rapid spread of the Internet and its remarkable rise as an object of research have driven researchers to revisit old research methods and to consider possible new methodological tools for its study (Fielding, Lee and Blank 2008, Hine 2005, Hughes 2012, Johns, Chen and Hall 2004, Jones 1999c, Markham and Baym 2009, Roberts et al. 2013, Salmons 2010 and 2012a, Sappleton 2013, Williams, Rice and Rogers 1988). Researchers of online technologies, content and phenomena have been much concerned with what methods are appropriate and with asking questions about the newness of methods for the study of the Internet and the extent to which their methodological strategy should signalise continuity with disciplinespecific research. Concerning methods for the research of new media, early thinkers stated: ‘although we consider possible research methods for new media as mainly extensions of existing methods, we propose that the new media researcher should consider alternative methods, or even multiple methods, and to attempt a triangulation of methods’ (Williams, Rice and Rogers 1988: 15). Early work conceded that the nature and characteristics of new media necessitated new research methodologies and argued that ‘the natural contexts of new media may limit how faithfully traditional research designs and methods may be applied … the nature of new media themselves may create limitations, as well as new opportunities’ (Rice and Rogers 1984: 82). Steve Jones’ edited volume Doing Internet Research (1999c)29 reflected researchers’ early endeavours to comprehend a field of reflection and exploration – the methods for the study of the Internet – that was effectively under-developed at the time. Jones and contributors focused on methods for investigating the Internet and underlined not only the complexity of the object of study (i.e., the Internet) but also the availability of numerous means of research that draw techniques and methodological mechanisms from a range of disciplines: ‘communication research, media studies, anthropology, sociology, literacy, criticism, cultural studies, psychology, and political economy. Some are quantitative, some qualitative, some are rooted in the social sciences, others in the humanities, and others still cross over such boundaries’ (Jones 1999b: xi–xii). This is to say that the complexity, multiplicity and evolving character of new media technologies were acknowledged quite early on, leading 29 This is one of the most widely read books on the methods, tools and practices of Internet research. It comprised one of the first major contributions to the study of established and pioneering methodologies for the investigation of phenomena and other objects of research housed on the Internet. It also addressed the methodological innovation marked by the Internet and the use of Internet tools and applications as part of old or new methodological mechanisms for research. Thus, its aim was to ‘assist in the search for, and critique of, methods with which we can study the Internet and the social, political, economic, artistic, and communicative phenomena occurring within, through, and in some cases, apart from but nevertheless related to, the Internet’ (Jones 1999b: x).

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researchers to underline the involvement of a ‘variety of disciplines’ and the use of ‘varied methodologies of these disciplines’ so as ‘the uses and effects of computer-mediated communication systems’ could be researched (Rice 1989: 436). Later on, when the Web had become recognised as a standalone object of research, the mutability and ephemerality of its content intensified the need for researchers to answer outstanding methodological questions and solve problems around methods and techniques in Internet research. The Web was described as: A unique mixture of the ephemeral and the permanent … First, web content is ephemeral in its transience, as it can be expected to last for only a relatively brief time … At the same time, the web has a sense of permanence that clearly distinguishes it from performance media … web content must exist in a permanent form in order to be transmitted … However, the permanence of the web is somewhat fleeting … a website may destroy its predecessor regularly and procedurally each time it is updated. (Schneider and Foot 2004: 115)

On the other hand, Internet research has marked the advent of new methods as well as virtual/online versions of old methods for the study of both Internetspecific and generic phenomena. Regardless of whether the Internet is considered an object of research or not, researchers raise questions around its role in research methodology (Schneider and Foot 2004) and, more practically, its use as a tool for research activities such as data collection (Bryman 2012: 658–678). The Internet has emerged in social science methodology as a multifaceted platform to which research techniques and methodological processes can be applied for the conduct of innovative research into both online and offline phenomena. In this regard, the Internet invites researchers to devise methodologies that are epistemologically rooted in conventional methodological approaches to research while technically adopting and integrating tools and applications available on the Internet. At the same time, the need to spread the methodological operationalisation of the Internet and other digital technologies has been acknowledged alongside the importance of building capacity in the research community so that digital methods become ‘mainstream methodology’ (Roberts et al. 2013). In the following subsections, I reflect on such methodological breakthroughs by presenting, first, some key virtual methods of research that revisit existing qualitative and quantitative approaches to research and, second, new methods and techniques of research, the rise of which is to be credited to the Internet. Virtual Methods of Research Virtual versions of ‘old’ research methods include both qualitative and quantitative techniques. In a collection of case studies, Sappleton (2013) and colleagues show that the use of digital technologies for the appropriation of conventional qualitative and quantitative methods of research can generate virtual modes of

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research. Salmons (2013) emphasises the importance of qualitative methods in appropriating deep, rich data located online and for the generation of new qualitative paths of exploration of social phenomena. Specifically, she considers online (either synchronous or asynchronous) interviews, (participant) observation of online behaviours and activities, and qualitative analysis of online content to be the three main examples of revised qualitative methods that apply in online research. Quantitative research has also been revisited through the employment of online platforms and tools of research and, thus, it constitutes a significant consideration when researchers choose a virtual method to conduct research. I first discuss qualitative methodology – specifically, virtual ethnography and the methodological tools of e-interviews, online focus groups, web social network analysis and web text analysis. The quantitative method of the online survey closes the discussion of the methodological evolution and challenges provoked by virtual methods of research. Virtual ethnography The employment of digital technologies to pursue ‘old’ or ‘new’ research has virtual ethnography30 at its core. Lindlof and Shatzer (1998) considered cyberspace to be the arena where new cultural practices worthy of analysis take place. They stressed that topics such as identity and embodiment in cyberspace and computermediated communication offer research challenges to ethnographers and wield insights that are very different from those produced in the ethnographic study of traditional media communication. According to Bryman (2012: 662), early online ethnographic research was focused on a single event, while later on virtual ethnographers became interested in the study of distinct communities or cultures online. However, early ethnographic studies, such as Markham’s (1998), aimed to offer a rather broad account of how Internet users frame and experience computermediated communication and why they use, go to or exist through virtual spaces of communication. Lindlof and Shatzer (1998) in turn sketched the key features of and innovative insights that stem from virtual ethnography and discussed four challenging areas that ethnographers of virtual contexts should consider: the nature and boundaries of ‘virtual communities’ as a key conceptual device; the socialpresence attributes of the participants and the technology itself; strategies for the entry of the researcher into virtual places and associated ethical matters (e.g., protocols for responsible entry); and Internet applications and related technical utilities for conducting ethnographic research and generating ethnographic data. Also, recently there have been attempts to produce overarching accounts of virtual 30 Various versions of virtual ethnography have been introduced and discussed over the past decade. ‘Digital anthropology’ (Horst and Miller 2012), ‘digital ethnography’ (Murthy 2008), ‘netnography’ (Kozinets 2002, 2010), ‘hypermedia and multimodal ethnography’ (Mason and Dicks 2001, Dicks, Soyinka and Coffey 2006) and ‘cyberethnography’ (Teli, Pisanu and Hakken 2007) are some of the most common names given to online or virtual versions of ethnographic research.

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ethnography, its methodological traits and elements of its practice (e.g., Boellstorff et al. 2012). As regards techniques and methods, virtual ethnographic research constitutes a rich and diverse area wherein different researchers make different decisions and combine different techniques of ethnographic exploration, also on the grounds of their epistemological perspectives. Perhaps the most common technique in ethnographic research is participant observation, which is highly applicable to virtual ethnography as well (Brotsky and Giles 2007, Kendall 1999, Williams 2006). Researchers such as Kendall (1999) proposed quite early on participant observation of interactive online forums in order to capture social contexts of online interaction. Kendall conducted three years of online participant observation in the MUD BlueSky in combination with face-to-face interviews and attendance at face-to-face gatherings. She concluded that methods such as interviews and surveys do not enable the researcher to discern the honesty of responses obtained online, with surveys in particular suffering from strong bias of online group participants and achieving low response rates and low validity of responses. In contrast, she contended that participant observation ‘allows researchers to gain a better understanding of participants’ ranges of identity performances and the meaning those performance have for them’ while it ‘provides particularly useful information about the connections between on-line and off-line interaction’ (1999: 71). Participant observation allowed Kendall to reach conclusions of wider interest and to take account of the various social contexts of online interaction so as to highlight the politics of identity: ‘Participants come to on-line forums from different positions of power within society, which affects both their own actions on-line and their interpretations of others’ actions’ (1999: 71). On the other hand, participant observation in virtual ethnographic research encounters challenges concerning the difficulty of demarcating online contexts of research, while anonymity and lurking in online spaces can call into question the level and quality of the researcher’s participation in the observed context (Garcia et al. 2009). In fact, participant observation is often combined with other online or even offline methods and techniques of research (Kendall 1999, Kozinets 2001, Williams 2006) Going beyond observation techniques, Murthy (2008) has reviewed four technological means for the conduct of digital ethnography: online questionnaires and email interviews; digital video; social networking sites; and blogs. Online questionnaires and email interviews (about which more is said below) are techniques employed since the 1990s, when Web 1.0 became an employable reality for researchers. They are less costly and labour-intensive and allow more flexibility and variability in sample selection than offline questionnaires and interviews (Murthy 2008). On the other hand, they raise ethical questions concerning the informed consent of participants as well as data reliability and sample genuineness. Participant-led digital video diaries are an intriguing technique that relies on respondent empowerment and self-representation (Murthy 2008). Also, in the context of Web 2.0, social networking sites and blogs offer a

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vivid framework in which ethnographic observation can be located, participants can be recruited and conversations about ethnographic research can take place between researchers and the public (Murthy 2008). Howard adopts social network analysis for ‘network ethnography’ and defines the process as ‘active or passive observation, extended immersion, or in-depth interviews’ that are ‘conducted at multiple sites or with interesting subgroups that have been purposively sampled after comparison through social network analysis’ (2002: 561). Specifically, he uses network ethnography to study ‘hypermedia organizations’, namely organisations created around or via new communication technologies. At the same time, he notes that network ethnography is something beyond a marriage of two conventional methods; it is rather a ‘synergistic, transdisciplinary method’ that is particularly useful for ‘studying communication in modern organizations over new media’ (2002: 551). The extent to which virtual ethnography is clearly separated from conventional ethnographic research31 is not an easy question to answer. Hine (2000, 2007, 2008, 2009), one of the key scholars in this area, does not dismiss conventional ethnography and refers to virtual ethnography as an adapted and extended form of ethnography. She considers the Internet both a cultural artefact (largely shaped by users and their cultures) and a culture itself influencing users and their lives. Along these lines, she contends that ethnography is an ideal method for the study of everyday practices around the Internet and whether the Internet can shape radically different futures (2000: 4). Ethnography can thus shed light on the meanings of technology and the cultures that enable it or are enabled by it (Hine 2000: 8). In a way, Hine views virtual ethnography not as limited to the online context but rather as informative of the complex interactions between online and offline identities, cultures, behaviours and so on. Beaulieu (2004) points to debates around the suitability of the Internet for ethnographic research.32 On the critical side, researchers draw upon Internet concepts and entities that are hard to define, conceive and delimit, such as the concepts of ‘community’ and ‘place’, as well as on the absence of face-toface interaction on the Internet. On the positive side, researchers argue that the multiplicity of online identities and the dynamism of online communities provide fertile ground for innovative ethnographic research (Beaulieu 2004: 143). Beaulieu (2004: 143–144) notes that technology can change the topic agenda of an ethnographer and add new topics purely or partly arising from technologically mediated communication. In addition, technology changes the actual venue or setting where ethnographic research is conducted, with the virtual ethnographer 31 Traditional ethnographic research ‘consists of a researcher spending an extended period of time immersed in a field setting, taking account of the relationships, activities and understandings of those in the setting and participating in those processes’ (Hine 2000: 4–5). 32 From an anthropological perspective, Beaulieu (2004) states that ethnographers are interested in researching both the cultures on the Internet and the Internet itself.

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not needing (or maybe lacking the opportunity) to leave home and travel to distant places (Hine 2000: 22). On the other hand, virtual milieus often deprive the ethnographer of reflective outputs that can be obtained through presence at a field site, such as field notes, recordings and pictures (Hine 2000: 22–23). Another matter of debate is lurking and how ethnographers can make their presence invisible online, thus applying unobtrusive research techniques and being protected from becoming over-involved in the studied setting (Lindlof and Shatzer 1998: 179, Beaulieu 2004). Lurking is not acceptable in all online spaces, and in addition it deprives the researcher of interaction with research participants as well as of the sort of immersion in the studied context that, as noted above, produces reflective insights (Hine 2000: 23). At the same time, the conduct of ethnography in a technologically mediated manner raises ethical questions, mainly in terms of anonymity, confidentiality of technological means of communication and so on (more on research ethics later in this chapter). Beaulieu (2004: 158) brings up the ‘gentle worries, milder claims and subtler adjustments’ in accounts of ethnography and the Internet, while Hine (2007) contends that ‘this form of ethnography is simultaneously old and new, being grounded in a tradition of emergence and adaptation’. Virtual ethnographic research has been employed in numerous studies across the social sciences (e.g., Baym 1993, 2000, Biddix and Park 2008, Carter 2005, Correll 1995, Hepburn 2012, Howard 2002, Kendall 2002, Miller and Slater 2000, Schaap 2002). Correll’s (1995) early study involved the ethnographic exploration of an electronic community space, the electronic lesbian bar called Lesbian Cafe, to examine how a community could be created and sustained through interaction delimited to computer mediation. Correll observed the daily activities at the Lesbian Cafe and interviewed patrons via email, telephone and in person. Later, Carter (2005) used ‘cyberethnography’ to identify the issues involved in the development of human relationships in cyberspace. Biddix and Park (2008) adapted Howard’s ‘network ethnography’ to examine the campus living-wage movement of college students in the US and found that ICTs had created an unintentional networked community that allowed the campus livingwage movement to overcome limitations and sustained it for quite some time. Hepburn (2012) used ‘network ethnography’ to examine the role of the Internet as a sphere of influence in local politics and local political events such as the UK’s Manchester Congestion Charge referendum conducted in 2008. In a landmark virtual ethnographic study, Miller and Slater (2000) studied Trinidad and the Trinidadians’ identity and culture. They applied many of the principles of traditional ethnography, such as long-term involvement of the ethnographer with the community and the use of multiple methods. They conducted their ethnographic study over a period of 15 months, which involved five weeks in Trinidad, collection and analysis of Internet data, interviewing Trinidadians in London and New York, engagement in email correspondence and participation in chat and ICQ. Thus, their research was conducted in several sites and employed various methods of investigation, such as interviewing, observation, participant

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observation and questionnaires. They justified their decision to apply virtual ethnography by arguing that ‘detailed focus on what Trinidadians find in the Internet, what they make of it, how they can relate its possibilities to themselves and their futures will tell us a great deal about both the Internet and about Trinidad’ (2000: 1). For them, ethnography can enable the exploration of community culture and identity while at the same time enhancing the understanding of the culture of context (in this case, the Internet) that frames and influences the community and its members. Thus, they suggested that, in order to reach conclusions about Trinidadians on the Internet, we need to understand the Internet itself, and the other way round as well: ‘“being Trini” is integral to understanding what the Internet is in this particular place; and … using the Internet is becoming integral to “being Trini”’ (2000: 1). They specifically explored four categories of ‘dynamics’ between community and the Internet: the dynamics of objectification (i.e., how people engage with the Internet as an example of material culture); the dynamics of mediation (i.e., how people engage with new media as ‘media’); the dynamics of normative freedom (i.e., how people engage with the dialectics of freedom and its normative forms articulated online); and the dynamics of positioning (i.e., how people engage with the ways the Internet positions them in trans-local online networks where mixed flows of cultural, political, financial and economic resources take place). Nevertheless, the standalone application of virtual ethnography has been and remains a challenging methodological consideration. Sade-Beck (2004) takes an anthropological perspective to question the sharp distinction between online and offline research and so proposes the integration of three online and offline qualitative data-gathering methods: online observations; offline in-person interviews; and content analysis of supplementary online and offline materials. This is in order to create what Sade-Beck calls ‘rich ethnography’, not solely Internet-based ethnography, for the richer and more insightful study of phenomena such as virtual communities. In a similar sceptical vein, Murthy (2008) argues that the socio-demographically driven differential access of researchers and respondents to digital technologies necessitates the combination of physical and digital ethnography. While this debate seems to be ongoing, two things can be said with certainty: first, that virtual ethnography constitutes a major methodological consideration for ethnographers and other researchers who employ the Internet for the conduct of qualitative research; and, second, that the boundaries between virtual and traditional ethnography are far from clear and synergies between the two methodological paths must always be taken into account. Virtual qualitative methods of research Remaining in the qualitative research camp, it should be said that a range of qualitative methods have been adapted either for the study of Internet phenomena or in order to use the Internet as a venue and tool of research (Mann and Stewart 2000). For the purpose of this discussion, e-interviews, online focus groups, web social network analysis and web text analysis are briefly discussed. As shown

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above, such methods and techniques – particularly e-interviews – are strongly applicable to the conduct of ethnographic research. E-interviews became of concern to researchers as soon as online research came to be a subject of discussion, deliberation and actual research endeavour (e.g., Bjerke 2010, Chen and Hinton 1999, Curasi 2001, Hamilton and Bowers 2006, James and Busher 2006, 2009, Kivits 2005, O’Connor et al. 2008, O’Connor and Madge 2001, Salmons 2010, 2012a). E-interviews can be defined as interviews conducted via synchronous (e.g., video conferencing or in 3D immersive virtual worlds) and asynchronous (e.g., email or forums) online technologies and the collected interview data can be text, graphics or visuals, audio or a multimedia event.33 Seale et al. (2010) have reached the conclusion that in online forums people tend to be more sincere and willing to talk about sensitive issues than they are in offline, conventional interview settings. On the other hand, e-interviews involve a series of design steps that are similar to and at the same time distinct from the design-and-implementation steps taken in offline interviews. More specifically, Salmons (2012a) has proposed an ‘E-Interview Research Framework’ that attempts to offer an overarching picture of the elements and requirements involved in e-interviewing. Specifically, Salmons discusses eight interrelated groupings of considerations a researcher should make when designing e-interviews and collecting e-interview data. The first consideration is to align purpose and design, namely to align theory, epistemology, methodology and the e-interview data-collection method. What follows is the development of a rationale for choosing e-interviews for the study, namely a specification of the purpose of conducting the online interviews. Thirdly, the researcher must consider appropriate and ethically acceptable approach or approaches to sampling and participant recruitment. This is followed by the researcher positioning him/herself – in other words, deciding on the extent to which she/he will be an insider or an outsider visà-vis the phenomena and contexts studied. The fifth consideration in e-interviews, according to Salmons, is to determine e-interview style(s), which involves aligning the desired level of structure of the interviews (e.g., structured, semi-structured or unstructured interviews) with the type(s) of online communication chosen for data collection. Next, the qualitative researcher must select the appropriate ICT and milieu – specifically, must decide on the visual, verbal or text communication technologies to be used for data collection and the technical means needed for the interview process. Then, the researcher should provide ample evidence of his/her ability to carry out interviews using the selected technology and setting. Finally, Salmons underlines ethical considerations, as the researcher is required to protect the research participants and, where appropriate, their avatars or online identities, as well as to specify how the collected data will be used. Online interviews involve the difficult-to-handle issue of developing rapport and a trusting relationship between the interviewer and the interviewees given 33 For more information, see http://blog.vision2lead.com/e-interviews-2/about-einterviews.

