THE INTERNET

Berg New Media Series

ISSN 1753-724X
Edited by Leslie Haddon, Department of Media and Communications, London School of
Economics and Political Sciences, and Nicola Green, Department of Sociology, University
of Surrey
Te series aims to provide students with historically-grounded and theoretically-informed
studies of signifcant aspects of new media. Te volumes take a broad approach to the subject,
assessing how technologies and issues related to them are located in their social, cultural,
political and economic contexts.
Current titles in this series include:
Mobile Communications: An Introduction to New Media
Te Internet: An Introduction to New Media
Forthcoming titles in this series will include:
Games and Gaming: An Introduction to New Media
Digital Broadcasting: An Introduction to New Media
Digital Arts: An Introduction to New Media
THE INTERNET
An Introduction to New Media
Oxford New York
Lelia Green
English edition
First published in 2010 by
Berg
Editorial ofces:
First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Lelia Green 2010
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of
Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Lelia, 1956-
Te internet : an introduction to new media / Lelia Green.
p. cm. (Berg new media series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84788-299-8 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-84788-298-1 (cloth)
1.InternetSocial aspects. 2.Computers and civilization. 3.Information society. I.Title.
HM851.G744 2010
302.23'1dc22
2010004767
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84520 298 1(Cloth)
978 1 84520 299 8 (Paper)
e-ISBN 978 1 84520 769 6 (institutional)
978 1 84520 798 9 (individual)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed in the UK by the MPG Books Group
www.bergpublishers.com
For Linda Jaunzems who helps me keep all the balls in the air
CONTENTS
Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Permissions xiii
1 Introduction 1
2 History 19
3 Policy 43
4 Te Digital Divide 65
5 Customising the Internet 79
6 Regulation and Legislation: Pornography and Cyber Stalking 99
7 Te Public Sphere 119
8 Community 139
9 Internet in Family Life 159
10 Conclusion 177
Annotated Guide to Further Reading 191
Exercises and Questions 197
Abbreviations and Glossary 205
References 217
Index 239
ILLUSTRATIONS
TABLES
4.1 Internet users as a percentage of a territorys population, for
30 June 2009 66
4.2 Percentage of worlds internet users, and percentage of a countrys
citizens using the internet, for the top fve countries in terms of
numbers of users, 30 June 2009 67
4.3 Top ten countries worldwide for fxed broadband subscribers,
frst quarter 2009 68
8.1 Lines of confict in the HeartNet case study 156
9.1 Opportunities and risks of childrens online activities 163
DIAGRAMS
2.1 A hub and spoke system with sub-hubs 25
2.2 A distributed network 25
2.3 How IMPs and TIPs link to each other, and to hosts 30
2.4 A schematic representation of TCP/IP 33
FIGURES
3.1 An indicative framework for regulation 44
5.1 An outline of Jeanneneys argument against the Google Books project 86
6.1 Morgans metaphors for organisations 102
7.1 Brunss preconditions for the creation of an efective wiki 132
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am extremely grateful to my employer, Edith Cowan University, who allocated
the study leave which allowed this book to be written, and particularly to Professors
Arshad Omari, Clive Barstow, Brenda Cherednichenko and Julie Warn who
approved and managed my absence.
Professor Brian Shoesmith, and my PhD supervisors Professors Tom ORegan
and Bob Hodge, frst encouraged my interest in this area. Dr Ann Willis, Dr
Danielle Brady and Julie Dare have all supported and developed the teaching of
units in the discipline, and Ive learned a lot from working with them. A number
of Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded projects have informed the research
communicated in these pages and I acknowledge the ARCs support, and that of
my co-Chief Investigators including Professors Robyn Quin and Mark Balnaves,
Associate Professor Trevor Cullen, Dr Debbie Rodan, Dr Leesa Costello, Dr
David Leith and industry partners Maurice Swanson, Steve Furmedge and Vanessa
Bradshaw. Dr Anne Aly, Jack Seddon, Donell Holloway, Christine Teague and
Lynsey Uridge were all involved as Research Assistants or PhD candidates with the
ARC research. My co-supervisors, postgraduate students and research associates
contribute a continuous stream of relevant, fascinating, information and opinion
so I also mention Associate Professor Maggi Phillips, Dr Julie Robson, Dr Teresa
Maiolo, Dr Kay Hearn, Dr Uta Daur, Julie Johnson, Jason Noble, Robyn Torney,
Christopher Phillips, Alex Bradley, Christina Ballico and Catherine Gomersall.