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the lack of face-to-face contact and the often asynchronous (e.g., email) nature of online interviews (Bjerke 2010, Curasi 2001, Evans, Elford and Wiggins 2008, James and Busher 2006, Kivits 2005, Mann and Stewart 2000: 138–139). Bryman (2012: 669) notes that the introduction of webcams and Skype have made online interviews more similar to in-person interviewing, as face-to-face contact can be an add-on feature, though still mediated by technology. Nevertheless, researchers who use online interviews are called to report on the technologies and communication platforms they use, such as text-based, videoconference, web conference multichannel meeting spaces and immersive virtual worlds (Salmons 2010, O’Connor and Madge 2001). They are also expected to reflect on whether they chose to conduct synchronous or asynchronous interviews and on the entire interview process through answering questions such as: Did you employ your interview guide in the same way as in a face-to-face interview? Did you follow up and probe in the same way as in a face-to-face interview? Were your participants less likely to answer your questions or to ask for clarification than in face-toface interviews? Did you find your participants more likely to withdraw from the interview before completion than in face-to-face interviews? Overall, researchers who employ online interviews are required to address and reflect on many more questions than offline interview researchers. This is due to the novelty of online interviews, the fast-evolving domain of online communications as well as the numerous critiques to which online interviews have been subject concerning matters such as recruitment of interviewees and means of obtaining participants’ informed consent; the process of interviewing and whether it should be done in batches or in one go; the ability to keep participants engaged throughout the interview and the related role of the interviewer; and the quality of the obtained interview data (e.g., see the comparison of online and face-to-face interviews in Curasi 2001). For instance, Evans, Elford and Wiggins (2008) reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of online interviews for the study of gay men and HIV and suggested that the narrow bandwidth of Internet communication (i.e., absence of many visual and aural cues in the online interview context) confines the quality, diversity and richness of online interview data. Also, Bjerke (2010: 1719) points out that the lack of face-to-face, nonverbal communication in email interviews can be a problem, since ‘a great deal of tacit information that would be conveyed in a conventional interview situation is lost’. Similar critiques and considerations can be found in the design and conduct of online focus groups. As Bryman (2012) notes, online focus groups can involve synchronous and asynchronous communication exchange and existing social science research offers plenty of examples of both synchronous and asynchronous online focus groups (e.g., Deggs, Grover and Kacirek 2010, Fox, Morris and Rumsey 2007, O’Connor and Madge 2003, Stewart and Williams 2005). On the whole, online focus groups have certain advantages as well as disadvantages compared to offline focus groups (Bryman 2012: 663–668). For instance, participants may not have communicated with each other face-to-face but they are members of the same online social group. They also come from different physical locations,

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allowing cross-cultural study to be pursued through focus groups at a low cost and with some temporal and spatial flexibility (Burton and Bruening 2003, Deggs, Grover and Kacirek 2010). At the same time, the fact that this method involves extensive use of conferencing software requires certain skills from both the researcher and the participants and adds complexity to participants’ involvement (Deggs, Grover and Kacirek 2010). Participants might be unwilling to install the necessary software on their personal machines, or they might feel unconfident in using the software. Participants’ involvement might also be adversely affected by moderation (Stewart and Williams 2005) and the fact that the moderator cannot remain active and intervene as appropriate throughout the research process. This is especially the case in asynchronous focus groups, where comments and posts can be produced at any time within a shorter or longer period of time. Some have claimed that the mediation of technology does not affect the quantity or quality of focus group data (e.g., Underhill and Olmsted 2003). However, the added complexity in the design and conduct of online focus groups has made many researchers conduct focus groups in offline environments, while employing technology to facilitate and enhance the group interview process. An example is Stromer-Galley and Foot (2002) who conducted thirteen focus groups in the US to study citizen perceptions of the role of the Internet in political campaigns and how citizens could become involved in campaigning by utilising the interactive features of the Internet. Stromer-Galley and Foot asked participants to spend two hours viewing, collectively navigating and discussing election-oriented and presidential candidate websites and the role of the Internet in the political process. In all focus groups, the researchers used a laptop computer, the Internet and an image-projection system. Another methodological approach adapted to the specifics of the Internet is social network analysis (SNA). This has been around for a few decades and aims ‘to describe networks of relations as fully as possible, tease out the prominent patterns in such networks, trace the flow of information (and other resources) through them, and discover what effects these relations and networks have on people and organization’ (Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman 1999: 76). In this respect, the ‘social network approach facilitates the study of how information flows through direct and indirect network ties, how people acquire resources, and how coalitions and cleavages operate’ (1999: 76). It is applied for the analysis of networks from a social perspective through modelling and visualisation and it tackles various types and sizes of network: ‘individual-level scores for the structural position of nodes, such as various individual scores for network centrality, as well as measures providing overall summaries of structural characteristics for the whole network, such as network density or centralization’ (Howison, Wiggins and Crowston2011: 769). In addition, it can explore relations within one network or internetwork relations. These generic remarks indicate the appropriateness and usefulness of SNA for the study of Internet-spawned relations and networks. Especially in today’s online social networking milieu – where online information traffic and exchange

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are accompanied by and largely drive the building of new groupings and networks of a social, business or purpose-specific nature – SNA is a useful methodological and analytical strategy to examine online relations as well as resources made available and circulated for the composition and sustainability of online networks. As Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman (1999: 83–84) noted, by examining patterns of online ties, social network analysts can delve into online network characteristics such as size and social heterogeneity (e.g., virtual communities are large and heterogeneous networks); centrality of network members; and roles in the network.34 Empirical research has extensively used SNA to study the structure and characteristics of online communication networks, such as online networks of right-wing extremist political organisations and movements (Burris, Smith and Strahm 2000, Caiani and Wagemann 2009, Tateo 2005). When applied online (i.e., web SNA), it draws data from web crawlers, mobile phone records, tweets, email records, social networking sites, blogs, newsgroups and so on. The Internet offers myriad social networks for exploration and analysis, even within spaces that do not have social networking technology built into their systems (Everett 2012). However, validity questions arise when web SNA is applied. According to Howison, Wiggins and Crowston (2011), online technologies provide new data sources – ‘digital trace data’ – that differ from the survey and interview data that network analysis has conventionally measured and interpreted and this poses various validity issues. In closing this brief discussion of virtual methods of qualitative research, text analysis should be mentioned. Quite early on and in light of the traits of web text, researchers (e.g., Mitra 1999, Mitra and Cohen 1999, Rivett 2000) revisited conventional text analysis and devised tools and principles for the study of the discursive structures and unique features of web text. They proposed critical textual analysis of web text, which takes into consideration the unique characteristics of text before decisions on critical textual analysis are made. Specifically, Mitra and Cohen argued that, in order for the analysis to be complete and reliable, analysts should take into account unique characteristics of web text, such as intertextuality and cross-site linking, nonlinearity, hypertextual decentring and impermanence (1999: 182–192). Intertextuality derives from (hyper)links and allows users to move quickly and simply from one text to another. Nonlinearity refers to text structure and organisation and suggests that the beginning and the end of web text are not explicit and clear, in a way granting the reader endless possibilities for personalised navigation and surfing through the text. In addition, the reader becomes the author, as she/he can (with certain freedom) select the links or hyperlinked texts to follow and read, thus coming up with unique and subjectively selected sets of texts and meanings. Furthermore, web text is marked by multimedianess, which is enabled by the convergence of different kinds of text 34 Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman (1999) offered a fairly detailed step-bystep description of social network analysis (and its conceptual and analytic tools), drawing specifically on examples from the study of online or computer-supported social networks.

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representation, such as visual and audio, that accompany the written text. Finally, global web text is produced, hyperlinked, accessed and read from all different corners and cultures of the globe, whereas it is ephemeral and impermanent, since it can disappear at any time regardless of its acceptance by the community of web readers. So why do the above characteristics matter for how critical textual analysis of web text is executed? Mitra and Cohen (1999) demonstrated that the above characteristics largely determine the decisions a researcher makes on the number of texts that are analysed as well as the criteria and processes for the selection of those texts. They also justifiably questioned what web text researchers should start their analysis from and what qualifies as a central, or core, text in analyses given the immersive intertextuality underlying the hyperconnected and nonlinear texts on the Web. Finally, they offered a word of caution, inviting researchers to consider the impermanence of web texts throughout analysis and to take action so as to retain records or copies of the concerned texts (for example, through archiving). Nevertheless, textual analysis of the Web often separates the text/ content from the form, limiting itself to a discursive or rhetorical approach and being vulnerable to critiques that highlight the inseparability of form and content and the need not to overlook the structuring elements of a website (Schneider and Foot 2004: 116). Web text analysis is discussed further in the section on novel methods and methodological breakthroughs in Internet research. Online survey On the quantitative side, the most noted and widely applied example of the virtualisation of research methods is that of the online survey. The online survey was of concern to researchers even before the 2000s (e.g., Coomber 1997, Couper 2000, Pitkow and Recker 1994, Rosenfeld, Booth-Kewley and Edwards 1993, Smith 1997) and has mostly been discussed and applied as another version of the survey method. Therefore, researchers mainly approach it through a comparative lens and by highlighting its advantages and disadvantages in relation to offline survey research. For example, the online survey has been deemed useful for reaching participants from a wide (even global) range of locations, but it does not allow the researcher to verify sample demographics so as to check data validity (Fowler 2009, Tourangeau 2004, Yun and Trumbo 2000). In social science research, one can find many examples of online surveys being compared to face-to-face, telephone, paper-and-pencil and mail surveys (e.g., Denscombe 2006, Fricker et al. 2005, Gunter et al. 2002, Heerwegh and Loosveldt 2008, McCabe 2004, van Selm and Jankowski 2006, Yun and Trumbo 2000). Although the conclusions on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of online surveys do not allow researchers to bring forward one strict, fixed position on preferred methods of administration of survey questionnaires, as noted above, it is broadly accepted that online surveys are likely to produce poorer data quality while seriously challenging the probability sampling principle (Bryman 2012: 673–674). Yun and Trumbo (2000) compared email and web surveys

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with conventional paper-and-pencil surveys and concluded that email and web surveys ‘use electronic text communication, require fewer resources, and provide faster responses than traditional paper and pencil methods. Gunter et al. (2002) compared online and offline questionnaire administration and argued that the use of online methodologies has implications for sampling, response rates, data quality and operational practices in research projects. Specifically, they suggested that, on the one hand, online research is restricted to individuals with access to relevant technologies and is unlikely to involve samples that represent the general population and, on the other hand, online research can produce quicker response rates and richer open-ended responses than offline surveys. Similarly, Fowler (2009) discusses Internet surveys and remarks their potential advantages, such as low cost, speedy data collection and higher validity of sensitive data, as well as their disadvantages, such as exclusion of Internet nonusers, need for respondents with good reading, writing and computer skills, difficulty in executing data quality control and a lack of control over who actually completes the questionnaire. Buchanan and Hvizdak (2009) suggest that the online survey challenges traditional research-ethics principles and adds new methodological complexities surrounding data storage, security, sampling and survey design. At the same time, there is a range of options within online survey questionnaire administration. This has provoked discussions on whether the specifics of questionnaire administration in online surveys can actually affect the response task and the obtained data. Specifically, an online survey can be administered either by email or via the Web, with the latter allowing the administration of a more embellished questionnaire that can ease the response task and ensure betterquality data (e.g., automatic skipping when using filter questions). Also, the Web allows the creation of an automatic database that relieves the survey researcher from conducting time-consuming, laborious and often error-prone data coding (Bryman 2012: 671). On the other hand, email-administered questionnaires can be classified further into embedded and attached email questionnaires. The embedded email questionnaire eases the questionnaire completion task and helps the respondent to return the completed questionnaire to the researcher, whereas an attached questionnaire requires more effort and skills from the respondent (Bryman 2012: 670). Although the comparison of online surveys with face-to-face, telephone and paper-and-pencil survey-data-collection modes is an unquestionably legitimate business, early accounts suggested that the online survey deserves to be given some more attention and space in the methodological literature (e.g., Smith 1997). Early on, Witmer, Colman and Katzman (1999) presented a substantive effort to delve into the specifics of the online survey. They were concerned with the low responses rates achieved in survey questionnaires administered online and, after testing various formats and lengths of a survey questionnaire administered via email, they concluded that ‘computer-mediated research needs specific and carefully designed instruments that not only accommodate but exploit the features of the electronic environment to attract respondents who otherwise may

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have their fingers on a delete key’ (1999: 158). Also in 1999, Kaye and Johnson made a series of recommendations with regard to how future researchers could apply web survey design, sampling, data collection and responses, and publicity. Cook, Heath and Thompson (2000) conducted a meta-analysis of response rates in online surveys, while, much later, Manfreda et al’.s (2008) meta-analysis of 45 comparisons of web and other modes of survey found that web surveys achieve 11% lower response rates on average. Keusch (2012) ran an experiment that made him argue that using a prenotification message and a female sender to contact male sample members can increase response rates in list-based web surveys. Regardless of the various suggested ways to increase response rates in online surveys, it has been noted (e.g., Bryman 2012: 675) that with many online surveys a response rate cannot be calculated, since it is often almost impossible to determine the size of the entire study population from which researchers sample. Overall, there have been attempts to reflect on the online survey as a standalone method, while it has been acknowledged that the online survey can boast unique methodological tools, techniques and mechanisms in the conduct of social science research (Couper 2008, Dillman, Smyth and Christian 2009, Fielding, Lee and Blank 2008). In their edited SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods, Fielding, Lee and Blank (2008) offer an overview of the online survey (Chapter 10 by Vehovar and Manfreda), as well as specific discussions of sampling (Chapter 11 by Fricker), design (Chapter 12 by Best and Krueger) and software tools (Chapter 13 by Kaczmirek). Researchers have addressed the influence of the design of web questionnaires on the responses and the quality of data (Ganassali 2008); the role of words, symbols and graphics in web surveys (Christian, Dillman and Smyth 2007); and the importance of asking probing questions in web surveys (Behr et al. 2012). Such examples of methodologically informative reflections indicate, in a way, the increasing prominence of online surveys. They show that online surveys not only allow the researcher to combine the lessons and practices of traditional paperand-pencil surveys with the advantages of self-completion survey questionnaires but also provide additional research tools and affordances, such as ‘the ability to use advanced design features not available within non-digital contexts … survey delivery via interactive audio or video methods, as well as new data collection platforms, such as mobile phones’ (Lee, Fielding and Blank 2008: 11). Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the ongoing challenges that researchers in this area are faced with, such as the selection of the appropriate survey software, sampling, and control of who actually participates in the survey. In this regard, Couper’s quite early remark seems of value to those who currently use online survey research: The challenge for the survey industry is to conduct research on the coverage, nonresponse, and measurement error properties of the various approaches to Web-based data collection … the sampling problem presents enormous challenges for Web surveys … We must also learn how to optimally design Web

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The Internet and Novel Methods of Research Internet tools, applications and other affordances not only redevise and repackage existing research methods, adapting them to the Internet, but also introduce completely new and often innovative approaches to and methods of research. As early as the late 1990s, researchers began to put forward considerations and proposals on Internet research and the methodological innovation it brings about. In 1999, Sudweeks and Simoff argued that communication technologies and socio-cultural norms housed online challenge existing methods and invite new methodological routes and practices. At the same time, they identified two main issues to be addressed in Internet research: first, difficulty in replicating research due to technological change and communication/language variability; and second, heterogeneous socio-cultural structures involved in Internet behaviours and artefacts (1999: 38–39). As a result of such observations, Sudweeks and Simoff proposed a complementary exploratory data analysis (CEDA) framework inspired by methodologies in artificial intelligence that integrates qualitative and quantitative practices and arguably accommodates the traits of Internet research (1999: 30). According to the CEDA framework, quantitative methods are to locate patterns in the studied Internet-spawned phenomenon and qualitative methods are used to capture the essence of that phenomenon (1999: 40–41). Sudweeks and Simoff argued that what is really distinctive about this framework is that it ‘allows the use of different data sets in a common research cycle rather than the traditional approach of applying different analyses to the same data set’ (1999: 41). The authors suggested that such a combined methodological approach can allow researchers to study Internet phenomena, such as virtual communities, online learning, virtual organisations and business information systems (1999: 52). At around the same time, Sosnoski (1999) acknowledged new forms of text on the Internet (e.g., multimedia hypertexts) and argued for the need to adapt rhetorical analysis accordingly. He proposed an emerging mode of rhetorical analysis for the study of Internet text that he called ‘configuring’ and described it as ‘a “figuring out” through analogies, an attempt to describe in general the contour of similar interactions that suggests how specific instances work’ (1999: 138). ‘Configuring’ dismisses the use of a template module in the analysis of text (as happens in traditional rhetorical analysis), since ‘Web pages bear only some resemblances to each other … [while] rapid changes in technology make it problematic to use templates to assess Web pages “across the board”’ (1999: 140).35 The methodological and analytical tools suggested for the study of Internet text vary and, in a way, invite researchers to identify the unique characteristics 35 Sosnoski offers plenty of examples of rhetorical analysis that apply the so-called emerging mode of configuring.

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of Internet text before they select methods and tools of analysis. Schneider and Foot (2004) suggested that the analysis of websites and their content requires new analytical tools to be devised and applied, since increasingly complex web applications alter traditional relationships between media form and content (Schneider and Foot 2004: 116). In reviewing the existing approaches to the analysis of the Web, Schneider and Foot concluded that the analysis of hyperlinks between webpages and websites, the analysis of the structural aspects and traits of a website and the analysis of online content and text have involved very different methods and approaches (2004: 116–117). Drawing upon the combined attributes of the ‘ephemerality’ and ‘permanence’ of web text, Schneider and Foot (2004: 115) contended that the former makes it necessary for the researcher to be proactive so as to ensure that the web experiences can be recreated for future analyses (e.g., through web archiving). Accordingly, they developed what they called ‘web sphere analysis’, a multimethod approach that analyses communicative actions and relations between web producers and users in the ‘web sphere’. For Schneider and Foot, ‘web sphere’ refers to a hyperlinked set of dynamic and constantly evolving digital resources found on multiple websites (e.g., structural and featured elements of websites, hypertext and links between them) relevant to a theme or object (Foot and Schneider 2002: 225, 2006, Schneider and Foot 2004). The web sphere can function as a macro unit of analysis in which historical and intersphere comparisons can be conducted, while it can also offer micro units for analysis, such as website texts, features and links (Schneider and Foot 2004: 118). These authors used ‘web sphere analysis’ to study web campaigning in US elections in 2000, 2002 and 2004 (Foot and Schneider 2006) and, overall, they described this analytical approach as a process that involves the following steps: Websites related to the object or theme of the sphere are identified, captured in their hyperlinked context, and archived with some periodicity for contemporaneous and retrospective analyses. The archived sites are annotated with human and/or computer-generated ‘notes’ of various kinds, which creates a set of metadata. These metadata correspond to the unit(s) and level(s) of analysis anticipated by the researcher(s). Sorting and retrieval of the integrated metadata and URL files is accomplished through several computer-assisted techniques. Interviews of various kinds are conducted with the producers and users of the websites in the identified sphere, to be triangulated with web media data in the interpretation of the sphere. (Foot and Schneider 2004: 118–119)

Recently, Rogers (2012) wrote about digital methods and separated them from virtual methods. He defines virtual methods as imported and migrated from offline research and adapted slightly to the online environment where they are employed, such as those discussed in the previous section (e.g., online surveys, e-interviews). In contrast, for Rogers, digital methods are those ‘native’ to the medium (i.e., digital technologies), such as hyperlink analysis, web engine diagnostics, web archival

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research, web content analysis and social media platform research. Roger considers digital methods appropriate for the analysis of digital data (e.g., hyperlinks, web content, web platforms) and distinguishes them from digitised methods, such as webometrics. Others have disagreed with such a separation, considering it restrictive and narrowly constrained and arguing that it misses the full range of prospects and possibilities in the digital-methods domain (Roberts et al. 2013: 6). Specifically, webometrics represents what Rogers calls digitised methods for digital data analysis. Webometrics is a relatively recent approach and essentially constitutes a quantitative approach to and analysis of data on and about aspects of the Web (Almind and Ingwersen 1997, Björneborn 2004, Björneborn and Ingwersen 2001, 2004, Thelwall 2008b, 2012, Thelwall, Vaughan and Björneborn 2006). It is located in the field of information science research (Björneborn and Ingwersen 2004) and is considered a modern, fast-growing offshoot of bibliometrics (Thelwall 2008b). It has been defined as ‘the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the Web, drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches’ (Björneborn 2004: 12). Webometrics can help the researcher to analyse a pool of data (usually medium size) that has a presence on the Web by using the Web as the actual object of research and the source of data for analysis. It is a quantitative approach and thus it counts and measures objects and phenomena on the Web. As such, webometrics involves a decision on the unit of measurement, which in many cases is the webpage or the website. In webometrics certain sampling techniques are applied since the decentralised and dynamic nature of the Web means that the researcher will not always be able to find or analyse every single web page or document. Webometrics researchers increasingly use web crawlers, commercial search engines and web server log files for web material, documents and data collection, instead of small-scale manual browsing (Thelwall, Vaughan and Björneborn 2006). Given that webometrics is rooted in traditional bibliometrics and citation analysis, a significant volume of the work in this area has been on the application of citation analysis to e-journals (e.g., Harter and Ford 2000, Smith 1999) as well as to traditional journals with some web presence (e.g., Vaughan and Hysen 2002, Vaughan and Thelwall 2003). It has been found that the online impact of scholarly journal publications, as measured by the number of links to the journal website, is associated with offline impact, as measured by average citation counts. Mushrooming digital libraries give analysts almost endless possibilities for employing the quantitative approach of webometrics to study aspects and traits of scholarly communication and publication impact (Thelwall, Vaughan and Björneborn 2006: 102). In addition, webometrics research has looked into web databases of scholarly work and their potential use as bibliometric tools, with somewhat critical accounts being put forward for the lack of quality control in web databases such as Google Scholar (Aguillo 2012). Webometrics offers the techniques, software and analytical approaches for researchers to explore diverse research questions such as: What are the interlinks between universities on the Web? How are research groups/networks

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interlinked through the Web (i.e., web-based research links)? What is the ranking of world universities on the Web? What are the sentiment orientations in relation to big events discussed on Twitter? What kinds of friend networks exist behind YouTube video commenting? (Thelwall 2012). However, webometrics is not broadly used outside the social sciences. Even in the social sciences it has not experienced wide take-up, with broader debates around digital research questioning whether webometrics is really needed to explore phenomena that can be studied through conventional methodologies and approaches (Thelwall 2012). At the same time, webometrics has encountered problems stemming from the messiness of web data and the need for data-cleansing heuristics as well as the loose connection between top-level domain specifications (e.g., .com, .edu, and .org) and their content (Thelwall, Vaughan and Björneborn 2006: 81). Specifically, researchers encounter technical difficulties in identifying web pages, while a single page may be made up of multiple files. Conceptually, different researchers can decide differently on how to divide and classify the web documents and material for analysis (Thelwall, Vaughan and Björneborn 2006: 91). Hence, scholars who apply webometrics have expressed the need to combine this quantitative approach with qualitative methods of research, while acknowledging the challenges that the technological evolution of the Web will bring for webometrics research (Thelwall, Vaughan and Björneborn 2006). * To conclude the discussion of virtual and novel methods in Internet research, we must acknowledge that such methodological breakthroughs come with a lot of advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, they allow low-budget and quickly completed research and also break down time and spatial barriers to participant recruitment. On the other hand, the lack of universal access to the Internet, the varying levels of researchers’ and participants’ literacy in appropriating technology for research purposes and the wide range of ethical concerns (discussed later in this chapter) all problematise virtual and novel methods in Internet research and make evident the need for researchers to carefully and continually address such challenges in the future (Bryman 2012: 658). New Areas of Research and the Triumph of Interdisciplinarity in Internet Research The pursuit of the Internet as an object of research and the introduction of novel methodological approaches have encouraged the emergence of new areas of research and simultaneously the spread of interdisciplinary research. As alleged in the introductory chapter, Internet studies is a highly interdisciplinary field while not yet deemed a scientific discipline. The Internet itself and the intriguing insights yielded through its study have generated new areas of research. This has

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strengthened the interdisciplinary character of Internet studies and has largely driven the rise and spread of interdisciplinarity, particularly as regards the empirical study of Internet phenomena. A range of interdisciplinary research initiatives and programmes of research have been dedicated to Internet research and one could quite confidently expect to see more and more diverse, wide-ranging and ground-breaking initiatives of this kind in the near future. This section discusses these developments and offers some informative insights accordingly. Internet Research and the Rise of New Areas of Research As already noted, the study of the Internet has given rise to emerging areas of scientific work and research. One such area is web psychology (e.g., Fogg 2002, Fogg and Eckles 2007, Kaptein and Eckles 2012, Nahai 2012a, 2012b, Pelet and Papadopoulou 2011, Schlosser 2011). Web or cyber psychology studies how digital environments influence our attitudes and behaviours. It is mainly fed by social and cognitive psychology and measures ‘online influence’ either through software (e.g., ratiobased software or algorithms) or through analysis of qualitative and quantitative data (Nahai 2012a). For instance, the power of the Web can be seen when web-based communication is used for marketing and the persuasion of consumers to purchase products and services (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006, Gershoff, Mukherjee and Mukhopadhyay 2003, Manganari et al. 2011, Schlosser 2011). Schlosser (2011) studied the persuasive power of products’ and services’ online reviews and argued that balanced reviews that highlight both pros and cons can be less persuasive than one-sided reviews, while the consistency and truthfulness of online reviews also mediate persuasion effects. Manganari et al. (2011) took a stimulus-organismresponse paradigm perspective to measure the effects of perceived web stores’ layout on consumer behaviour in the online travel industry, while, similarly, Porat and Tractinsky (2012) developed and tested a model to explore the effects of web store design on consumers’ emotions and attitudes. The psychological effects of online campaigns are another key area of web psychology research. One interesting example is the Corona campaign that encouraged web users to give a ‘like’ in order to see a photo of themselves on the Times Square billboard. The Corona campaign reached millions of Facebook users and achieved a 6,000% increase in the number of ‘likes’ (it collected 200,000 ‘likes’). By offering five minutes of fame, this campaign managed through online social media to acquire new fans, to achieve viral promotion of the product (i.e. Corona beer) via a word-of-mouth buzz and to gain longer-term advocacy (Harbison 2011, Nahai 2012a). In summary, web psychology is a quickly developing area of research that brings together psychologists, social psychologists, media effects scholars and Internet researchers. It publicises its insights and knowledge outputs in various venues, notably in journals such as the Journal of Consumer Psychology and CyberPsychology & Behavior.

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Another emerging area is web historiography, namely the study of the history of the Web (Brügger 2010, 2012, 2013, Foot and Schneider 2010). Web historiography has drawn together Internet studies and historiography, forming a new study domain of epistemological and methodological interest. This domain is rooted in the study of the Internet’s military-industrial precedents, how we came to invent the Internet more than two decades ago and the various stories told about its history (e.g., Abbate 2000, Campbell-Kelly and Aspray 1996, Rosenzweig 1998 – see more on the history of the Internet and its study in Chapter 2). Brügger (2013) argues that historiography, and web historiography in particular, should be placed high on the research agenda of Internet studies, since historical perspectives on the Web are essential in order to ‘fully understand the conditions for contemporary internet forms and uses’ (2013: 761). Although there is a growing interest in this new area of study and research, ‘web history has not yet been constituted as a subfield of study in its own right within Internet Studies’, as ‘indicated by a lack of shared theoretical and methodological assumptions and discussions’ (2013: 753). According to Brügger (2013), web historiography draws on various perspectives on the Web and its historical development, shedding light on web production (a political economy outlook), web content and its discourses (a language and culture outlook) and the Web’s propagation, use and consumption within its broader context of influence (a social-interaction or everyday-use outlook). In turn, web historiography pursues questions shared by and derived from historiography in general, such as: What is the purpose of the study of the history of the Web – is it to produce a chronology of events or to identify processes and forces driving the historical evolution of the Web? How should the historical changes and stages of development of the Web be understood – should they be understood as part of a continuum of development, progress and decline or as neutral transformations? Should the history of the Web be divided into periods, and, if so, based on which criteria? What sources of material are available, what criteria will determine the selection of sources and how our choice of sources can determine and even bias the study as a whole? (2013: 754–755). Although Brügger (2013) puts forward a positive view on the value of web historiography for Internet studies, he points to challenges that web historians currently face. These are challenges mainly arising from and revolving around the characteristics of one of the main sources that web historians use in their analyses: archived web material. Archived web material is a key source in web historiography, especially given that web historians cannot produce new material (e.g., survey or interview data) from the actual object of study. However, archived web material usually has the website as the main archival unit, which means that web elements and webpages, such as images, sound, video or hyperlinks, may be missing. Incomplete archived web material can result from technical or other factors. Further to incompleteness, the process of archiving itself and the software used may create a different and rather inconsistent version compared to the original web material, while the archived web material can itself be available in a few different versions, created during or even after archiving. This is to

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say that ‘archived web material is not only born digital, but it is also “re-born digital”’ (Brügger 2013: 758). Incompleteness, inconsistency and multiplicity of archived web material mean that web historians often draw upon archived material that constitutes just one version of the original that ‘we can never expect to find in the form it actually took on the web; we can neither find an original among the different versions nor reconstruct an original based on the different versions’ (Brügger 2010: 7). Associated challenges for web historians stem from the archiving process, the accessibility of archived web material and the level of analysis conducted (e.g., analysis of web pages or of a web sphere). In fact, any web material can be considered to pose challenges to researchers who envisage analysing and reflecting on Internet content. In this regard, not only web historians but also all those who study web material must deal with the complexity that marks web content and the options available for its analysis. At the same time, novel research methods can involve the Web as the medium for research and through this give shape to new areas of study or transform existing ones. An indicative example is web cartography, which derives from cartography but has adopted new elements, approaches and levels of study thanks to the tools, applications, software and usage affordances of the Web. It was first introduced by geographers and other social scientists around the turn of the millennium (Crampton 1999, Green 1997, Kraak and Brown 2001, Peterson 1997, 2000). It was initially assigned various terms and concepts, such as ‘online mapping’ (Crampton 1999), ‘web mapping’ (Haklay, Singleton and Parker 2008) and ‘cybercartography’ (Taylor 2005). Crampton defined it as ‘the suite of tools, methods, and approaches to using, producing, and analyzing maps via the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, characterized by distributed, private, on demand, and user defined mapping’ (1999: 292).36 Digital cartography can involve topics such as ‘web mapping protocols and standards, map application programming, interfaces (APIs), mashups, performance and usability, and user-generated map contents’ (Tsou 2011: 250). Recent web cartographic work (Monmonier 2008, Peterson 2003, 2008a, Tsou 2011, Tsou and Curran 2008, Wachowicz et al. 2008) has attempted to review developments in this study area, looking into web cartographic theories, the usability and evaluation of web maps and the importance of user-centred design. Tsou (2011) sustains that the importance of user-centred design and the ubiquitous access to web mapping of public and amateur cartographers are the two research directions for web cartography in the future. Thus, Tsou has offered a new definition of web cartography that clearly outlines the possible future of this study area: ‘the study of cartographic representation using the web as the medium, with an emphasis on user-centered design (including user interfaces, dynamic map contents, and mapping functions), user-generated content, and ubiquitous access’ (2011: 251). The Google Earth project has been a breakthrough in this respect and 36 Another path in web cartography researches the cartography and mapping of cyberspace per se (e.g., Dodge 1999, Dodge and Kitchin, 2001, Girardin 1996).

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has drawn the attention of researchers. Google Earth gives the opportunity to those without geographical or cartographic training to build 3D maps and to publish them to the Web, thus making web mapping accessible to the public (Treves 2006). At the same time, ongoing and continuous developments in mobile web and GPS navigation devices reinforce the idea of the ubiquity of web cartographic content and lead to greater access to spatial information, increased levels of interactivity with maps, real-time locational information and greater integration of multimedia content through pictures, sound and video (Peterson 2008b). Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration in Internet Research Besides and in parallel with the emergence of new domains of study, highly collaborative research initiatives have mushroomed in Internet research over the past few years. The broader research community has propagated a range of technical and methodological means for the pursuit of interdisciplinary work wherein the Internet constitutes an object of research and/or the tool and platform for research. For instance, Vision2Lead,37 led by Janet Salmons, is dedicated to informing and supporting researchers who are interested in e-learning, e-research and e-collaboration. Vision2Lead is devoted to qualitative online research and methods for online data collection, such as online interviews and participant observation. It focuses on e-interviews (synchronous interviewing in particular), offering a range of information, tips and resources, as well as step-by-step guidance on when, why and how to conduct online interviews. It also offers guidance and taxonomy for online collaboration as well as panel discussions and webinars to inform researchers and others on e-collaboration. In addition, it runs a blog tool where e-research reflections are posted and relevant events and publication news are announced. Finally, it offers book resources that inform students and researchers on theoretical, practical and ethical matters and processes in qualitative e-research, and it has strong links with Methodspace,38 a forum for methodological discussion and exchange. One of the first attempts in the UK to develop interdisciplinary and collaborative Internet research was the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS). The NCeSS ran from 2004 to 2009 and aimed to pull together research forces across the UK so as to advance e-science in the country. Specifically, it investigated how computerbased infrastructure and tools developed under the e-science programme can benefit social science research. It reported on applications of e-social science and developed new tools for advancing applications of e-social science in the future. It also provided information, training, advice, support and online resources to help the social science research community adopt e-social science. It consisted of a 37 More information can be found at http://vision2lead.com. 38 For more information, see http://www.methodspace.com.

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coordinating hub at the University of Manchester, research nodes39 and 12 small grant projects at universities across the UK. In 2009 the NCeSS’s activities were taken over and carried forward by the Manchester eResearch Centre (MeRC) at the University of Manchester. By capitalising upon Manchester’s five years of operation as the coordinating hub of NCeSS, MeRC has aimed to revitalise the e-social science research programme by continuing research in two key strands of work: the applications strand (so as to develop e-infrastructure that will support social scientists in pursuing solutions to substantive research problems) and the social shaping strand (which adopts a social studies of science and technology approach to understand e-social science and its implications for research practices and outcomes). More specifically, the MeRC continues the eight second-phase NCeSS nodes while pursuing a series of new collaborative cross-disciplinary e-research projects funded by various sources (e.g., the Research Information Network and the Joint Information Systems Committee). A significant part of its efforts have been invested in collaborating with other e-research initiatives and centres in the country (e.g., with the Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory on social media analysis platform and tools development) as well as with the Guardian newspaper. Since 2004, the ESRC has funded the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM).40 The NCRM devotes a significant part of its training, capacity-building, knowledge-exchange and networking activities to online or e-research in social science. For instance, it has funded the node MODE,41 whose aim is to deliver research and training on multimodality and to advance multimodal approaches to digital data and environments. Multimodal approaches involve the use of image, layout, writing, colour, moving images and speech to conduct visual, linguistic and rhetorical analysis of online environments such as websites. Apart from training and events devoted to multimodality, MODE also includes two research projects: 39 The research nodes were formed in three phases – respectively starting in September 2004, April 2005 and October 2005 – and each was funded for three years. They were categorised into two strands and each focused on a particular area of e-social science. The applications strand consisted of GENeSIS at UCL and the University of Leeds; LifeGuide at the University of Southampton; Obesity e-Lab at the University of Manchester; DAMES at Stirling University; Understanding New Forms of Digital Records (DReSS) at the University of Nottingham; and Semantic Grid Tools for Rural Policy Development and Appraisal (PolicyGrid) at the University of Aberdeen. The social-shaping strand consisted of Oxford e-Social Science (OeSS) at the University of Oxford (more on OeSS later in this section). 40 The NCRM was established in April 2004 to provide more strategic integration and coordination of the ESRC’s investment in research methods. It constitutes a focal point for research, training and capacity-building activities and aims to enhance the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by social-science researchers in the UK and to support methodological innovation and excellence accordingly. More information can be found at http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/about. 41 For more information, see http://mode.ioe.ac.uk/a\\bout-us.