Warm thanks to Dr Judy Clayden for the index. Judy was also generous in shar-
ing a librarians approach to fnding quality information on the web, and helpfully
critiqued my punctuation. Ken Gasmier was more patient than I deserve as my
specialist librarian. Jude Elund crafted the diagrams in the book, and she and Sharron
Snader also provided other help. Dave Batley, proving that Wikipedia discussion
lists do work, reviewed them from the perspective of a computer programmer and
theoretical physicist, although any errors remain my own.
I am fortunate to be involved as a joint Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of
Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. Tis has brought me into contact
with a number of exceptional academics whose work is relevant here, including:
a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s ix
distinguished Professors John Hartley and Stuart Cunningham; Professors Jock
Given, Gerard Goggin, Greg Hearn, Catharine Lumby and Alan McKee, Associate
Professor Axel Bruns, Dr Jean Burgess and Dr Kate Crawford. My international
colleagues on the Asia-Pacifc Digital Review, but especially Professor Claude-Yves
Charron, and volume editors Chin Saik Yoon, Professor Felix Librero, Shahid
Akhtar and Associate Professor Patricia Arinto have, since 2003, provided me with
an illuminating introduction to the digital divide as it operates in most areas of the
globe, for the majority of the worlds population.
As a member of the International Advisory Panel of the EU Kids Online project,
20069, I was among the frst to see the exciting outputs of that 21-nation research
network. Im grateful to Professor Sonia Livingstone and Dr Leslie Haddon for the
opportunity to take part. Dr Haddon is also one of the two editors of the Berg New
Media series, with Dr Nicola Green, and was particularly generous in his support
and unstinting in his feedback: thank you Leslie. Commissioning Editor Tristan
Palmer was wonderfully fexible in calling in my deadlines and Emily Medcalf
intuited a fabulous cover. I am grateful to them, to the Berg Production staf, and to
the anonymous reviewers whose comments both challenged and inspired me. Linda
Jaunzems, like Dr Haddon, was indispensable to the eventual completion of this
book, ofering support, assistance and one-stop expertise. Tis volume is dedicated
to her, and to her family.
My life is sustained by a network of friends, many of whom have already been
mentioned and others of whom include: Claire Andrews, Jenny Benjamin, Jeanette
Connolly, Carmel Elwell, Professor Nadine Henley, Dr Larissa Hjorth, Dr Kara
Jacob, Heather McLean, Joan Smith, Emily Walker and Susan Young.
My mother, also Lelia Green, has fuelled this work with food, drink and love
and by creating a refuge from other demands to allow me time to commit myself
to writing. My sister, Ginny Weston, has supported me throughout this and other
journeys. Anna Weston, Mark Weston and Paul Schutz, all of whom have an
important place in my life, have ofered feedback from the students viewpoint.
My fnal acknowledgement must go to my two wonderful children, Carmen
and Ben Guinery. Tey grew up digital and generously shared the excitement of so
doing, together with some details of the journey. Tey tolerated the progress of this
book, and others of my consuming passions, with open-minded good humour and
large bowls of vegan pasta. Tey tell me this is an Oscar acceptance speech. I would
be lost without them. Tanks, kids.
PERMISSIONS
I am grateful to the following authors and publishers for permission to reproduce
their work. For Table 4.1 and Table 4.2, Sr Enrique De Argaez, Editor and
Webmaster, Miniwatt Marketing Group and World Internet Stats, published June
30 2009, http://www.internetworldstats.com; reproduced with permission from
World Internet Stats. For Table 4.3, Louise Budde of Paul Budde Communication
Pty Ltd, 2009, trading as BuddeComm, http://www.budde.com.au, regarding 2009
data from Point Topic on behalf of the Broadband Forum, based on self-reporting
by carriers and defning broadband as 144Kb/s; reproduced with permission from
Paul Budde Communication Pty Ltd. For Figure 5.1, Jean-Nel Jeanneney, author
of Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe, 2006, Te
University of Chicago Press, for permission to create a fgure based on Jeanneneys
arguments; reproduced with permission from the University of Chicago Press. For
Figure 6.1, Gareth Morgan, author of Images of Organization (revised edition),
2006, Sage Publications, for permission to create a fgure based on the Contents
pages of Morgans book; reproduced with permission from Sage Publications. For
Figure 7.1, Axel Bruns, author of Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From
Production to Produsage, 2008, Peter Lang Publishing, for permission to create a
fgure based on pp. 1920 of Brunss book; reproduced with permission from Peter
Lang Publishing. For Figure 9.1, Uwe Hasebrink, Sonia Livingstone, Leslie Haddon
and Kjartan lafsson, editors of Comparing Childrens Online Opportunities and Risks
Across Europe: Cross-National Comparisons for EU Kids Online (2nd edition), 2009,
the London School of Economics and EU Kids Online for permission to adapt two
fgures on pp. 89 of the second edition of Deliverable D3.2 of the EU Kids Online
project; reproduced with permission from EU Kids Online, the London School of
Economics and Political Science, London.
1 INTRODUCTION
Tis book explores the internet as an introduction to new media. It does so by
looking backwards to examine the history of the internet, and by looking forward
to its emerging future. It draws upon current evidence from around the world to
illustrate diferent aspects of internet use as these refect a range of social, political
and economic circumstances. It uses case studies, many based on new research,
some of it unpublished, to reveal important aspects of the internet for comment and
analysis. While the internet is too big a subject for any book to provide a complete
review of its past, present and future, insights from case studies provide a series of
snapshots which taken together create a broad picture of the contexts of internet use
and illustrate what is happening, how and why.
Te Internet (as) An Introduction to New Media examines the internet as itself, but
is also a way of examining our everyday lives through our uses of the internet, and
linking the internet with aspects of other new media. Many changes wrought by
new media swiftly make their way into popular culture, both refecting and building
the excitement about new possibilities. Old media the press, radio and television
discuss the innovations, and new media become the central element of novels and
flms. One example of this, within a popular culture context, would be the flm
Youve got mail (Ephron 1998).
Te type of context chosen is itself important when considering the internet,
since a historical context will provide diferent information, and raise diferent
questions, compared with a social context, for example. Te diverse range of case
studies covered in this book makes a number of diferent contexts visible. Tese
include the way that the internet is used in everyday western life, as well as its
technological, political, economic and global contexts. What becomes clear is that
the internet, like other new media, is a site of constant reinvention. It has energised
creativity, collaboration and novel models for commercialisation. At the same time
that the internet makes possible new ways for us to seek information and relate to
others, it also ofers another technological medium through which individuals and
societies can express themselves and their priorities.
2 t h e i n t e r n e t
In many western countries, the internet is pervasive. Tat is to say, almost
everybody who wants to do so can access the internet (but see Chapter 4). Tis access
will not necessarily always be in the time and place and circumstances that a person
chooses, but there are comparatively few people who lack the skills and support to
use an internet terminal in a library. It is important to remember, however, that
the situation is very diferent in most parts of the world where the internet is still
generally restricted to the richer, better educated, younger, males in the community.
Tis also used to be the pattern of access in the West up until the early 1990s. Te
huge growth in take-up of the internet has both raised interest and created anxiety, a
pattern common to each new medium as it is taken up and difuses through society.
When printing frst started, and when telephones, radio, the cinema and television
all became integrated within everyday life, the lawmakers and regulators of the day
were concerned. Even while people are excited by new possibilities and potentials,
as we will see later in the book, they may simultaneously be worried about risks,
dangers, control, and relative advantages and disadvantages. For these reasons, new
media are often associated with fear and panic, and a concern that the technology is
too big to regulate.
Given the numerous ways in which a book about the internet could be structured,
this chapter explains why this book has been approached as it has. Te explanation
includes not only why there is a focus upon case studies, but also the logic behind
the structure of the book. First, we start of with consideration of the internet as
an introduction to new media, including a defnition of the internet, in order to
understand what we are focusing upon in this volume of the Berg new media series.
Te digital is a critical component of new media, and characteristics of digital
goods are compared and contrasted with physical goods. Te chapter goes on to
consider how societies choose to use technology and explains the social shaping of
technology approach, which is the major conceptual framework used. Tis approach
is complemented by the theory that technologies are consumed by the people who
use them and become part of a revised, enlarged conception of that persons sense
of self. Te benefts of consuming a technology are often communicated through
social constructions of that technology, the meanings and understandings about
that technology which circulate in the relevant society, while a particular strand
within that approach Actor-Network Teory positions people as key actors in
networks which form integrated wholes related to technology use.
Te internet can be explored using a wide range of theoretical frameworks and
while the social shaping approach is not the only method used in this book, it is
the main one. To illustrate the ways in which a particular framework makes some
research and some evidence more or less important, the discussion of the social
shaping of technology is developed in Chapter 2 through the use of a feminist
i n t r o d u c t i o n 3
approach. Partly as a way of considering the predominantly male history of the early
internet, we examine Wajcmans (1991) argument that technology is a masculine
culture. Tis is contrasted with the requirements of a more traditional historical
analysis, such as that which characterises most of the material in Chapter 2, which
positions key inventors and industrialists as the heroes of innovation.