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‘Digital technologies in the operating theatre’, which explores the potential and use of digital video for professional and educational purposes, and ‘Researching embodiment with digital technologies’, which investigates the role of emergent digital technologies in engendering ‘embodied’ learning experiences. The list of resources offered by MODE to students and researchers is particularly useful for those who wish to familiarise themselves with and apply multimodal methodology. It includes bibliographies, glossaries of key multimodal terms, publications, training materials, video resources and working papers. In addition, as part of its Networks for Methodological Innovation scheme,42 the NCRM funded the network ‘Digital Methods as Mainstream Methodology’. This network was developed by researchers in various UK research institutions, such as the University of Southampton, the University of Surrey, the University of the West of England, the University of Manchester and Trilateral Research, and aimed ‘to build capacity in the research community to address the opportunities and challenges that digitally inspired methods present for social research’.43 It ran a series of three seminars (2012–2013) in which researchers from various disciplines were invited to engage with and advance debates on digital methods, bringing forward cross-disciplinary social science projects that utilise digital methods, and shedding light on the future role of digital methods as part of the so-called ‘mainstream social research methodology’. Another NCRM-funded network for methodological innovation has addressed the question: ‘Blurring the boundaries – new social media, new social science?’ (NSMNSS).44 NSMNSS was hosted over several online platforms, such as Methodspace, Blogspot, Twitter and YouTube, and involved a launch event, four seminars and a final closing event over a 12-month period (2012–2013) in its effort to assess the methodological and practical implications of social media for social science research. The network was led by NatCen Social Research, Sage and the Oxford Internet Institute. In attempting to answer the question of whether social scientists should use social media, Gareth Morrell, one of the core members of NSMNSS, pointed out the tremendous potential of social media research. Also, Morrell highlighted the implications of social media for the methods and expertise employed in research, for the quality and authenticity of the collected data and for research ethics.45 On the NSMNSS blog, the network posted news about its knowledge-exchange seminars and brief accounts of the sort of quantitative (‘big data’) and qualitative (‘deep data’) methods and data used in social media research.46 Also, the network

42 Other NCRM Networks for Methodological Innovation-funded projects can be found at http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/research/NMI. 43 http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/research/NMI/2012/digitalmethods.php. 44 For more information, see http://www.natsal.ac.uk/nsmnss. 45 Available as part of the NCRM podcast series at http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/TandE/ video/podcasts.php. 46 The blog of the network can be accessed at http://nsmnss.blogspot.co.uk.

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ran a forum for discussion on Methodspace47 and, on the same platform, it offered resources for researchers who use online social media.48 Finally, NSMNSS organised thematically specific chats on Twitter. The ESRC also supported the Digital Social Research (DSR)49 initiative (2010–2012), whose aim was to fund and support the ‘update, use and impact of new digital technologies across the social science community’. DSR identified the following as the key dimensions of what constitutes digital social research: research that studies new ‘born-digital’ data and data sources; research that initiates and employs innovative methods driven by new data and infrastructure, new forms of collaboration and interpretative research; new capability and skills in using tools, resources and services of e-infrastructure; new areas of study and discipline (e.g., e-science); new practices (e.g., new modes of collaboration, evolving publishing models); and a new scale of research (e.g., internationalisation and interdisciplinary working). On its website, DSR offered researchers downloadable research tools and software, while it funded large research nodes, smaller ‘demonstrator’ and ‘sustainability’ grants and community-based initiatives across the UK. Its Community Activities Funding scheme supported research partnerships, research visiting proposals, training and events that facilitated the formation of a crossdisciplinary digital social research community. At this point, I will discuss two of the DSR-funded projects: the Oxford e-Social Science (OeSS)50 node and the Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS).51 The OeSS node studied the use of increasingly powerful and versatile computer-based and networked systems in research and their ethical, legal and institutional repercussions. OeSS was additionally funded by the NCRM, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the European Union, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Research Information Network (RIN) and the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. It constituted a crossdisciplinary collaboration drawing on humanities, social and computer sciences, and engineering across the University of Oxford and specifically at the Oxford Internet Institute, the Oxford eResearch Centre (OeRC)52 and the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Said Business School. It consisted of two main 47 http://www.methodspace.com/group/nsmnss/forum. 48 http://www.methodspace.com/group/nsmnss/forum/topics/resources-forresearchers-using-social-media. 49 For more information, see http://www.esrc.ac.uk/research/research-methods/dsr. aspx. 50 For more information, see http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oess. 51 For more information, see http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/cosmos. 52 The Oxford e-Research Centre was established in 2006 with the aim of leading digital research and innovation. It has hosted projects in the sciences, social sciences and humanities and in technology and research-infrastructure development. Specifically, it has run projects in interdisciplinary areas such as cloud computing, digital humanities, digital social science, e-science, imaging and many-core computing. For more information on the Centre, see http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk.

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phases of work: in the first phase (2005–2008), the project aimed to identify the social, legal and ethical issues raised by early attempts to build the infrastructure and tools required for digital research. Based on case-study data, it identified a range of cross-cutting themes and issues in digital research, such as ownership and IPRs, disciplinary cultures, institutional infrastructures, privacy and data protection, anonymity and confidentiality, new collaborative networks, and social and ethical values. In the second phase of work (2008–2011), the project empirically examined possible solutions that could derive from technical, legal and policy initiatives. It used case studies, focus groups and interviews, and a longitudinal ethnographic study, while outreach activities enhanced the lessons and conclusions reached from the empirical study. The project produced a range of conference, seminar and symposium papers as well as publications that touched upon issues such as the use of mobile smartphone applications in research; interdisciplinary collaboration in e-research; digital methods; virtual research environments; tools in digital research such as web graphs, digital cartography, digital library resources and webometrics; data and information access in e-research; information search and access on the World Wide Web; trust and ethics in e-research; e-infrastructure and transformation of research practices and outcomes; and multidisciplinary research into new technologies. The OeSS work and the events that celebrated and enriched it led researchers to produce a quite comprehensive account of digital research and its challenges for future research practices.53 For instance, Dutton et al. discuss some of the key issues in digital research, such as ‘the growing wealth of digital data, the potential for digital collaboration, new forms of scholarly communication, the ethical challenges of digital research, the reshaping of institutional boundaries, and the need for digital curricula’ (2012: 5). These, among other issues, clearly point to opportunities along with challenges and difficulties in digital research, also indicating that those engaged in Internet research will have to be prepared to deal with new and different issues in the future. On the other hand, COSMOS is an empirical research programme wherein social and computer scientists collaborate to manage the so-called coming crisis of empirical sociology. They do so by taking advantage of the data available on social media and the interactive Web. Social media arguably offer researchers new, visible or invisible, populations for study and thus provide them with the potential for systematic data mining and analysis of naturally occurring data. Specifically, COSMOS has aimed to offer a social science digital toolkit for crawling, harvesting, indexing and visualising qualitative and quantitative social media data, as well as insights into methodology, ethics and legal issues arising in social media analysis. The COSMOS demonstrator project ‘Monitoring Social Cohesion and Tension’ aimed to analyse social media data so as to monitor social cohesion and tension before, during and after major events, such as urban riots, political protests or elections, industrial action, sporting events and so on. Thus, 53 A full list of publications can be accessed at http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oess/ publications.

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it hoped to provide resources for NGOs and the wider citizenry to draw on digital social research in relation to major social-political issues, such as ‘community cohesion’. The ‘JISC Research 3.0: Driving the Knowledge Economy’ campaign54 is another recent e-research initiative in the UK. JISC considers that digital technologies create a new paradigm for research, and it provides the networks, services, tools and content that UK researchers need to utilise such technologies. For instance, JISC has supported online content and specifically the digitisation of more than 6.5 million items including newspapers, films, images, sound files, pamphlets and cartoons. It has funded the National Grid Service, which enables researchers to share computational tools and data-storage capacity and instruments. It has also funded the preservation and curation of the UK research’s outputs through digital repositories. In addition, it runs the MediaHub platform,55 a multimedia platform that offers access to a wide range of digital image, video and audio collections. Overall, by providing the required infrastructure, digitised online content and virtual research environments, JISC envisages helping teachers, educators and researchers from across science and social science disciplines to fully utilise digital technologies in classrooms, lecture theatres and laboratories. It aspires to offer tools, applications and content to enable researchers to use ICTs at all stages of the research lifecycle, from putting together a research idea to publishing research results.56 At the time of writing, JISC is responsible for running 12 Regional Support Centres (RSCs)57 that respectively cover England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as part of an integrated UK-wide support network. The RSCs aim to support organisations at the regional level in deploying technology so as to improve learning, teaching and overall organisational effectiveness. They deliver support and services to learning providers in integrating technology through face-to-face and online consultations, events, support networks, continuous communication, training opportunities, development of partner relationships, and provision of resources and material.58 For example, JISC RSC Wales has delivered lunchtime online, interactive information sessions on the use of technology in learning and research (so-called ‘lunchtime bytes’). One such ‘lunchtime byte’ was on ‘Storytelling Using Technology’ and aimed to inform on how people use various technologies to tell stories in different ways to diverse audiences and how this can fit the learning process and be useful for the learners.59 JISC RSC Wales offers links 54 For more information, see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/res3. 55 For more information, see http://jiscmediahub.ac.uk. 56 For more information on JISC’s services for researchers, see http://www.jisc. ac.uk/whatwedo/campaigns/res3/jischelp.aspx#ideas. 57 More information on the JISC RSCs can be found at http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk. 58 For more information, see http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk/about-us/what-we-do.aspx. 59 The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling (GEECS) at the University of Glamorgan, Wales, has been a centre of excellence in digital storytelling within the

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to a range of online and digital storytelling resources that point to the storytelling use of blogs, Twitter, YouTube and so on,60 while it has organised events on topics such as screencasting and apps for searching the Internet without typing text. Some words should also be said about the collaborative and interdisciplinary work of the RIN.61 The RIN (2005–2011) dedicated part of its work to how researchers perceive and use Web 2.0.62 It commissioned the MeRC and the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, University of Edinburgh, to explore the extent to which Web 2.0 represents useful communication, sharing and dissemination tools for researchers across disciplines, and to investigate factors that influence researchers’ decisions to adopt and use Web 2.0 tools. The project reached the conclusion that: ‘Web 2.0 services are currently being used as supplements to established channels, rather than a replacement for them … for most researchers the established channels of information exchange work well; and, critically, they are entrenched within the systems for evaluating and rewarding researchers for their work’ (RIN 2010: 8). In this project, RIN (2010) recommended that universities, funders and members of the research community build mechanisms and the appropriate settings to enable Web 2.0 tools and services to contribute to experimentation and innovation while sustaining key elements of the well-established scholarly communications process, including registration, certification and preservation. Finally, at the regional level, it is worth making a reference to the methodologically grounded and data-oriented work of the interdisciplinary and collaborative initiative known as the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), established in 2008.63 Part of the researchcapacity building and skills training activities of WISERD has been devoted to the use of media technologies in conducting and communicating research. For instance, the WISERD seminar ‘Exploring the Use of Visual Media in the Communication of Research’ aimed to explore the challenges and opportunities in the use of visual media for the communication of research findings. It touched upon themes including mapping and graphics, film and video, and hyper- and multimedia websites.64 Communities 2.0 project. It has held community-based workshops on narrative and storytelling in a digital format through digital photography, audio recording, digital video editing and DVD production. For more information, see http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/ http%3A%2F%2Fgeecs.tumblr.com?tab=people&uname=rscwales. 60 For a list of digital storytelling resources and material, see http://www.diigo.com/ list/rscwales/Storytelling-Using-Technology. 61 Information on the role and form of existence of the RIN can be found at http:// www.rin.ac.uk. 62 More information on this project can be found at http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/ communicating-and-disseminating-research/use-and-relevance-web-20-researchers. 63 For more information, see http://www.wiserd.ac.uk. 64 More information about the seminar can be found at http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/ socsi/newsandevents/events/12072012wis.html.

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This discussion could touch upon many more past and ongoing collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives in Internet research. However, from everything discussed in this chapter, it has become obvious that there is a growing body of interdisciplinary and collaborative initiatives within Internet research. Such initiatives bring together not only individual researchers from a range of disciplines but also different disciplinary and epistemological traditions and entire institutions. Such initiatives essentially signal a multidirectional and partly fragmented effort to methodologically and empirically advance research that involves online media either as research tools and platforms or as actual objects and core elements of research. Internet Research Ethics As hinted above, interdisciplinary initiatives and collaborative projects in Internet research are seriously concerned with research ethics. On the one hand, ethics is an integral part of every research effort in all scientific fields and constitutes a core element of the activity of every research institution and research funding body (at least in the context of Western research cultures). On the other hand, research ethics is constantly subject to challenges concerning the variability of research contexts, the volatility of research conditions and the forces that define ethically acceptable research. At the same time, one can interrogate the very essence of research ethics and whether it dictates moral, harmless and beneficial research or good-quality research. Accordingly, questions are posed about the normative load of research ethics and the politics, values, provisions and practices that frame research ethics nowadays. Broadly speaking, research institutions and funders are interested in postulating well-grounded research-ethics frameworks that, however, often contrast with their declared readiness to undertake methodologically innovative and groundbreaking research. Methodological innovation is considered a goal of research in its own right, and funding bodies have placed research methodology at the core of their agendas. As mentioned above, the ESRC has made a significant investment in social-research methods through funding the NCRM. Some have defined methodological innovation as involving the crossing of strict disciplinary boundaries and encouraging interdisciplinary research work while applying existing methods in reformed ways and with the use of technology (Xenitidou and Gilbert 2009). Others question whether innovation goes beyond methods and suggest that it is mainly to do with how effectively methodology is applied by the researcher and, in this respect, whether it can be integrated into or even facilitated by the mandates of research ethics (Nind et al. 2012: 8). What constitutes innovation and its ethical implications have incited debates among researchers (Nind et al. 2012). Nind et al. suggest that there is an ‘inevitable tension of research ethics both driving and constraining innovation in research methods and practices’ (2012: 2). They draw their attention to voices that criticise

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formalised research ethics regulations and associated ethics review mechanisms as hampering methodologically ground-breaking, innovative and often risky research: ‘we see then the two interacting forces in tension: methodological development pushing forward ethical research practice and institutionalised research ethics practices pushing back methodological developments’ (2012: 7). From this perspective, the ‘unknown’ and ‘unfamiliar’ elements of innovative research are largely precluded from formalised research ethics mechanisms, since such mechanisms are reliant on the ‘familiar’ and ‘safe’ routes for the conduct of evidence-based scientific research. Beyond the way that formalised research ethics can affect methodological innovation, methodological breakthroughs can challenge the way we think about and apply research ethics, particularly when new technologies are employed. This has been acknowledged by numerous studies on ethics in online and social media communication (e.g., boyd and Hargittai 2010, Lange 2007, Lampe, Ellison and Steinfield 2006, Miller 2011). The three novelties in Internet research discussed in this chapter – new objects of research, new methods of research and the development of interdisciplinary research – and the associated ‘utility’ of the Internet ‘as a field, a tool, and a venue’ of research (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012) clearly challenge the way we think about, develop and apply research ethics. This does not mean that research ethics and technologically enabled methodological innovations, such as those involved with Internet research, are two incompatible realities. On the contrary, as Nind et al. have argued, alongside the tensions between institutionalised research ethics and methodological innovation, research innovators provide a fresh perspective on research ethics and declare their aim to ‘act responsibly while moving forward methodologically’ (2012: 15). More specifically, from the 1990s (e.g., Jones 1994) and especially from the early 2000s (e.g. Bassett and O’Riordan 2002, Berry 2004, Buchanan 2003, Flicker, Haans and Skinner 2004, Johns, Chen and Hall 2004, Ornatowski 2002, Sixsmith and Murray 2001, Stern 2003), researchers became systematically concerned with ethical issues in Internet research, such as data privacy and confidentiality, integrity of data, intellectual property and professional standards. Research concerning or taking place on the so-called ‘social Web’ is increasingly confronted with issues concerning participant recruitment, informed consent, protection of privacy, anonymity and confidentiality of data, data integrity when a mechanical turk or a bot carries out parts of the work, as well as jurisdictional differences in data laws when research is processed, stored and disseminated via cloud computing or in remote server locales (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). Although such issues are – among others – at the epicentre of research-ethics regulatory frameworks in all disciplines, in Internet research ‘the ethical issues have shifted from purely data driven to more human-centered’ (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). This means that Internet researchers are increasingly called on to answer questions such as: What ethical obligations do researchers have to protect the privacy of subjects engaging in activities in ‘public’ Internet spaces? How is confidentiality or

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The rise of new ethical questions and challenges in Internet research has led individual scholars and research associations to contemplate the ethical dilemmas in Internet research, and some have formulated principles or rules for the conduct of ethical Internet research (Allen 1996, Beaulieu and Estalella 2012, Boehlefeld 1996, Buchanan and Ess 2008, Ess 2002, Markham and Buchanan 2012, Reid 1996).65 For instance, in 2002 the AoIR (Ess 2002) formulated a first set of ethical guidelines for those involved in Internet research. Ten years later and after long and extensive deliberation, the AoIR recognised the need for a new series of ethical guidelines that would not invalidate the 2002 ethics document but would rather complement and work in parallel with it so as to respond to the new challenges and rapidly shifting ground in Internet research. Thus, through years of discussion within the AoIR Ethics Committee as well as across the AoIR membership, the 2012 document came to reflect the effort of Internet researchers ‘to recognize and respond to the array of changing technologies and ongoing developments that affect the ethics of internet research’ (Markham and Buchanan 2012: 2). This follow-up set of research ethics guidelines also proved that ‘no set of guidelines or rules is static’, especially given that ‘the fields of internet research are dynamic and heterogeneous’ and that as yet there has been no official guidance on Internet research ethics adopted at the national or international level (Markham and Buchanan 2012: 2). The 2012 AoIR ethics document specifically stressed ‘human subjects’, ‘public/private’ and ‘data(texts)/persons)’ as the main concepts of ethical tension, while it emphasised that ethical tensions and associated contradictions should be encountered step by step, through a ‘process approach’. Also, it recognised that there are research ethics dilemmas that are unique to Internet research and directly or indirectly arise from the involvement of the Internet in research practice: ‘The internet complicates the fundamental research ethics question of personhood. Is an avatar a person? Is one’s digital information an extension of the self?’ (Markham and Buchanan 2012: 7). On the whole, the rapid spread of Internet research from the early 2000s onwards and the increasing occupation of individual researchers and institutional research bodies with ethics in Internet research led to the development of Internet research ethics as a discipline by the mid 2000s:

65 For a list of professional associations that have produced statements or guidelines for Internet-based research, see Buchanan and Zimmer (2012).