Empirical research forms a vital part of this book and, consequently, there is
a brief introduction to case study research methods relevant to a social shaping
framework. Tis allows readers to understand the ways in which case studies draw
upon and showcase relevant evidence concerning peoples uses of the internet. Tis
introduction concludes with a description of the chapters that follow and suggests
ways in which readers might like to use the book, since it has been designed to be
read in bits and chunks, as well as a single narrative. A dot-point summary draws the
threads of the chapter together, and sets the scene for the chapters to come.
THE INTERNET AS AN INTRODUCTION TO
NEW MEDIA
Te term the internet is used here to cover:
n the interconnected and networked technological infrastructure that supports the
World Wide Web;
n proprietary sites linked into the web (such as that maintained by Te Louvre, the
world-famous French museum);
n open and closed source software and architecture (e.g. Firefox, Wikipedia,
Internet Explorer, Google);
n computer and everyday languages in terms of making the internet accessible to
people of many cultures and literacies;
n email, chat and instant messaging (e.g. AOL, MSN);
n blogs and social networking sites (e.g. Facebook);
n games, communities, environments and worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft, Second
Life);
n the many ways in which digitally mediated communication has become
domesticated and pervasive within the everyday.
Not all of these aspects of the internet are given equal attention in this book since
many areas, such as computer games and digital arts, are covered in companion
books in the series. However, an inclusive notion of the internet, as indicated above,
provides the blueprint for this volume. While it is expected that readers not only
students and educators but also researchers and policy makers will be familiar with
4 t h e i n t e r n e t
using aspects of the internet, this book encourages a critical examination of such
individual experiences and places them into a context which includes the past and
the future of the internet; as well as the technical and social implications of internet
use.
A new media approach to studying the internet recognises that digital tech no-
logies and environments are convergent. When technologies converge they take
on and share the capacities and characteristics of other technologies alongside the
core technology. Tis contrasts with everyday goods from pre-digital life, which
had separate functions and separate technical characteristics. In the early days,
television could not be used as a radio; a telephone could not work as a camera.
Once information is digitised, however, it can be handled in consistent and efective
ways which allow a blurring of functions and the emergence of hybrid technologies.
For example, early computers had started as number crunchers, but became word
processors as well as calculators. Increasingly, new media technologies can perform
more functions in more varied contexts; such as accessing the internet from a mobile
phone to post digital pictures to a social network profle, even as the event recorded
is still happening.
Refection: Convergent technologies
Can you think of a technology in your life that used to be two or more separate technologies?
What advantages do you fnd to having a number of functions combined in the same technology?
Are there disadvantages?
In addition to recognising convergence in the functions of end-user technologies,
new media perspectives acknowledge that formerly distinct industries also converge,
partly to position themselves strongly as competitors in emerging markets. Te
internet itself is sometimes positioned against a background of old media: print
culture, which started in about 1439 with Johannes Gutenbergs invention of
printing using movable type; and broadcast culture, which is a little over a century
old. While old media do ofer starting points for understanding the internet and the
World Wide Web (WWW), these perspectives are more relevant to Web 1.0 than
they are to Web 2.0, or than they will be for Web 3.0. It might be worth noting
here that the internet is not the WWW, although it provides the technological
structure which makes the WWW possible. Web 1.0 refers to a stage in its evolution
i n t r o d u c t i o n 5
when the internet could be used to access information and relatively static web
pages, while Web 2.0 recognises that online environment now ofers opportunities
for social connection and interactivity for example, through blogs, wikis and
social networking systems and technologies. For people in western countries, Web
2.0 has become increasingly prominent since the new millennium, although the
organising principles of both print and broadcasting culture dominate many aspects
of corporate content production.
As well as including aspects of both print and broadcasting culture, the inter-
net marks a major development in the felds of information technology (IT) and
telecommunications. One of the reasons for this huge growth in hybrid and con-
vergent products, services and markets has been the impact of the digitisation of
information in comparison to older analogue broadcasting technologies. When
audio, video, data, graphic and multimedia applications are all designed to process
digital information then those audio, video and data services can also be man-
ipulated, stored and communicated via computers and telecommunications. Te
underlying digital structure of these diferent applications allows the outputs to be
delivered through a variety of channels including cable, satellite, microwave and
other telecommunications systems, with the platform of delivery being less relevant
in terms of access and use than the bandwidth capacity of the delivery channel.
New media are digital media, they tend to be information and communication
technologies (ICTs) and they are hybrid to their core. Te relevance of their digital
nature lies in diferences between the characteristics of digital goods and services,
and material goods.
HOW DIGITAL INFORMATION DIFFERS FROM
PHYSICAL GOODS
In the physical world, if a package is lost in a journey between London and New York,
there is a problem. If it cannot be found, it may have to be replaced. In the digital
world, if a packet of information is lost it will be re-sent, automatically, without
anyone being aware that the packet has gone missing. Tis is partly because digital
information is kept by the source at the same time that it is sent to the receiver.
In the digital world you can have your cake, and eat it too! Four characteristics of
digital information difer dramatically from the characteristics of physical goods, as
identifed by Japanese futurist and information scientist Yoneji Masuda (1981).
First, information is not consumable: it continues to exist after it has been
used, and diferent people can use the same information multiple times. Second,
informa tion is non-transferable: this means that the information can be passed onto
6 t h e i n t e r n e t
others and yet still be retained by the original user. Tird, information is indivisible.
Every fourth letter-space-punctuation in this book, for example, would fail to
communicate a quarter of the meaning. Fourth, information is accumulative. As
information is used, for example, entered into a database and then processed using
statistics software such as SPSS, so it becomes more relevant and accessible for a
range of purposes. Usually the processing information makes it more useful: it adds
value. Tis is because accumulation of goods is by their non-use, but information
cannot be consumed or transferred (Masuda 1981: 77), thus as information is
accumulated, so it has greater use; and as it is being used, so more information is
accumulated. Masuda adds that the quality of accumulated information is increased
through the addition of further high quality information.
Tis is the opposite of material goods, where consumption equates with destruc-
tion. Te use of digital technologies to process data magnifes the benefts of these
four properties of information. New information can multiply both the value and
the amount of existing information through the creation of new knowledge.
Refection: How does digital information compare with:
n printed information
n personal knowledge
n material goods?
Are all four characteristics of digital information used in internet communication?
Masuda (1978, cited in Jones 1995: 186) demonstrates that other astonishing
things happen when digital information is combined with information technology.
He notes that while information has always had the property of self-multiplication,
computer-communication technology has rapidly increased the speed and quality
of self-multiplication because the technology itself has added four more properties
to information: (1) concentration, (2) dispersion, (3) circulation, and (4) feedback.
To these four functions we can, following the invention of the WWW, add (5)
searchable.
1. Concentration occurs because ICTs store digital information more
efciently than any other means. Tis results in ICT operators being able to
work efectively with multiple data sets using just one piece of technology.
i n t r o d u c t i o n 7
It also allows many people simultaneously to access huge databases from
remote terminals, e.g. international ATM access to credit card accounts.
2. Dispersal allows information to be exported to many diferent sites.
Together with inconsumability, this capacity of ICT permits information
to be incorporated into a variety of data storage systems for multiple uses
by many people.
3. Te circulation of information provides users with additional choices. Even
if information is not downloaded onto a drive (as, for instance, would
happen with dispersal), access to that information circulates via emails,
web-links, etc.
4. Feedback allows ICTs, via their data protocols, to verify that all the in forma-
tion sent has been safely received and reassembled. If the sending machine
does not receive appropriate feedback verifcation, it automatically re-sends
the data: hence the missing packet is replaced before anyone notices it is
missing.
5. Searching for data using WWW search engines allows access to constantly
multiplying amounts of information, prioritised according to the searchers
key requirements. Tis aspect of ICTs will be examined closely in Chapter
2s case study of Google.
THE SOCIAL SHAPING OF TECHNOLOGY
Having established some key features of the digital information handled on the
internet, we now move on to examine the main theoretical frameworks drawn upon
in later chapters. Te social shaping of technology approach to new media studies
takes a fundamental pair of questions as its starting point: Does technology shape
society?, or, Does society shape technology?. Once people have started looking at
these questions they fnd others also emerge: How does the shaping process happen?
and Is technology neutral?. Tese questions and the discussions arising from them
provide a starting point for thinking about the internet and other new media. Tey
ofer a way of talking about where people experience power and powerlessness in
their uses of technology (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999).
Some peoples everyday experience is that technology changes too fast for their
comfort. Tey prefer the old ways of doing things and feel disempowered when
asked to carry out their everyday activities online. Tey resent that bank branches
are closed down because more people are using internet banking. Tey feel
disadvantaged when airline companies ofer special fares for booking on the web.