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There was ample scholarly literature documenting [Internet research ethics] across disciplines and methodologies, and subsequently, there was anecdotal data emerging from the review boards evaluating such research … boards were primarily concerned with privacy, data security and confidentiality, and ensuring appropriate informed consent and recruitment procedures. (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012)

Internet research ethics examines debates and provisions mainly concerning the protection of privacy and confidentiality, research subject recruitment, informed consent, and minors and consent (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). At this point, I will discuss each of these matters in some detail: 1. Protection of privacy and confidentiality. This involves the protection of the anonymity of human subjects of research and the confidentiality of sensitive data or conduct. Internet research raises challenges that make privacy and confidentiality a problematic, if not unfeasible, task (Bryman 2012: 680). First, Internet research often involves the collection of comparable and combinable data that somehow change the meaning of personally identifiable information. Such data can reveal people’s web search queries, online activities and preferences, and most-visited sites, all of which go beyond demographics and other conventional constituents of personal identity. Similarly, new types of data collected in Internet research can be used to identify a subject within a dataset previously assumed to be anonymous. For example, Internet researchers can collect the IP addresses of the subjects of research or of users of certain online sites and services. Second, privacy becomes more complicated in Internet research as Internet users do not seem to be fully informed about privacy online, risks of privacy violation on the Internet and existing regulations for the protection of privacy online. As an outcome, they are not aware of whether practices involved in Internet research can or may violate their privacy and divulge personal or sensitive information. Even if knowledge of formal privacy rules and associated risks is ensured, users’ own perceptions of the private or public character of the content they contribute, upload or post online complicate the research practices for securing privacy. Even in fully public environments, the posting of some content or some exchanges may be perceived by the user as profoundly private or sensitive. In this case, the user may not consider this information likely to be exposed to public viewing or to become subject to searching, scrutiny and analysis through research (Sveningsson Elm 2009: 77–78). Even if the user/content creator is happy to make the content accessible to the entire public of the online environment where content is located, she/he may be unwilling to provide access to it to the intended audience of research (Sveningsson Elm 2009: 84). Similarly, researchers cannot be certain whether online information that is publicly available (e.g., information posted on social

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networking sites) is private or whether it can be freely used for research purposes. Subjective judgement of what is private and what is public – judgement emanating from the user (the creator of content) but also from the researcher –complicates the protection of privacy when analysing web content. The distinction between private and public is very blurry in online spaces, while, as Sveningsson Elm points out, this distinction should not be seen as a dichotomy but rather as a continuum across which researchers can discern how public or private the studied online space or environment is: ‘online environments may not fit so neatly into just one of the polarities. In practice or by design, the online environment in question may not be only public or private but something in between’ (2009: 76).66 In this respect, both researchers and users encounter a knowledge gap regarding the type of information available online (private or not), the privacy regulations of the various sites and services on the Internet, and the speed at which technological infrastructure moves and how this affects privacy rules and practices. Furthermore, researchers have to make provisions for the secure transmission and encryption of sensitive personal data obtained and stored online, especially given the increased risks of data-hacking online. These uneasy matters invite researchers as well as institutional research-ethics review boards to integrate into existing regulations the challenges that Internet research raises for how subject privacy and anonymity are defined and protected. 2. Research subject recruitment. In general, recruitment of research participants aims to strike a balance between, on the one hand, sampling processes that serve the purposes of research and, on the other, ethics provisions such as informed consent and fair selection of participants so as to minimise risk and eliminate harm for those participating in research. In online research, such ethics provisions cannot easily be secured since ‘populations are often self-selected and can be exclusive, depending on membership and access status’ (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). In addition, participant profiling and selection of a representative sample are barely achievable goals in Internet research. Use of pseudonyms and the adoption of multiple or alternative identities online result in a flux of profiles and identities among research participants (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). One should not underestimate the ethical and research-quality dilemmas that Internet researchers are faced with when it comes to online identity and the difficulty in identifying actors within an Internet communication context. For instance, authenticity and the questions posed around it as a 66 One way for the researcher to discern the degree of publicness of the site or space online is to consider the level of ‘openness’ of the content available and whether registration, membership or other accessibility limitations are in place, although many types of accessibility freedom and constraints may coexist in the same online environment (Sveningsson Elm 2009: 76–77).

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result of the multiple and barely verifiable user identities on the Internet seriously challenge the actual practices of research subject recruitment and consequently the quality and reliability of the obtained data (Hine 2000).67 On the other hand, Internet research offers researchers new means and techniques of recruitment through postings on social networking sites and on Twitter, through YouTube videos, by creating dedicated web pages and blogs, through aggregating and scraping data, or via direct email. In this way, researchers are able to recruit participants from across geographical distances and populations, although they still need to consider the terms and conditions of use of external websites for research purposes. 3. Informed consent. This is an integral part of the research process and involves informing participants of the nature and aims of the research, of how the research outcomes will be used and of any potential risks for the participant. In conventional face-to-face, telephone and mail research, informed consent can be secured verbally or via appropriate documentation that is handed or posted to participants and is signed by them. In Internet research, portals are frequently used to inform participants and obtain their consent. Consent cards or tokens are used when researching Internet locales such as virtual worlds, while electronic signatures are often employed for the purposes of informed consent. However, new means for ensuring informed consent must be devised in Internet research ‘given the fluidity and temporal nature of Internet spaces’ as well as the emergence of new means of data storage (e.g., cloud storage) and online data sharing (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). In addition, the multiplicity of online actors and the fast movement of active membership of and participation in online environments (e.g., chat rooms) pose barriers to the researcher’s ability to inform every user/ participant individually and in detail. Furthermore, in some online spaces, researchers find it infeasible to identify those contributing the content that constitutes part of the material for analysis (e.g., discussion groups, online guest books), since often content contributions are anonymous or signed with a pseudonym (Sveningsson Elm 2009: 72). At the same time, when participants in Internet research come from different parts of the globe, the language and content of consent statements must take into account the jurisdictions in those parts of the world, especially in relation to data use and sharing. This is a barely achievable provision that continually challenges researchers who collect data online. Finally, the fact that the boundaries between public and private are deeply blurred on the Internet adds complexity and some have suggested that data made available in the public Internet domain voluntarily can be used by researchers without the need for informed consent (Hewson et al. 2000, quoted in Bryman 2012: 679).

67 Chapter 6 in Hine (2000) offers a discussion of this ethical matter for the ethnographic study of virtual spaces.

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4. Minors and consent. Researching children and minors raises a range of challenges regarding access, consent and ethics. This is even more so when children are researched online, since it is not easy for the researcher to ensure that all ethical imperatives – such as participants’ informed consent – are met (Livingstone, Ólafsson and Haddon 2013: 77). Age verification of participants is far from straightforward in online spaces, while age-consent regulations vary across countries and even locales. Buchanan and Zimmer (2012) advise that technical software applications as well as knowledge checks are used to verify the age of participants, but in reality these tools have not proved sufficient to encounter the consent and other ethical challenges that online research of minors entails. The above ethical issues in Internet research have been looked at in more detail by studies that examine one particular methodology or method of data collection. For instance, Beaulieu and Estalella (2012) have examined mediated research ethics within an ethnographic context and argue that traditional research ethics are challenged by ethnographic research in mediated settings on the basis of two underlying dynamics: contiguity and traceability. Regarding e-interviews, Salmons has listed the sorts of ethics questions a researcher should ask (and actually answer) before conducting interviews or observations online: • When I interview consenting participants online, can I also use the information or images posted on their Facebook pages as data? Can I use information in their avatars’ profiles? Or their tweets/blogs/websites? • How can I be sure the person I am interviewing is who I think he is (and is over 18) when I recruit participants online? • How do I know what is ‘public’ versus ‘private’ space online? If I want to observe people in an online community, do I need to announce that I am a researcher and obtain informed consent from the people who post? • Is an avatar a ‘human subject’? Are researchers responsible for protecting the online identity of participants? • If I want to interview in Skype versus in text chat do I have to record the visual, as well as audio exchange with the participant? What do I do with the visual data? (Salmons 2012c, emphasis in original) For the case of social media research, Salmons (2012b) notes that researchers who collect social media data must decide what type of data they aim to analyse (e.g., visual, verbal or text) as well as consider IPRs when the data (e.g., pictures or images) include other people who have not given permission to the researcher. Furthermore, the rapidly expanding use of mobile devices and cloud computing adds new opportunities for Internet research as well as additional complexity to the above ethical challenges. Mobile devices (on which Internet services are nowadays widely available) move research away from a place-restricted Internet and ‘enable the use of synchronous data collection and dissemination from non-

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place based environments’ (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). In addition, cloud computing68 is increasingly used in subject recruitment, data collection and storage, data processing, and communication and collaboration, and this sets challenges for data storage, encryption, processing, transfer and sharing (for more on ethical challenges raised by the use of cloud computing in research, read Buchanan and Zimmer 2012). In concluding this discussion, it can be argued that endeavours to research Internet phenomena, content and data challenge well-established institutional regulations on research ethics and associated practices to pre-emptively ensure ethical research. Existing research ethics recommendations and frameworks are seriously challenged with regard to their suitability for Internet research and voices of scepticism increasingly pose questions about existing Internet research ethics guidelines and their future shape: How thorough and up-to-date are current guidelines … and how far should new guidelines go in addressing the ethical issues of digital research? … The challenge lies with public engagement regarding the ethics of digital research and the adoption of human concerns in ways that do not stifle innovation. (Dutton et al. 2012: 9)

In order for complex ethical issues to be addressed in research of the Internet and/or when Internet research methods are employed, researchers are required to provide concrete answers to the following set of questions before, during and after the completion of research: • What is the ultimate goal of research? • What is the basis for selecting the means, techniques, methods and participants/subjects for investigation? • What are the risks and benefits arising for research participants and what ethical issues are respectively involved? • What ethical provisions will maximise the benefits and minimise the risks for participants? • How will the researcher ensure balance between achieving the research objectives and complying with the rules that underpin the established ethical framework of research? • What have been the ethical ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ of the conducted research? Accordingly, what are the subsequent lessons with regard to how 68 Cloud computing involves services such as ‘web-based email and calendaring services provided by Google or Yahoo, online productivity platforms like Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365, online file storage and sharing platforms like Dropbox or Box. net, and large-scale application development and data processing platforms such as Google Apps, Facebook Developers Platform, and Amazon Web Services’ (Buchanan and Zimmer 2012).

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researchers in the same field should design and pursue similar research in the future? Concluding Remarks: Symbiosis or Competition between Internet Research and Conventional Research? Internet-based objects of research and associated online methods and venues for the conduct of research, as well as interdisciplinary initiatives for the spread and development of Internet research, go hand in hand with somewhat inexorable ethical challenges and, all together, form a complex map of trends and practices in social science research. Such a complex map poses vital questions about the impact of Internet research on ‘traditional’ offline research and whether Internet research acts as a surrogate for, augments or reorients conventional social research and its methods (Williams, Housely and Edwards 2012). On the one hand, the comparative advantages of Internet research are mostly to do with involving hardto-reach subjects of research; integrating multiple types of digital data; collecting data from various locations; identifying new ‘populations’, ‘networks’ or ‘relations’ to be researched; and finding new methods, techniques, tools/software and forms of collaboration and research practice for data analysis. On the other hand, it is acknowledged that Internet research suffers from low provision of sociodemographic data, difficulty in securing sample representativeness and a lack of face-to-face contact (which usually offers richer and more nuanced qualitative data) (Williams, Housely and Edwards 2012). At this point it is worth reflecting on some of the popular voices of praise and criticism of Internet research, in comparison with conventional, offline or nonInternet-related research and especially in relation to the conduct of qualitative research. Markham and Baym (2009) have argued that Internet tools and methods complicate the way qualitative research is put into context and practice. They suggest that the Internet affects qualitative inquiry in the following ways: first, by leading to media convergence, with mixed-media forms and messages becoming ‘integral to the full range of human social practices’ (2009: x); second, by challenging traditional frameworks of the subject of research and bringing into existence a ‘multiphrenic or saturated subject’ whose ‘experience and identity are saturated by so many communication media’ and are no longer defined through conventional socio-demographic categorisations (2009: x–xi); third, through shifting social boundaries and blurring the lines of distinction between private and public, with private ‘talks’ taking place in ‘public’ Internet spaces, thus complicating the ethics of data collection online and the very concept of privacy (2009: xi); and, finally, by annihilating geographical and temporal boundaries in communication, exchange, transactions and other dealings, thus problematising the geographical and temporal settings of the studied phenomenon or practice(s) and opening up new possibilities for research that is conducted beyond a specific geographical site or moment in time (2009: xi).

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At the same time, Markham and Baym note that Internet researchers and researchers who conduct conventional qualitative research encounter similar challenges and both adopt a series of fundamental research principles and practices. For instance, research design is ongoing and continually subject to a dialogue between theory and method. The constitution of data is the result of a series of decisions made throughout the research, while critical ethical issues – such as trust, authenticity, privacy and consent – are meant to be treated in an inductive (rather than rule-driven) and context-sensitive way. Also, in all kinds of qualitative research the role of the self (the researcher and the subject of research, as well as their associated identities) must be subject to reflexive inquiry; thus, research practices are situated in the sense that they are placed in context (e.g., emotional, institutional, economic, cultural, social). Finally, both Internet and conventional research require researchers to sustain an ongoing balance between ‘dialectical tensions’ (e.g., messiness versus neatness; depth versus breadth; local versus global) and to be aware of the consequences of any related decisions. Drawing on lessons from her ethnographic research, Hine (2009) contemplates the boundaries of ethnographic research when conducted in, through and on the Internet. She talks about departing from place-bounded ethnography and applying a ‘multisited’ ethnography (see Marcus 1995) that explores various offline and online sites through diverse tools, means and techniques of qualitative research inquiry: ‘face-to-face interviews, visits to physical sites, autobiographical experiences, historical documents, websites, searches and surfing, participation in online groups, simple structured analyses of messages, e-mail interactions, and dynamic visualizations of web-based networks’ (Hine 2009: 17). From an anthropological perspective, Beaulieu agrees and states that ‘new sites and objects of study are being proposed (networks, multi-sited ethnography, multi-media) for the study of traditional anthropological issues like migration, community and identity, and of novel ones, like globalization’ (2004: 142). Culture(s), social practices and identities – primary objects of research for ethnographers – are no longer situated within fixed, well-demarcated geographical and temporal boundaries. Today’s technological developments and the continually shifting socio-economic and cultural ground make the same object of ethnographic inquiry appear in similar or different forms in both physical and digital/virtual spaces. This invites ethnographers to employ both experimental and conventional means of inquiry to reflectively immerse themselves in multiple, fluid and often controversial field sites online and offline. On the other hand, Orgad suggests that qualitative Internet research examines the Internet as a place, venue and field of practices, as an object of research itself: ‘the study of the multiple meanings and experiences that emerge around the internet in a particular context. These meanings and experiences can relate to contexts of use (by individuals, organisations, networks, etc.) and/or to contexts of design and production processes’ (2009: 34). Orgad notes that the Internet has become a powerful and continually evolving research field site due to the fact that, unlike other media (i.e., mass media), ‘internet spaces have often been seen as

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distinct and separate from offline, or “real” social life, encompassing relations and practices of their own’ (2009: 36). In this regard, qualitative Internet research has the opportunity to develop an ‘interpretive understanding of people’s experiences of the internet and of the texts (in the broad sense) they create online and offline’ (2009: 34). For Orgad, Internet research can employ either or both online (e.g., virtual ethnography, e-interviews, online surveys) and offline (e.g., physically sited ethnography, face-to-face interviews, phone surveys) methodologies, collecting online and offline data, respectively. At the same time, she acknowledges that Internet research is increasingly inclined to study the Internet in conjunction with offline practices, meaning construction processes and experiences, while combining online and offline data (2009: 37). For instance, in their study of the public response to the July 2005 London bombings, Drury, Cocking and Reicher (2009) aimed at triangulation and combined their analysis of blogs with offline methods, such as newspaper analysis and interviews. It is increasingly acknowledged that the separation between online and offline is blurry and that complex interrelationships between online and offline are being developed, while the Internet has obtained a core position in people’s lives. Conducting research into the Internet and phenomena or practices within it in complete isolation from offline contexts is becoming an increasingly difficult and even unjustifiable task, not only in terms of methods employed but also with regard to the phenomena studied. The Internet is deeply embedded in offline contexts of everyday life, and, to understand its usage or phenomena that take place on it, researchers are called on to consider the offline context(s) wherein the Internet and its users are situated. This brings up plausible claims for combined, multilayered research designs in which both online and offline methodologies are utilised and multiple sources and types of data inform and offer nuances to research. In addition, practical as well as socio-cultural obstacles often make the collection of research data through the employment of online tools inappropriate or even infeasible. For instance, Malta (2012) describes conducting interviews with older people via instant messaging and email and finds that older people are averse to being interviewed online. Furthermore, ethical constraints in online research can lead researchers to employ offline methods to complement and enrich online data, while face-to-face contact, rapport and trustful contact developed between the researcher and the researched are benefits that are barely available in online data collection (Orgad 2009: 42). Nevertheless, the conduct of combined Internet and conventional research is a far from easy venture. For instance, when researching ‘life’ on the Internet through both online and offline data collection methods, the researcher encounters the challenge of analysing all types of data and making decisions about how to treat and organise the analysis (e.g., hierarchically or thematically) of each type (Orgad 2009). Different researchers make different decisions – for example, ranking one type of data higher than another, using one type of data to explain another, comparing one type of data against another, or

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putting the same weight on all types of data so as to cross-check findings and identify possible discrepancies or gaps. At the same time, methodological issues concerning Internet research are inextricably tied to broader issues of epistemology and quality of research. As argued by Baym, how the Internet is used as a field and methodological research tool brings up issues of ‘quality’ that every investigator is required to take into account in any research project: ‘the internet magnifies and forces us to confront what seem like new challenges in our research yet when we confront those challenges … we find that these are challenges all researchers face, not just internet researchers’ and that essentially ‘to do good qualitative internet research is to do good qualitative research’ (2009: 189). Thus, in assessing the criteria for high-quality Internet research, Baym refers to parameters that are not specific to the field of online research: ‘good work is historically grounded … such work is focused … judged in terms of what it is practical to accomplish … a good research gains persuasive ability by anticipating others’ counter arguments and making the arguments for his or her own case explicit’ (2009: 179). On the other hand, ‘quality’ is complicated by the interdisciplinarity of Internet research. As discussed above, Internet research runs across disciplines and can barely be subject to disciplinespecific rules and processes that verify quality and standards of research. This arguably entails that ‘quality must be evaluated at the individual rather than institutional level, a challenge that forces researchers to strive to understand a broad array of theories and methods from multiple disciplines’ (Markham and Baym 2009: xiv). In summarising the discussion of Internet research, it can be argued that a range of epistemological, methodological, practical and socio-ethical issues are drawing the attention of those who debate the present and future of Internet research. Such issues raise questions and possibilities about the future of Internet research and invite researchers to revisit their positioning towards the role of technology in research. While developments in Internet research have encouraged deterministic perspectives on the role of technology in the design and conduct of research, it is evident that Internet researchers should not disregard nontechnological contexts and dimensions of the phenomena under study, nor overlook traditional processes of research. Hence, the questions to be answered concern, first, whether Internet research can provide the space for a new discipline to be formed and, second, how it will further challenge traditional or long-standing disciplinary boundaries in the future. Those involved in Internet research should also consider the role of the Internet not only as an object of or methodological tool for research but also as a means for better research and, more broadly, better scholarly communication, publication and advancement (e.g., online open-access journals, social media sites). On the one hand, Internet tools, platforms and services can boost research collaboration and sharing of research resources while overcoming spatial and time barriers and enhancing the potential impact and dissemination of research. On the other hand, as Procter (2012) found in his work, a limited number of scholars are involved

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in Internet-based knowledge exchange and research-impact and dissemination activities. The often anarchic character of online communication and associated concerns over the credibility and quality control of peer-review practices online are some of the reasons that scholars have not been widely involved in online scholarly communication (Procter 2012). In any case, as Bryman recently noted, ‘e-research is very much a work in progress. New approaches are being developed, new fields of study are being envisioned, and the platforms for conducting research via software and the Internet are changing. The ethical terrain is changing too’ (2012: 681). At the same time, training and awareness-raising within the research community appear to be immediate prerequisites in order for Internet research to be advanced and established as a fully-fledged scientific field. In closing this chapter, I list some of the key challenges in Internet research that Salmons pointed to in 2013. These, I think, capture quite satisfactorily the key considerations for Internet research in the future: 1. Ethical challenges, such as the distinction between private and public spaces and data on the Internet, obtaining informed consent from participants and participants’ often inauthentic and multiple identities online. 2. New research literacies that researchers require in order to operationalise Internet and other technologies for research and to put in practice the research opportunities and risks that exist online. 3. Multi-formality of online data and the associated challenge of handling, analysing and reporting written, visual, audio and multimedia data. 4. New methods or new versions of old methods and how they are related to long-standing traditions and attitudes in research. 5. The changing role of the researcher (the qualitative researcher in particular) and the associated issues of power, relationships/interactions, identity and safety of researchers who conduct research online. 6. How Internet research can consider broader social settings and be responsive to contextual challenges and conditions.