Tey cant believe that a smart-phone menu (Press 1 for . . .; Press 2 to . . .) ofers
customer service advantages over the real person who used to answer when they
8 t h e i n t e r n e t
called a companys ofce. Such people might feel that the technology itself is behind
the changes that make them uncomfortable.
Some commentators construct technology as the power which drives social
change, impacting upon society. It is almost as if the scientifc rules behind the
development and application of technology are more efective and non-negotiable
than the social and cultural dynamics that shape the communities and countries in
which we live. Since new media technologies conform to the laws of science of
electro-magnetics, engineering, digitisation this can be interpreted as indicating
that technological change is a given, like gravity. Tere is no point in arguing about
whether gravity is good or bad. According to this approach, the only role for society
is to adapt itself to the technology, and come to terms with a future that is driven
by technological change. Such a perspective sees technology as shaping society. It is
called technological determinism because the technology is positioned as the most
important element determining peoples lives.
Very few theorists these days argue a pure case for technological determinism.
Instead, this perspective tends to be aligned with those who argue that certain
technologies are inherently bad, and that this contaminates all uses of the tech-
nology. Such a perspective can be found in Teodore Roszaks classic criticism of the
computer:
No matter how high the promise of that [information] age is pitched, the price
we pay for its benefts will never outweigh the costs. Te violation of privacy is
the loss of freedom. Te degradation of electoral politics is the loss of democracy.
Te creation of the computerised war machine is a direct threat to the survival
of our species. It would be some comfort to conclude that these liabilities result
from the abuse of computer power. But these are the goals long since selected by
those who invented information technology, who have guided it and fnanced it
at every point along the way in its development. Te computer is their machine;
its mystique is their validation. (Roszak 1994: 233, original italics)
Refection: Is the internet neutral?
Thinking about your own circumstances, at home and in other locations, what rights and opportunities are
implied in your use of the internet?
Do you see your internet use as neutral? Why?
Do you see the internet itself as a neutral technology?
What factors are you taking into account?
i n t r o d u c t i o n 9
Social determinists agree that technology is an important change agent, but they
argue it is not developed outside society but is an expression of priorities and choices
that are made within social systems. Tis perspective is part of an overarching
philosophy called Social Constructionism, which argues that social forces construct
our understanding of the world and frame how we act within it. When discussing
the role of technology, social determinists point to the actions of elites in sponsoring,
developing and marketing technologies; and claim it is no accident that some
technologies are promoted while others never even reach a prototype stage.
Tis perspective positions technology as having the power to impact upon
everyday life, but it also constructs technologies as the result of social processes.
When technology is positioned as an outcome of social dynamics, as it is in the social
shaping of technology approach, there is the possibility that technological processes
can be made accountable and that the development and deployment of technology
can be regulated. Te social shaping of technology perspective is generally a positive
one. It says that technology is not beyond the control of social processes. However,
it also argues that since technology is part of society, it tends to express the priorities
of elite groups in that society.
Te elites typically identifed as supporting the development of technology can
be remembered using an alphabet mnemonic: the A, B and C of technology change.
A Armed forces;
B Bureaucracy; and
C Corporate power.
Tese three drivers of technological change are key promoters of new technology
development. Te US armed forces, for example in the shape of ARPA, the (then)
Pentagon-based Advanced Research Projects Agency commissioned the work
which led to the start of the internet. Bureaucratic drivers are behind innovations
such as online tax returns and government portals delivering information and
services. Te UK Pension Service (http://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk) would be
a contemporary example of a bureaucratically-driven investment in technological
development, which would include design and usability studies. Corporate power
notes that companies also seek out and develop new products for new markets.
Google would ofer many examples of corporate power driving development
(Chapter 2). Even where universities are the powerhouses for innovation, the
funding for their research tends to come either from defence, the (civilian arm of )
government or business.
Traditionally, the A, B, C of technology change ended with these three categories.
Latterly, however and excitingly it has become appropriate to acknowledge a D
and an E. Tese are less clearly elites, but may be seen as comparatively small groups
10 t h e i n t e r n e t
of people within their societies who have special skills and a passion for new media.
Te D and E that should be added to the mnemonic are
D Distributed collaborators; and
E Everyday innovators.
It is not the case that D necessarily comes before E (or that A came before B and
C) and many would argue that everyday innovators have always been active in
customising technology for their own purposes (Marvin 1990; Haddon 1988).