Chapter 6

Conclusion: The Unexpected Future of the Internet and its Study In a recent special issue on Internet studies published in New Media & Society, the guest editors, Ess and Dutton (2013), offered an update on the status, traits, trends and research agendas in Internet studies. They remarked that this is no longer an emerging trend but rather a rapidly expanding field with the following traits: • diversity and specialisation, with growing communities of researchers dealing with individual topics or entire sub-fields in the study of the Internet (e.g., Internet governance, Internet research ethics etc.); • inter- and cross-disciplinarity, with disciplines in social sciences and arts and humanities accommodating research on, about and via the Internet; • a moving and evolving research agenda, which is combined with continuity in the study of long-standing topics of inquiry; • cross-cutting disciplinary diversity in theories and theoretical contestations in the study of Internet-related phenomena, such as the debate between technological and social determinism; • focus on specific technologies and communication platforms (e.g., social media) and on concrete social and institutional contexts (e.g., community context) for the purpose of contextualisation; • transformation of research methods for the study of conventional topics of research and rise of new objects of inquiry, since technologies, phenomena and actors associated with the Internet have become actual objects of research; • definitional fermentation over the Internet and the field of Internet studies as a whole. This goes hand in hand with a search for identity so as to clearly distinguish the field from related fields and disciplines, such as ‘web science’ and ‘new media studies’, and to respond to challenges from mainstream disciplines and interdisciplinary positions. This book has aimed to cast some light on such highly challenging issues in Internet studies and has offered a wide-ranging critical examination of the field. Chapter 1 introduced the field and pointed out that the ‘Internet’, although well known to all of us, is comprehended as a fluid, barely definable and largely controversial term. This chapter also offered a mapping of Internet studies. It noted that Internet studies constitutes a rapidly developing, interdisciplinary, increasingly important and as yet not fully shaped field of study and research that

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is largely marked by dualisms and binary conceptual and intellectual tensions, such as those of ‘optimism versus pessimism’ and ‘technological determinism versus social determinism’. In this introductory discussion of Internet studies, I supported the broadly acknowledged need to eschew both technological and sociological determinism and to consider the interplay between society and technology as well as associated politics, power and representation battles in order to fight hyperbolic claims and overcome binary tensions in the field. Chapter 2 briefly presented some of the milestones in the rise and spread of the Internet and how its recent history has paved the way for the emergence of the vivid and fast-developing field of Internet studies. The history of Internet studies was briefly presented, while the case of the ‘Web’ and its own history, standing and role in communication were discussed from within the field of Internet studies. In this chapter, I conceded that the history of the Internet has been told a number of times and in various ways and with emphasis on diverse factors, actors, conditions and associated developments. One could even refer to multiple histories or understandings of the history of the Internet or multiple versions of the same history, since different authors and historical accounts of the Internet locate its origins in different acts and agents. The chapter closed with some reflections on the need to place history into context and link past histories with the possible future course of the Internet and its study. The main part of the book (Chapter 3–5) mapped core strands of theoretical work and their contribution to developing an Internet theory in the future (Chapter 3); examined the study of the ‘dark’ and ‘bright’ sides of the Internet and the Internet’s role in real-life contexts (Chapter 4); and, finally, considered the literature on and actual initiatives for the development of interdisciplinary Internet research, underscoring the employment of the Internet as both object and tool for methodologically innovative and interdisciplinary research (Chapter 5). More specifically, Chapter 3 presented aspects of the theoretical study of the Internet and theory-grounded perspectives on the processes and factors that have shaped the Internet and determined its role. First, it introduced the idea of ‘theorisation’ and the value of theorising the largely under-theorised study of the Internet. Second, it critically discussed debates and discourses in three theoretical strands: socio- versus techno-determinism; the political economy of the Internet; and the network society. I acknowledged the profound implications of these theoretical strands for theorising the Internet and I pointed to the following three concepts (and associated questions) that, one way or another, should be part of future efforts to craft an Internet theory: first, the concept of agency (versus structure) and the question of whether agency in relation to the Internet derives from social or systemic/structural actors and factors; second, the concept of power and the question of who owns power and the implications of power relationships and dynamics for Internet development and effects; and, third, the concept of identity and the question of whether the Internet has an identity and, accordingly, the Internet’s implications for user identity.

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Chapter 4 focused on the role of the Internet in real-life contexts and on the ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ sides of this role. On the one hand, it discussed the role of the Internet in civic activism and democratisation as well as the employment of virtual platforms for community-building and identity expression. It presented some evidence in favour of and against the allegedly positive changes the Internet can bring into people’s engagement in politics and community membership. On the other hand, it reviewed people’s nonadoption of the Internet and the Internet’s control and governance by vested interests. Again, it presented evidence in support of and in opposition to the harmful effects that can derive from digital exclusion and an unjust and ineffective Internet governance system. In this way, it attempted to illustrate that the boundaries between ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ or ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in relation to the Internet and its real-life role are blurred and partly arbitrary. The chapter concluded with a suggestion for continuous reflection and updating, and for both theoretically and empirically informed study of the role of the Internet. Chapter 5 discussed Internet research and shed light on the Internet as a relatively new object of study that influences research agendas and prompts researchers to revisit the study of ‘old’ research questions. In addition, it examined the Internet as a methodological tool that sways processes and practices across disciplines and steers the development and advancement of interdisciplinary and collaborative research. It also addressed the repercussions of Internet research for research ethics and discussed the ethical issues that Internet researchers encounter nowadays. I concluded the chapter by inviting those who are involved in Internet research to deliberate further on a range of research and methodological issues. In this concluding discussion I will attempt to map out the lessons, challenges and risks that Internet studies must be prepared to encounter and will comment on its highly unpredictable future. I will also address the question of whether Internet studies is on a trajectory to form a fully-fledged discipline. Certainties about the Future of the Internet and its Study By critically discussing theoretical, real-life and research areas of examination in Internet studies, this book has pursued a wide-ranging, although far from exhaustive, scrutiny of the field and of some of its main contributions, dynamics, arguments, trends, strengths and weaknesses. Such a thread of theoretical, empirical and research reflections has the potential to provide the foundations for a synthesis-rich account of the study of the Internet; an account that is informed by a range of disciplines that influence and shape Internet studies as a whole. More specifically, in this book I have aimed to address three key questions.

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First, how does Internet studies inform us about the multilayered, complex and controversial role and significance of the Internet in the past, in the present and in the highly unpredictable future? The main part of the book discussed this question and essentially confirmed some of the initial ideas I put forward in the introductory chapter. It was demonstrated that studies of the role of the Internet have generated inconclusive views and have reported diverse findings that mainly inspire debate. This prompts us to consider the need for further study alongside the understanding that the role of the Internet is inevitably complex, mutable, relative and dependent on parameters such as time, space or context, and the researcher’s own personal and epistemological viewpoints. In more detail, regarding the concept of agency, it was noted that some studies formulate celebratory accounts of the Internet and its potential to revolutionise society, while others are sceptical and consider the affordances and constraints of the Internet highly dependent on human agency. What can be suggested is that future studies take a dialectical position on whether the Internet constitutes part of the broader structure or is driven by user/nonuser agency. The Internet should be considered another form of agency that acts alongside human agents and the affordances and constraints of the broader social structures. Such a dialectical approach to the positioning of the Internet in the agency-structure schism could enable future studies to craft arguments that refrain from presenting the Internet as structurally driven and disadvantageous for supposedly passive social actors or, on the contrary, as a fully-fledged and structurally independent platform that empowers social actors and particularly those who integrate it into their life activities. In relation to the concept of power, similarly, optimistic accounts express their faith in user empowerment through the Internet and refer to phenomena such as grassroots mobilisation and the development of online communication. On the other hand, those who are critical of the Internet draw upon political economy and other critical approaches to suggest that power imbalances and the dominance of the oligarchy of the capitalist class continue to exist online. The discussion in this book developed the understanding that questions of power, participation and politics of representation are far from easy to address and that, therefore, they must be elaborated on the basis of consistent, longitudinal and both theoretically and empirically informed work. Finally, in relation to the concept of identity, studies often feed celebratory accounts of the Internet and its potential to liberate and empower user identity. Other studies again consider identity in cyberspace quite problematic, questioning the degree to which online and offline identity are identical and posing questions on possible risks arising from digital identity. What has been concluded is that the broad concept of identity deserves an analytically rich and empirically systematic exploration so that scholars may obtain a better understanding of its role in the shaping of the various phenomena of concern and interest to Internet studies.

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Second, what can one say, if anything, about the agendas emerging in the field of Internet studies? Internet studies appears to be a fast-growing interdisciplinary field that pursues theoretical, empirical and methodologically informed study and research into the Internet, while continually facing knowledge enigmas and building provisional knowledge certainties. It is broadly acknowledged as a much-needed field of study in attempts to critically examine whether, how and why the development of the Internet is linked to past and ongoing systemic developments and its repercussions for individuals and society as a whole. At the same time, it is increasingly recognised that this study field must place the Internet in context so as to examine its role within ongoing changes and developments in all life areas. Nowadays, the study of the Internet is faced with challenges and emerging agendas that problematise both the concepts and contexts employed as well as the theoretical, research and real-life questions that scholars in this field aim to address so as to evaluate the multilayered, complex and controversial role of the Internet in past, present and future-looking terms. Third, what are the lessons for the study of the Internet in the future? Overall, this book has pointed to certain lessons that scholars and others should take into account for the study of the Internet in the future. First, the discussion of key theoretical concepts pointed to the devaluation of the theoretical study of the Internet and suggested that theory and empirical study should not be treated as separate and disconnected. On the contrary, it pointed out that empirically grounded work requires a conceptually rich framework to inform and feed it, while theoretical propositions are in turn in need of continuous testing and empirical evidence so as to refine their concepts. In this way, theory and empirical study are interdependent and jointly responsible for new conceptual foundations and theorisations in the field. In addition, it was shown that theoretical concepts potentially have more than one meaning, signifying the need to adopt an open approach to theoretical concepts and to the ways they might inform an Internet theory in the future. As regards the study of the real-life role of the Internet, the discussion in this book clearly pointed to the ambivalent and multifaceted role of the Internet and to the blurred boundaries between Internet risks and opportunities. Thus, it posed questions about benefits and how they can be turned into risks as well as about risks and how they can be turned into opportunities. This challenges the clear-cut binary distinction that studies often make between the ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ sides of the Internet. Future studies also need to account for the equally problematic distinction between online and offline and the way the Internet might be integrated into offline reality while developing online spaces, online areas of action and online phenomena. It is critically important for future studies to identify the lines of connection between online and offline and to move away from the existing

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strong emphasis on the distinct nature of the online and the ways in which the online can challenge or even undermine the offline. Finally, the discussion of epistemological, methodological, practical and socio-ethical issues raised questions and possibilities about the future of Internet research and invited researchers to revisit their positioning towards the role of technology in research. While developments in Internet research have encouraged deterministic perspectives on the role of technology in the design and conduct of research, Internet researchers should not disregard nontechnological contexts and dimensions of the studied phenomena, nor overlook traditional processes of research. Those involved in Internet research should also think about the role of the Internet not only as an object of or methodological tool for research but also as a means for better research and, more broadly, better scholarly communication, publication and advancement. Training and awareness-raising within the research community and other stakeholders appear to be immediate prerequisites in order for Internet research to be advanced and established as a fully-fledged scientific field. At the same time, the question that remains and to which researchers’ attention should be drawn concerns traditional disciplinary boundaries and how Internet research will further affect them in the future. Uncertainties about the Future of the Internet and its Study The above points of certainty are coupled with a number of uncertainties about the future of the Internet and its study. Uncertainties about the Internet itself as well as about trends, agendas and dominant paradigms in its study and research add complexity to any efforts to predict the future of the field of Internet studies. First, the Internet itself and the uncertainty that marks discussions over its future shape, tools and affordances do not permit us to foresee its study in the future. On the one hand, the fast movement from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, the spread of mobile/on-the-go Internet, the enrichment of the Internet’s communication affordances with interactive, networking and collaborative tools and services, and the continuing technological developments both in terms of devices and applications cause many to ask: what is next? But can anyone really predict what the Internet of the future will be like? There is a lot of discussion in this area but it is mostly based on the industry’s business planning and on developments around future releases of devices such as those that offer flexible, interactive and on-thego Internet (e.g., Android, iPads). But the Internet goes far beyond devices and applications; it is a hard-to-chart landscape of actors, spaces, content, services and phenomena that embeds many more parameters than just technology and its future standing can by no means be predicted. The study of the Internet itself is faced with great uncertainties and challenges. In terms of theory, the prominent under-theorisation of the field does not give us enough reasons to think that an integrated Internet theory is likely to arise in the near future. As noted in Chapter 3, the answer to the question of whether we

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are likely to soon devise such a theory for the conceptually rich and contextually framed study of the Internet is ‘possibly yes, possibly no’, and so ‘it all depends’. This means that all possibilities are open and that the outcome will largely depend on how well theoretical concepts and pending questions are synthesised to form the key pillars of an Internet theory. At the same time, we could question whether a synthesis of key theoretical and conceptual pillars, such as those discussed and proposed in this book, is adequate to enable us to put forward a comprehensive and responsive Internet theory. Others may also contend that the vision of an Internet theory is rather idealistic and practically infeasible due to the complexity of the Internet and its fast-evolving and perplexed role in individual and sociallife settings and subsequently the multilayered theoretical positions, concepts and debates involved in its study. Such matters point to the caveat that discussions around Internet theory need to take into consideration and draw our attention to still-unanswered questions surrounding the scope, breadth, agenda and value of an Internet theory in the future. Besides the uncertain future of the theorisation of the Internet, the study of its real-life role and effects has constituted a shifting domain. Studies initially examined the role of the Internet in information dissemination and exchange and subsequently also looked into its role in personal and public communication enhancement, whereas nowadays scholars largely examine phenomena such as online social networking, virtual community-building and activism, and, more generally, the way the Internet can challenge offline spaces and life routines. What has been concluded from the discussion in this book is that the study of Internet risks and opportunities is marked by a great deal of complexity. New areas of concern and study will most probably rise in the future, further perplexing the distinction between Internet risks and opportunities. At the same time, one can hardly predict the precise agendas that will drive the study of the real-life role of the Internet in the future. Will the currently studied risks and opportunities continue to be of concern to scholars in the future? Will new risks and opportunities arise? If so, will they concern existing or new aspects of people’s usage and appropriation of the Internet? Will future study also engage with risks and opportunities that stem from new and evolving forms of ‘produsage’ and ‘participatory culture’ on the Internet? And how will the study of Internet risks and opportunities affect the way we theorise the Internet and the various efforts towards the development of an Internet theory in the future? All these are questions that are yet to be answered and around which there is a great deal of uncertainty. In addition, the Internet will continue to influence a range of epistemological, methodological and socio-ethical issues in research in the future, both adding complexity and accommodating advancement. On the one hand, ethical issues – such as informed consent, the distinction between private and public spaces online and the protection of participant anonymity and identity – will probably continue to be of concern to Internet researchers, affecting both the methodologies and actual outcomes of research. However, it is barely predictable whether the subfield of Internet research as a whole will coordinate efforts and develop initiatives in

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order for best practices for encountering such ethical issues to be set in motion. Also, researchers’ attitudes to new or virtual methods in relation to old traditions and research perspectives; their handling of online textual, visual and multimedia data; and the literacies they need in order to pursue Internet research all are matters that will continue to puzzle researchers and influence research practices and associated developments in the future. In addition, Internet researchers as well as those concerned with the future of Internet research will need to continually consider, inform and revisit their approaches to the role of the individual researcher in the conduct and outcomes of Internet research; the way the Internet researcher (especially the qualitative researcher) relates to the research context and the participants; how the researcher is positioned in the research context; and the actual research process and the interaction that a researcher could and should develop with participants. These parameters complicate the power relationships and dynamics between the researcher and participants and pose questions to both parties about identity and self-representation in the research process, while also inviting the researcher to adopt a reflective attitude to the technological context within which research is pursued so that more certainty about the researcher’s role within the research context is established. Yet, long-standing binary splits have persistently been present in scholarly work in the field of Internet studies. Some Internet scholars continue to fall into the trap of pessimism while others support celebratory accounts of the Internet and its transformative effects. Technological advancements continue to amaze and frighten researchers even more than past advancements, while scholars often strive to take a strong and clear position about the Internet and its role in an attempt to make a distinct and original contribution to the field of Internet studies. At the same time, although the great majority of Internet scholars declare the need to craft and carefully balance out praises and critiques of the Internet, it is yet largely unclear how this need can be met and equally uncertain whether this will actually be the case in the future; the matter is probably as uncertain as the future of the Internet is itself. Currently, there are persistent difficulties in the field of Internet studies in reaching a consensus around predictions and their level of optimism with regard to the future of the Internet. Similar difficulties appear in forming concrete arguments about whether the lessons from past, recent and ongoing work in the field will be learnt by those who will study the Internet in the future. Hence, a great degree of uncertainty is inevitably present in discussions and deliberations around the Internet and its study in the future. The way scholars will deal with such uncertainty is, in turn, subject to the approaches and decisions of the individual researchers as well as of the entire scholarly community. Will Internet Studies Constitute a Fully-Fledged Discipline in the Future? The majority of the work in Internet studies considers the field to be interdisciplinary on the (correct) assumption that it borrows research questions,

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theoretical approaches and methods of research from a range of disciplines. It is also acknowledged that the Internet itself has brought fundamental changes to the way social research is conducted, introducing virtual research and new research methodologies. However, scholars are yet to place sufficient emphasis on the way Internet studies as a whole feeds and advances established disciplines. Besides its impact on the objects and methods of research, Internet studies has provoked a conceptual advancement of social research, in the sense that conventional socialresearch concepts such as identity have acquired new meanings and a stronger multifaceted character than before (e.g., digital or virtual identity). Internet studies has also initiated new concepts and terms (e.g., ‘cyber’, ‘virtual’) that appear to be appealing to a number of social-research disciplines. Finally, Internet studies not only accommodates interdisciplinary research but also, for both epistemological and methodological reasons, assigns to interdisciplinarity a scope and character not met previously (e.g., see the debates on e-science and e-research). Overall, there is an intense and evolving interplay between Internet studies and a range of disciplines, which results in a complex and dynamic landscape of interdisciplinary study and research. However, acute forms of interdisciplinarity, as they appear to prevail in Internet studies, seem to avert scholars from labelling Internet Studies as a discipline, often in the fear of over-narrowing the scope and simplifying the complexities of this study area. While the majority of scholars concede that Internet studies is no longer an emerging but rather a fast-developing study field, it is not considered to be any closer to a fully-fledged discipline as yet. This raises numerous question marks over the disciplinary status of Internet studies in the future and makes scholars ask: What is required in order for Internet studies to constitute a standalone and self-sufficient discipline and is this likely to happen in the near future? Is it really only a matter of time before Internet studies constitutes a discipline, and will a longer and richer history of the study of the Internet ensure the maturation of the field and allow its scholars to claim the status of a discipline? In this regard, is Internet studies likely to develop its own study and research tradition? And finally, will the status of a self-sufficient and standalone discipline have implications for the degree of openness of Internet studies to other disciplines’ scholarly and research influence? These are questions to which one can barely give any firm answers. What can be said for now, though, is that the notion of interdisciplinarity itself has not yet been sufficiently explored or comprehended, while its shape and directions cannot be reliably predicted. What Was not Said in this Book This book has aimed to offer an overview and critical discussion of Internet studies while pointing to lessons and posing questions for the future study of the Internet. It has taken a time-rich approach to the Internet and its study by intermingling past, ongoing and future-looking accounts. This approach was based on my strong

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belief that the development of the Internet and its study is running across a time continuum wherein the past matters for the present and the present matters for the sorts of conclusions and hypotheses one can make about the Internet and its study in the future. Such an approach has provided the space for a wide-ranging but at the same time quite varying and partly exclusive discussion of the field of Internet studies as a whole. In addition, the separation of theoretical from empirical accounts in the field of Internet studies does not by any means imply a clear-cut distinction between the two. As argued above, empirical accounts are greatly inspired by concrete theoretical frameworks or even abstract ideas, while there cannot be theory that is not informed by empirical findings or observations of and insights into segments of reality. However, as noted at various points in the previous chapters, this book left unaddressed a range of matters and areas of consideration in relation to the broad scope and multifaceted study of the Internet. Specifically, I discussed a limited number of concepts and theorisations around the Internet. Such a discussion offered a far from exhaustive account of theorisations of the Internet, since many popular theories that often frame the study of Internet phenomena were not discussed in this book (e.g., the public sphere and theorisations around the existence and characteristics of an online public sphere; community and theorisations of virtual communities and virtual worlds; media audiences and their shift from mass to new audiences; globalisation and globalised communication in the age of the Internet). This book also provided a relatively narrow account of the role of the Internet in real-life settings. On the one hand, the four themes of the real-life role of the Internet discussed in this book constitute vast areas of debate and controversy and involve scholars from a range of disciplines, thus leading me to rather unavoidably leave out of the discussion a number of relevant study examples, items of evidence, arguments and perspectives. On the other hand, other aspects of the role of the Internet have been entirely unaddressed (e.g., social media and online social networking; user-generated content and user creativity online; e-commerce; privacy and security risks). While the role of the Internet in real-life settings spans social, economic and political living and continually inspires the production of a range of discipline-specific as well as interdisciplinary studies, this book has shed light on and discussed only a small number of studies in this area. As a final word, I should stress that the aim of this book was to offer an overview of the field of Internet studies that would cover a significant portion of the study of the Internet and provide a wide-ranging account of the field. As a result, as soon as this book project was conceived, I made the conscious choice to sacrifice detail and exhaustive discussion of key works in the field in order to give an overview and critically discuss the field as a whole. Nevertheless, I did and I still recognise the importance of somehow balancing out breadth and depth in accounting for Internet studies, but it is for the reader to judge whether this book has achieved this balancing act or not.

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Index

access (to) computer or ICTs 15, 51, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128, 135 Internet, the 16, 51, 76, 85, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 155, 158, 171, 172, 185, 191, 194 technology or media and communication 30, 48, 50, 117, 118, 119, 121, 125, 126, 128, 130, 149, 186 activism 65, 72, 78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 96, 110, 112, 117, 147, 168, 221 citizen activism 72, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 95, 97, 160, 161, 163, 217 cyber or Internet activism 19, 79, 84, 85, 86, 87, 96 See also citizen mobilisation Adorno 43 agency 31–33, 35, 38–41, 53, 66–68, 93, 94, 96, 106, 108, 115, 132, 135, 160–162, 216, 218 Agre 10, 41 Allen 2, 6, 7, 14, 16, 20, 23 America 1, 23, 45, 86, 126, 150 See also US & United States Anderson 100, 106 anti–capitalist 84 See social movement anti-globalisation 82–84, 86 See social movement AoIR (Association of Internet Researcher, the) 6, 7, 18, 165, 204 Appadurai 100, 106 Arab Spring 83, 84, 91 See social movement architecture (of) Web or Internet, the 20, 21, 133, 135, 137–140, 143, 145, 146, 158

ARPA 14 See also DARPA ARPANET 14, 15 Audenhove 76–78, 117, 125 audience 1, 8, 16, 43, 45, 46, 49, 52, 61, 70, 80, 81, 168, 200, 205, 224 authoritarianism or authoritarian 90, 91, 139, 143, 144 Bakardjieva 5, 37, 78, 97, 102, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 114 Bangemann 140 See also Bangemann Report Bangemann Report, the 140 banking (web or online) 23 Baron 123 Bassett 20, 203 Baym 7, 8, 99, 107, 174, 179, 210, 211, 213 Bell 32, 157 Benkler 51, 53, 169 Bennett 72, 75, 78, 80, 82, 87 BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, the) 156 Berners-Lee 15, 20, 135, 157 Bijker 35–37, 122 binary tensions or dualisms (in Internet studies) 9, 10, 216, 219, 222 Blank 174, 187 blog 20, 23, 30, 78, 88, 92, 93, 95, 103, 105, 144, 165, 168, 177, 184, 195, 197, 201, 207, 208, 212 blogging 76, 89, 170 blogosphere 21, 169 See social media Boas 143, 144 Bolter 3 Bourdieu 31, 33 boyd 142, 203

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broadband 16, 140, 141, 156 See also mobile broadband Brügger 193, 194 Bruns 30, 33, 173 Bryman 173, 175, 176, 182, 185–187, 191, 205, 207, 214 Buchanan 165, 166, 186, 203–209 Burgelman 139, 142 Calabrese 45, 139, 142 Calhoun 75, 107 Cammaerts 72, 76–78, 116, 117, 124, 125 capitalism 13, 29, 32, 36, 41–52, 54–56, 61, 63, 64, 66, 68, 73, 74, 76, 79, 82, 99, 113, 128, 129 Carpentier 29 Castells 3, 6, 13, 29, 39, 51, 53–65, 67, 68, 79–82, 88, 97–100, 111, 117, 124, 125 censorship (of) 83, 91, 142, 157 Internet, the 39, 85, 89, 133, 136, 141–148, 154, 159 See also surveillance Chadwick 72, 73, 90 China 143 citizenship 52, 72, 73, 78, 79, 124, 132 digital/e-citizenship 73, 78 civic commons 93, 94 clientelism 90 code (of) 60, 141, 144, 146, 166 Internet, the 135, 136, 139, 140 Coleman 72, 76, 87, 88, 93 commodification16, 42, 45, 48, 49, 51, 77, 173 communication computer-mediated 18, 61, 89, 101, 175 online, virtual or digital 18, 58, 65, 76, 81, 83, 85, 88, 91, 92, 96, 104–106, 113–115, 139, 142, 146, 147, 151, 152, 173, 181, 182, 184, 214, 218 community 5, 6, 15, 18, 23, 49, 51, 57, 58, 67, 69, 70, 96, 97, 100, 106–111, 113–116, 118, 119, 123, 124, 129, 138, 142, 145, 150, 154, 158, 170, 173, 175, 178, 179, 180, 185, 195, 197, 198, 211, 214, 215, 220, 222, 224

online, digital or virtual 6, 11, 19, 27, 57, 70–72, 76, 80, 82, 88, 92, 97, 98, 102, 103, 105–117, 134, 161, 162, 165, 167, 176, 178, 179, 180, 184, 188, 208, 224 computer 1, 2, 14, 15, 16, 32, 51, 88, 117, 118, 121, 127, 183 See ICTs confidentiality 179, 199, 203, 205 See research ethics Consalvo 7–10, 16, 19, 101, 102 content digital 4, 52, 120, 121, 149, 154, 172 Internet, web or online 6, 18, 21, 22, 41, 49, 51, 76, 78, 116, 121, 130, 136, 139, 143–149, 153–155, 165, 167, 169–176, 185, 189, 190, 193, 194, 200, 205, 206, 207, 209, 220 media or communication 1, 2, 16, 24, 30, 40, 42, 43, 45, 50, 51, 75, 80, 142, 152, 189 multi-media 4, 16, 54, 195 user-led or -generated 30, 48, 49, 50, 51, 79, 82, 89, 96, 105, 120, 194, 205, 206, 224 convergence (media) 20, 29–30, 32, 210 copyright 136, 142, 144, 146–154, 159 See also IPRs co-regulation (of the Internet) 139 COSMOS (Cardiff Online Social Media Observatory) 198, 199 Costigan 2, 3, 109, 167 Cottle 82 Council of Europe, the 141, 155 Couper 185, 187, 188 creative commons 152, 153 critical theory 27, 36, 44, 56 of technology 35 cultural imperialism 29, 45, 50 See Schiller H. cultural industries 21, 46 cultural studies 11, 18, 29, 162, 174 Curran 15–17, 23, 35, 39, 40, 80, 89–91, 194 cyberactivism 84–86 cybercrime 136, 141 cyberculture 27 See also virtual culture

Index cyberprotesting, online protesting 19, 72, 73, 76, 79, 84–86, 88, 92, 96, 151 cyberspace or virtual space 4, 6, 18, 23, 49, 58, 59, 66, 77, 78, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92–98, 101, 103–109, 116, 132, 139, 140, 144, 149, 152, 162, 166, 176, 179, 194, 207, 211, 218 See space Dahlberg 76, 77, 87 Dahlgren 72, 76–78 DARPA 14 DDoS (distributed denial of service) 137, 144 decision-maker 4, 94, 95, 126, 127, 130, 136, 139, 151, 154 See policymaker decision-making 88–90, 92, 96, 98, 123, 128, 133, 137, 138, 142, 152, 159, 212 Deibert 143–145, 150 De Maeyer 167, 168 democracy 19, 52, 72–74, 87–93, 95, 132, 141 digital, Internet, cyber- or e-democracy 4, 19, 27, 72, 73, 88–93, 95, 96, 169 democratic politics 13, 72, 78, 84, 88, 94 democratisation 11, 23, 48, 71, 72, 87, 89–91, 94, 95, 160, 217 DeNardis 133, 145–149, 154 Dertouzos 32, 39, 66, 117 design (of) Internet, the 3, 20, 33, 94, 95, 136, 137 technology 2, 3, 5, 6, 35, 38, 39–41, 66, 69, 95, 120, 130, 133, 137, 139, 149 deterritorialisation 100, 106 Deursen 116, 119, 121 digital communication 58, 65, 81, 91, 92, 151 exclusion 11, 94, 116, 117, 119, 123, 124, 128, 130–132, 162, 163, 186, 217 inclusion 119–121, 124–129, 131, 132, 142, 163 media 46, 54, 57, 78, 89, 93, 129, 167

271

technology 22, 58, 81, 116, 118, 119, 121, 125–128, 131, 166, 175, 176, 180, 189, 197, 198, 200 Digital Agenda for Europe 140, 141 digital divides or gaps 4, 18, 19, 27, 28, 72, 85, 93, 95, 116–132, 161 See digital exclusion digital economy 27, 49 Digital Economy Act, UK 148, 151 digital media 46, 54, 57, 78, 89, 93, 129, 167 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, US 148, 149 discipline 6–8, 11, 12, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 28, 29, 72, 83, 106, 116, 162, 163, 166, 167, 174, 175, 191, 197, 198, 200–205, 213, 215, 217, 222–224 DMI (digital methods initiative) 168 DNS (domain-name system) 135–137, 145, 146, 149 domestication studies 37, 66 Donk 5, 79, 81 DPI (deep packet inspection) 145, 146, 148, 157 DRM (digital rights management) 45, 149 Dutton 2, 6–8, 28, 89, 103, 122, 133, 135–138, 142, 159, 199, 209, 215 e2e 137, 146 eEurope 140 effects (of) Internet, the 4–6, 9, 11, 37, 39–41, 65, 68, 69, 72, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94, 98, 104, 109–112, 114, 116, 160–162, 192, 216, 217, 221, 222 media or ICTs 5, 32, 34, 35, 43, 175, 192 e-government 22, 79, 87, 91, 95 Egypt 83, 91 e-interview 181 See also interview Elliott 42, 48, 160 email 15, 17, 19, 40, 59, 79, 81, 84, 158, 167, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184–186, 207, 209, 211, 212 e-participation 72, 80, 90, 92, 94 epistemology 28, 31, 51, 71, 165, 175, 177, 181, 193, 202, 213, 218, 220, 221, 223

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e-research 195, 196, 199, 200, 214, 223 See Internet, online or virtual research; e-science e-science 195, 198, 223 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council, the) 195, 196, 198, 202 Ess 7–10, 16, 19, 98, 101–103, 204, 215 ethics research ethics 6, 19, 165, 166, 176, 177, 179, 181, 186, 11, 195, 197–199, 202–214, 215, 217, 220–222 ethnography 107–109, 178–181, 199, 207, 208, 211, 212 network 178, 179 virtual 165, 176–180, 212– Europe 1, 23, 83, 123, 127, 140, 141, 148, 151, 155, 156, 159 European Commission 140–142, 151, 155, 156 European Union or EU 135, 140, 141, 150, 151, 154–156, 198 everyday life 10, 13, 36, 37, 59, 121, 131, 212 everyday life studies 37, 66 Facebook 16, 83, 91, 103, 171, 172, 192, 208, 209 See social media FCC (federal communications commission) 154, 157 Feenberg 35, 36, 107, 10, 111, 122 Felten 157, 158 Fernback 106–108, 112 Fielding 174, 187 focus groups online focus groups 176, 180, 182–183 Fowler 185, 186 Frankfurt School 43, 74 See Adorno, Horkheimer free/open source software 15, 17, 22, 30, 49, 51, 80, 129 Freedman 132, 138–140, 142, 149–152, 158 Fricker 185, 187 Fuchs 2–5, 10, 12, 19, 22, 33, 37–39, 46, 48–50, 53, 55, 56, 58, 60, 63, 64, 66, 80, 82, 84–87 ,91, 92–94, 97, 99, 101, 105, 107, 109, 111–113, 125, 128, 129, 160

Garnham 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 53, 63, 66, 67 Giddens 31, 33, 58, 59, 115 gift economy 56, 129 Gillespie 35, 116, 145, 149, 152 globalisation 13, 41, 52, 55, 58, 70, 80, 86, 224 Golding 5, 42, 45, 48, 90 Google 48, 49, 151, 157, 169, 171, 190, 194, 195, 209 governance 5, 52, 61, 74, 93, 133, 160 Internet governance 5, 6, 11, 19, 71, 72, 132–142, 144, 145, 147, 149, 154, 155, 157–163, 215, 217 media governance 159 Graber 32, 72, 90 Graham 42, 46, 52, 66 Granovetter 58, 83 grassroots 29, 64, 78, 87, 92, 93, 96, 162, 218 Grokster, US 150 Grusin 3 Gurstein 57, 126 Habermas 29, 73–76 habitus 31, 32 See Bourdieu Hacker 72, 87, 89, 116, 118–121, 126, 127, 142 hacking 84, 206 Haddon 37, 122, 124, 208 Halavais 49, 81, 168 Hamelink 128 Hargittai 116, 119–121, 142, 203 Haythornthwaite 5, 10, 37, 118, 183, 184 Hine 174, 178, 179, 207, 211 historiography web historiography 193 history (of) Internet, the 4, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 39, 193, 216 Internet studies 7, 13, 17, 18, 24, 216, 223 Web, the 13, 19, 20, 22,193, 216 Horkheimer 43 Horrigan 22, 123 Howard 72, 73, 83, 90, 144, 178, 179 Hunsinger 7, 8 (hyper)link studies 167–168, 189–190