Te acknowledgement of distributed networks of collaborators allows recognition
of the creative power of harnessing the hive; the community of people engaged
in a shared activity. We see these alliances of enthusiasts working creatively and
productively in gaming contexts, in wikis and on fan fction sites to name but
a few. An everyday innovators category acknowledges the creativity of new media
adopters in fnding novel applications for emerging technologies unsuspected by
the technology developers. Tis was the case, for example, of SMS texts and the
adoption of texting by Finnish teenagers as their major mobile application once it
became clear how much cheaper it was to communicate in this way rather than by
voice (Kasesniemi and Rautianinen 2002). Tese examples make clear the possibility
that the elite associated with a technology can change over time: the corporate
designers were supplanted by the cash-poor teenagers who fashioned the uses of
the mobile phone to suit their lifestyles, their budgets, and to circumvent the usual
communication patterns of their parents and teachers. (See the separate book in
this series on Mobile Communication for more.) Clearly some internet advances
can be attributed to Distributed and Everyday groups, and the internet is rarely
conceptualised solely in terms of its Armed forces-sponsored beginnings.
Tese examples introduce the fact that the social shaping of technology approach
is an umbrella concept for a range of specifc micro-theories. Teories of specifc
relevance to the social shaping of technology approach include the Teory of
Consumption, the Domestication of Technology framework, the Social Con-
struction of Technology (SCOT) and Actor-Network Teory (ANT).
Te theory of consumption, developed by Daniel Miller (1987: 178217) argues
that Mass goods . . . are an integral part of that process of objectifcation by which
we create ourselves as an industrial society: our identities, our social afliations, our
lived everyday practices (ibid.: 215). Tis has been stated more simply as: social
identity can be interpreted as a function of consumption (Hearn et al. 1997: 106).
Essentially, to the world outside, we are what we consume in terms of products,
services and technologies (Green 2001). We fashion our identities in part according
to whether or not we go online and what we go online to do. We also change our
homes, our schools and our workplaces by engaging in voluntary consumption
i n t r o d u c t i o n 11
practices in those spaces. Since the home is the least (externally) regulated of all
the places we inhabit, consumption in domestic spaces is particularly indicative of
identity. Te domestication of technology is consequently of great signifcance in
understanding its consumption.
In suggesting that technology is domesticated, the Domestication of Tech-
nology framework (Silverstone et al. 1992: 1531) implies that the technology in
question goes through a process of being tamed to serve the needs of those people
inhabit ing that domestic space. Te classic model, originally focusing on domestica-
tion in the home, has four elements and proposes that the households concerned
have a porous boundary with the wider society. Te process of appropriation in-
cludes developing awareness, interest and desire for the technology, culminating in
the action of procuring it for use in the home. Objectifcation involves the creation
of a physical space, often within the home, for using the technology. In parallel,
incorporation describes how the technology is integrated into the rhythms and the
time structures of the household, and the individual lives of the people who belong
to it. Finally, conversion explains how the people who consume the technology
use it to construct and develop their social identity. Tis may be, for example, by
developing good online search skills and becoming not only a better student, but the
natural leader in group projects. Alternatively, it may be used to develop an identity
as a gamer, or a fan fction writer. Chapters 8 and 9 address these issues in much
greater depth.
SCOT is generally associated with the work of Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bjiker
(Pinch and Bjiker 1984; Bjiker, Hughes and Pinch 1987) and ofers both a theory
and a methodological approach which sets out a series of steps to follow when
analysing the uses of a technology. Whereas I have used the term social elites in
my brief introduction to the social shaping of technology, Pinch and Bjiker discuss
Relevant social groups. Principally the producers and users of a technology, such
relevant social groups can also include, for instance, regulators and journalists.
One criticism of the SCOT approach is that there are no objective tests as to what
constitutes a relevant social group. Instead, the identifcation of any relevant social
group is itself the outcome of social constructionist processes.
Bruno Latours work on Actor-Network Teory ofers the provocative idea that
non-humans are actors in a network alongside humans, and that networks combine
diferent entities (human and non-human) to form a unifed whole which can itself
be an actor in a network. Tus the internet might include technology, systems,
designers, programmers and users; it might also be an actor in the network of people
and things that make up a national health system. Tis theory does not assume
that networks, once formed, are stable and tends to focus on how networks evolve
and disintegrate. It accepts that networks may be temporary, and it assumes that
12 t h e i n t e r n e t
networks are characterised by conficts as well as by collaboration. Both human and
non-human network actors are implicated in these conficts. Carefully grounded in
qualitative case studies, the early formation of ANT culminated in Latours 1987
book, Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Within
the social shaping of technology framework, then, SCOT charts the importance of
relevant social groups while ANT sees people and non-human actors forming and
reforming critical networks of relevant technological activity.