Index See also hyperlinking hyperlinking 56, 82, 167–168, 184, 185, 189, 190, 193 i2010 140 ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the) 135, 136 ICTs (information and communication technologies) 10, 32–34, 37, 38, 47, 55, 58, 78, 89, 100, 107, 119, 120, 122–126, 128, 135, 140, 179, 181, 200 IGF (internet governance forum, the) 134, 136, 138 imperialism 31, 82 cultural imperialism 29, 45, 50 Indymedia 84 Information Society 7, 10, 24, 29, 32, 34, 45, 54, 57, 123, 125, 126, 128, 134, 140 informational capitalism 55, 56, 63 economy 55, 56, 63 labour 55, 56, 63 informationalism 55 informed consent 177, 182, 203–208, 214, 221 See also research ethics infrastructure (of) 16, 39, 62, 112, 119, 120, 121, 133, 136, 142, 146, 147, 195, 196, 198–200, 206 Internet, the 2, 5, 136, 137, 146, 154 Innis 42 intellectual property 52, 140, 145, 148, 151, 152, 203 See IPRs IPRs (intellectual property rights) 133, 136, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 150–152, 199, 208 interdisciplinarity 7, 8, 11, 18, 19, 25, 28, 29, 51, 72, 163, 165, 166, 170, 191, 192, 195, 198, 199, 201–203, 210, 213, 215–217, 219, 222–224 Internet exclusion 11, 116 See also digital divide, digital exclusion Internet studies 1, 4–13, 17–19, 22, 24, 25, 27–29, 31, 32, 41, 48, 51, 52, 65, 66, 67, 69–73, 94, 98, 101,

273

103, 106, 108, 115–117, 121, 133, 160–163, 165, 166, 173, 174, 191–193, 215–224 Internet theory 11, 27, 29–31, 35, 39, 41, 52, 65, 67, 69–71, 216, 219–221 See theorisation of the Internet interoperability 137, 141 interview online interview 165, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 195, 208, 212 See also e-interview ISOC (internet society, the) 135 ISPs (internet service providers) 135, 139, 143–151, 154, 156, 157 ITU (international telecommunication union, the) 127, 128, 135, 142 Jenkins 29, 30, 33, 73 JISC (joint information systems committee, the) 198, 200 Jones 6, 7, 9, 23, 75, 107, 108, 174, 203 journalism citizen journalism 83, 89 Kahn 15, 78, 79, 82, 88 Kellner 78, 79, 82, 88 Kendall 102, 106–108, 111, 113–115, 177, 179 Kozinets 176, 177 Kroes, Neelie 155, 156 Kvasny 123 labour (on) Internet, the 21, 22, 49 law or legislation (of) Internet, the 6, 90 132, 136, 140, 141, 143, 147, 148, 150, 151–153 Lee R.M. 174, 187 Lee H. 59 Lefebvre 36 Lenhart 122, 123 Lessig 139, 140, 143, 152 Liebenau 59 Lievrouw 3, 5, 8–10, 32, 33, 38, 40 LinkedIn 16, 145 literacy 21, 104, 121, 129, 174, 191 digital or Internet literacy 21

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Livingstone 2–5, 7–10, 15–18, 22, 23, 25, 32, 38, 40, 88, 90, 94, 116–119, 121, 208 MacKenzie 10, 33, 35 mailing list 56 Mansell 43, 44, 47, 51, 52, 66, 117, 124 Margetts 72, 73, 79, 89 Markham 6, 165, 174, 176, 204, 210, 211, 213 Marx 49 Marxism 38, 44, 47, 49 mass communication 4, 6, 65, 80 media 1, 3, 9, 29, 32, 43, 47–51, 74, 80, 82, 83, 88, 95, 211 McChesney 5, 43, 48 McLuhan 32, 55, 59, 66 media and communication (the study of) 24, 29, 42–44, 46, 47, 49, 52, 162 mediation, technological 42, 44, 82, 92, 100, 114, 179, 180, 183 medium, technological 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 18, 22, 30, 32, 33, 37, 76, 80, 86, 121, 165, 188, 189 medium theory 35 method (of research) 4, 6–9, 11, 17, 19, 22, 23, 25, 108, 165–167, 168, 173–181, 183–189, 191, 193–199, 201–203, 205, 208–217, 219–221, 223 Internet, online, virtual, digital or digitised method 19, 168, 169, 174–177, 180, 181, 183–185–187, 189–191, 195, 197, 199, 209, 210, 212, 222 Middle East 1, 83 Miller D. 176, 179 Miller V. 203 Mitra 101, 165, 184, 185 mobilisation 83, 86, 118 citizen mobilisation 71, 85, 87, 91, 96, 116, 162, 218 online or e-mobilisation 76, 81, 88 mobile broadband or Internet 16, 59, 156, 195, 220 telephony 4, 91, 123, 146, 184, 187, 199

modus operandi 32 See Bourdieu MOOs 102, 167 See also virtual worlds Morozov 90, 91 Mosco 42–44, 47, 52, 66 MUDs 102, 167 See also virtual worlds multimedia 1, 4, 16, 18, 19, 37, 54, 82, 181, 184, 188, 195, 200, 201, 211, 214, 222 multi-stakeholderism 137, 141, 160 See Internet governance Munro 53, 62, 63, 67 Murdoch 42 Murdock 5, 46, 48, 89, 118 Nahai 192 Napster, US 150 nationalism 13, 90, 100 NCRM (national centre for research methods, the) 196–198, 202 Negroponte 4, 32, 39, 66 neoliberal policy or system 48, 99, 129, 152, 160 net neutrality 133, 141, 142, 145, 146, 154–159 See also open Internet network, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 14–17, 53, 54, 55, 57, 64, 67, 81–83, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 150, 157, 159, 162, 168, 183, 184, 197, 200 network society, the 3, 6, 11, 21, 27, 29, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 60–69, 77, 79, 80, 100, 161, 216 networked individualism 53, 56, 57, 69, 98, 100, 111, 115 new media 3–5, 29, 35, 40, 43, 46, 47, 49, 51, 72, 77, 82, 83, 94, 100, 117, 160, 174, 178, 180 new media studies 3, 5, 11, 29, 47, 49, 51, 72, 107, 109, 168, 174, 215 NGOs 61, 135, 140, 160, 168, 172, 200 Nind 202, 203 Nordicom 138, 141, 150, 151, 154 Norris 116–118, 124–126 NSMNSS (new social media, new social science) 197, 198

Index O’Reilly 3, 20, 21 Occupy Wall Street 83, 84 See social movement OECD (organisation for economic cooperation and development) 137, 141, 142, 144 OeRC (oxford eResearch centre, the) 198 OeSS (oxford e-social science) 196, 198, 199 open Internet 139, 141, 151, 152, 154–159, 162, 168 See also net neutrality opportunities (on) Internet, the 5, 18, 21, 22, 39, 40, 69, 71, 72, 76, 79, 101, 112, 124, 159–162, 170, 173, 219, 221 opus operatum 32 See Bourdieu Orgad 173, 211, 212 p2p (peer-to-peer) 80, 146, 149, 150, 152, 156, 157 Papacharissi 5, 73, 76, 77 participant observation 108, 177 online or on the Internet 172, 176, 177, 195 participatory culture 30, 33, 221 phenomenology 35, 36 See Schutz Pickard 84, 85 Pinch 35–37, 122 PIPA (protect IP act, US) 148, 150, 151 placelessness 58, 107, 109 policy Internet policy 6, 72, 126, 127, 132–136, 138–141, 144, 148, 149, 152, 156, 159 media policy 42, 43, 152 policymaker 89, 90, 93, 127, 128, 138, 157, 158, 159 See also decision-maker political communication 72, 75, 76, 89–91, 162, 168 political economy (of) 11, 29, 42, 44, 46–49, 51, 52, 61, 63, 66, 68, 95, 113, 125, 128, 152, 162, 174, 218 media 42–52, 66, 68 Internet, the 5, 11, 19, 27, 38, 41, 47, 48, 50, 52, 66–68, 95, 161, 168, 216

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political science 18, 29, 72, 162 Poster 29, 32, 75, 76 post-industrial society 32 power concept 68, 96, 106, 132, 160, 161, 216, 218 relationships or battles 36, 42, 47, 50, 52, 60–62, 64–66, 68, 69, 79, 95, 133, 139, 154 160, 166, 216, 222 structures 38, 48, 52, 61, 66 privacy (on) Internet, the 9, 22, 116, 136, 139–142, 145, 146, 148, 151, 154, 199, 203, 205, 206, 224 produsage 30, 33, 221 See Bruns prosumer 49 protesting 72, 78, 79, 83, 85, 86, 95 See also cyberprotesting pseudo-identity 97, 104, 116 See also online & virtual identity public service broadcasting 50, 51, 75 public sphere 29, 70–78, 90, 224 online or virtual 27, 70, 71, 73, 76–78, 224 transnational 76, 77 Putnam 58, 77, 94 QoS (quality-of-service) 146, 154, 158 qualitative research 111, 180, 184, 210, 211, 213 quantitative research 176 reality 4, 12, 16, 20, 32, 40, 44, 54, 57, 62, 71, 97–99, 104, 160, 177, 219, 224 online or virtual 4, 54, 59, 97, 98, 106 regulation 64, 123, 139, 140 Internet, digital or electronic media regulation 5, 6, 8, 72, 132, 133, 136–140, 143, 144, 147, 149, 150, 152–154, 155, 157–159, 205, 206, 208 See co-regulation, law, legislation & self-regulation remediation 3, 4 See Bolter & Grusin research digital research 191, 198, 199, 209

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Internet research 6, 7, 11, 18, 28, 165, 166, 173–175, 185, 188, 191, 192, 195, 199, 202–204–214, 216, 217, 220–222 online or virtual research 176, 181, 186, 195, 206, 208, 212, 213, 223 research ethics 165, 166, 179, 186, 197, 202–204, 206, 208, 209, 217 Internet research ethics 19, 202–205, 209, 215 resistance (to) technology or Internet, the 17, 37, 114, 122, 127 See also self-exclusion Rheingold 5, 6, 21, 97, 98, 107, 112 RIN (research information network, the) 198, 201 risks (on) Internet, the 5, 9, 22, 69, 71, 72, 116, 154, 159, 160, 162, 205, 206, 214, 218, 219, 221, 224 Rodogno 99, 102–104 Rogers E.M. 32, 117, 174 Rogers R. 189–190 Salmons 174, 176, 181, 182, 195, 208, 214 Sassen 76, 90 Saudi Arabia 143 Scannell 59 Schiller D. 5, 48 Schiller H. 29, 43–46, 50, 51 scholarship 3, 8, 23, 24, 58, 62, 65, 68, 97, 100, 107, 109, 110 Schutz 35, 36 SCOT 35 See also social constructivism of technology Seale 181 search engine 18, 95, 150, 165, 169, 190 See Google Second Life 16, 30, 59, 103 See virtual worlds security 81, 116, 136, 138, 140–142, 144–146, 159, 186, 205, 224 Segerstad 123 self-exclusion 122, 127, 132 See resistance

self-regulation (of) Internet, the 139, 144 Selwyn 116, 119, 122–124 Servaes 127, 142 Silverstone 5, 37, 122 skills 21, 63, 121, 122, 124, 183, 186, 196, 201 ICT, digital or Internet skills 94, 118, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 186, 198 See literacy Skype 156, 182, 208 Slater 179 SNA (social network analysis) 178, 183, 184 web SNA 176, 180, 184 social capital 21, 58, 72, 88, 115, 124 See Putnam social constructivism of technology 35, 38 See social determinism social determinism 9, 33, 215, 216 See socio-centric social embeddedness (of) Internet, the 11, 27, 31, 33, 66, 69 technology 33, 35, 51, 161 social media 18, 72, 83, 84, 91, 95, 105, 151, 170, 171, 173, 190, 192, 196–199, 203, 208, 213, 215, 224 social movement 54, 60, 73, 76, 78–81, 83, 86, 95, 96 e-movement 81 transnational 82–83 social networking 98 online social networking 19, 144, 183, 221, 224 social networking sites 59, 85, 86, 88, 103, 165, 167, 169, 171, 177, 184, 207 social shaping of technology 10, 35, 38, 69 See social determinism social Web, the 125, 203 See Web & social media socio-centric (approaches) 10, 37, 39 sociology 11, 18, 24, 29, 31, 36, 72, 106, 107, 153, 162, 174, 199 software 2, 15, 20, 21, 49, 80, 90, 93, 98, 121, 139, 150, 165, 168, 171, 183, 187, 190, 192–194, 198, 210, 214

Index SOPA (stop online piracy act, US) 148, 150, 151 South, the 45, 83, 129 space 20, 24, 27, 34, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 66, 74, 75, 77, 78, 85, 87–90, 93, 94, 97, 101–104, 107, 108, 111–115, 134–136, 145, 163, 165, 166, 182, 184, 186, 213, 214, 218, 220, 221, 224 online, Internet, cyber or virtual 4, 6, 18, 22, 23, 49, 58, 59, 66, 76, 77, 78, 82, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92–98, 101, 103–109, 111–116, 132, 139, 140, 144, 149, 152, 162, 165–167, 169, 170, 176, 177, 179, 194, 203, 204, 206–208, 210, 211, 218, 219, 221 stakeholder 5, 21, 127, 128, 130, 133–135, 137, 138, 155, 160, 162, 220 See decision-maker Stevenson 126, 127, 129, 142 Street 75, 87, 89, 96 structuration theory 31 See Giddens structure 3, 5–8, 13, 31, 33, 35–36, 38–43, 45, 47, 48, 52, 53–56, 58, 60–62, 64–67, 69, 74, 76, 79, 82, 84–87, 95, 99–102, 107–109, 113, 115, 127–129, 132, 134, 138, 149, 156, 159, 160, 162, 165, 167, 168, 172, 181, 184, 188, 190, 211, 216, 218 surveillance 9, 16, 22, 34, 52, 85, 91, 136, 142, 145, 146 survey online, web or email survey 92, 165, 176, 185–189, 212 technization 38, 39 See Fuchs technological determinism 9, 32, 64, 216 See techno-centric technology computer, online or Internet 1, 2, 10, 14–17, 32, 34, 39, 40, 47, 51, 65, 69, 88, 89, 100, 172, 116–118, 121, 124, 127, 138, 143, 167, 174, 181, 183, 184 See ICTs technology studies 11, 18, 29

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See Internet studies technosphere 38, 39 See Fuchs telecommunications 2, 14, 140, 146 television 4, 75, 83, 91 Terranova 49, 61, 118, 122, 125 Thelwall 167, 168, 170, 190, 191 theorisation (of) 10, 38, 39, 42, 58, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 216, 219, 220, 224 Internet, the 8, 10, 11, 27, 41, 53, 67, 69–71, 221, 224 See also Internet theory Third World, the 56, 128 three-strikes law, France 147 Thussu 75 time 24, 27, 34, 42, 56, 58–60, 62, 66, 75, 80, 82, 88, 89, 102, 109, 121, 146, 157, 158, 169, 191, 195, 213, 218, 223, 224 Internet time 58 transdisciplinarity 7, 8 See Hunsinger transnational activism 96 communication 60, 82, 86, 139, 145 movement 82, 83 public sphere 76, 77 Tsatsou 59, 60, 98, 105, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122–125, 127, 131, 142 Turkle 6, 101, 102 Twitter 83, 84, 170, 171, 173, 191, 197, 198, 201, 207 See social media UK 22, 122, 147, 150–152, 179, 195–198, 200 See United Kingdom UN 134, 140 See United Nations United Kingdom 75 United Nations 127, 134–136, 140 United States 50, 83, 149, 151 See America, US US 14–16, 50, 123, 126, 129, 135, 147, 148–150, 152, 154, 157, 158, 173, 179, 183, 189 use or usage (of) ICTs 37, 89, 120, 125, 123

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Internet Studies

Internet, the 2, 5, 6, 18, 21, 37, 49, 77–81, 82, 86, 93, 95, 116, 118, 121, 124, 126, 133, 136, 154, 158, 165, 171, 174, 180, 190, 194, 201, 207, 212, 221 technology 21, 37, 40, 81, 89, 104, 105, 117, 118, 119, 125, 128, 131, 132, 146, 148, 150, 152, 157, 166, 175, 181, 183, 190, 197–202, 208, 209 usenets 56 Valkenburg 116, 126 Van Dijk 5, 53, 62, 63, 65, 67, 73, 77, 87, 89, 90, 94, 110, 116, 117–121, 124, 126, 127, 142 Van Zoonen 75 Verdegem 119, 122 videotext 23, 24, 40 virtual community 6, 11, 19, 27, 70, 72, 76, 80, 82, 92, 97, 105–116, 161–163, 165, 167, 176, 180, 184, 188, 221, 224 ethnography 165, 176, 177–180, 212 identity 71, 97, 98, 105, 114, 115, 116, 161, 223 living 97, 114, 116 reality 4, 54, 59, 97, 98, 106 virtual togetherness 97, 107, 108 See Bakardjieva virtual worlds 16, 19, 70, 92, 101, 102, 165, 181, 182, 207, 224 See Second Life, MUDs, MOOs virtuality 20, 97, 98, 104, 106, 111, 114 real virtuality 54, 58, 97, 98 See virtual reality Vision2Lead 195 See Salmons VoIP (voice over internet protocol) 146 W3C (world wide web consortium, the) 16, 135, 136 Wajcman 10, 33, 35 Warschauer 5, 118, 119, 127 Wasko 46, 48 Wayback machine 169 See website archiving weak ties 83 See Granovetter

Web, the 16, 22, 49, 80, 81, 83, 85, 122, 123, 157, 165, 167–169, 175, 185, 186, 189–195 Web 1.0 18–20, 22, 177, 220 Web 2.0 16, 18–22, 27, 33, 49, 50, 72, 78, 90, 93, 103, 105, 177, 201, 220 Web 3.0 18–20, 22, 50 web cartography or mapping 194–195 web content 21, 172, 173, 175, 190, 193, 194, 206 web or cyber psychology 192 See Nahai web publishing 167 web text 184, 185, 189 web text analysis 176, 180, 184, 185 webometrics 190–191, 199 See Thelwall website 16, 19, 50, 51, 84, 87, 95, 121, 144, 146, 148–150, 151, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 183, 185, 189, 190, 193, 196, 198, 201, 207, 211 website archiving 193, 194 Webster 3, 10, 24, 28–30, 32, 34, 37, 45, 55, 56, 60, 63, 67, 74, 75 Wellman 5, 7, 10, 17, 18, 37, 57, 78, 107, 110, 111, 115, 118, 183, 184 West, the 1, 16, 45, 50, 56, 74, 77, 82, 84, 107, 123, 125, 129, 132, 152, 173, 197, 202 WGIG (working group on internet governance, the) 133, 134, 136, 142 wiki 20, 90, 92, 105 WikiLeaks 147 Wikipedia 21, 22, 30, 50, 51, 112, 113, 151, 169, 170 Wilhelm 5, 77, 87 Winseck 46, 48, 49–53, 66 WISERD (Wales institute of social and economic research, data and methods, the) 201 World Wide Web, the 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 33, 87, 135, 194, 199 See also Web WSIS (world summit on the information society, the) 128, 134, 143 YouTube 16, 48, 169, 191, 197, 201, 207 See social media

Index Zapatistas 81 See social movement

Zimmer 20, 22, 166, 203–209 Zittrain 138, 139, 145

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