Te discussion so far has used a somewhat inclusive notion of technology. As
well as assuming that all new media have a technological dimension, this book
treats programs and practices as part of the technological whole: alongside the
technological product. Te object itself, the systems (e.g. electricity, software)
through which that object is made functional as well as the (human) knowledge,
skills and expertise through which the technology and its systems are harnessed to
create activities and outputs; are all implicated in this inclusive notion of technology.
Tese three levels of understanding technology (Wajcman 1994: 6) together
constitute one way to consider the question of whether technology is neutral. At
the level of an object where an object is as inert as a sculpture with no sense
of what it was made for or how it is used technology might be seen as neutral.
However, it would be hard to recognise such an inert and mysterious entity as a
technology: technologies necessarily have a use. Once that use is known, neutrality
becomes impossible as a result of the technology being associated with certain elites,
users, outcomes and processes. Further, only certain people have the know-how to
use a new technology. When consideration is given to the individuals or groups
empowered to use a technology, in which circumstances, in regards to which groups
of people, a technology becomes imbued with issues of power, privilege, gender,
nation and education: entirely embedded in social and cultural processes.
CASE STUDIES
We now turn from the analytic frameworks used in this book to consider the role of
the case studies that it draws upon. Tese examine many aspects of internet use as
a way of addressing and illustrating the relevance of the internet and new media to
everyday life. Tey allow us to explore both the breadth and the depth of current and
classic research and this approach is one way to deal with the huge diversity of the
global experience of new media. By using research-based case studies, peoples uses
of the internet are thrown into focus. Readers can examine evidence from their own
lives to gauge their experience of the internet compared with other people in terms
of points of similarity and points of diference. As the book progresses, students
i n t r o d u c t i o n 13
and other readers will learn from the examples given, and analysis ofered, how to
construct their own case studies around uses of the internet.
Yin identifes three kinds of case study: exploratory, explanatory and descriptive,
commenting that the focus should be on a contemporary phenomenon with some
real life context (Yin 2003: 1), and that case studies are particularly useful when
the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident (ibid.:
13). Tis method of presenting research draws upon a wide variety of materials
and evidence: documentation, archival records, interviews, direct observation,
participant-observation, and physical artifacts (ibid.: 83); and is particularly
indicated when matters of how or why are being addressed (ibid.: 9).
Te triangulation of research fndings is particularly relevant here (ibid.: 97
99), where two or more research methods are used to illuminate the same issue.
Also important is the complementary use of qualitative and quantitative research. A
quantitative study may follow on from a qualitative fnding in order to investigate
how widespread a particular practice or belief may be in terms of a specifc population.
Similarly, a qualitative investigation, answering how and why questions, is often
used to investigate in depth a fnding that is uncovered through a quantitative study,
which deals with how many and how often issues. For example, we might fnd via
a quantitative survey that people over 75 with children are more likely to be internet
users than people over 75 without children. Using in-depth interviews, which are a
qualitative tool, we could then discover that a major motivator for over-75 internet
use is the desire by seniors to keep in touch with adult children, and that these
children are often mentors for their parents in terms of helping them develop internet
skills. In a case study of over-75s internet use, these two data sources, surveys and
interviews, would triangulate to support a fnding that family communication is an
important promoter of internet use among older people.
Among other benefts, triangulation comes into its own when data from a range
of diferent sources or perspectives give similar or overlapping indications as to how
or why. Indeed, many detailed case studies try to include a number of diferent
sources to make triangulation possible. In terms of this book, a range of data will be
addressed in the case studies, but the case studies themselves are also a research tool
to consolidate and integrate available evidence in order to triangulate theories about
the role and relevance of the internet across a variety of cultures and contexts.
Yins view (2003: xiv) is that there are three steps in a case study: defning and
designing the study; preparing, collecting and analysing the data for the case study;
and drawing conclusions. In the case of this book, considering the internet as
an introduction to new media, the case studies have been defned and designed
to illustrate the multi-faceted nature of the internet, and give some indication
of the range of ways in which organisations, cultures, consumers and prosumers
14 t h e i n t e r n e t
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK
Te books structure is pivoted around Chapter 4. Chapters 13 introduce the in-
ternet by examining key concepts and theories, the history of the internet and the
important policy dimensions that impact upon its use. Chapters 59 start wide and
gradually become more specifc in focus, beginning with how the internet is cust-
omised for specifc purposes (Chapter 5); attempts to regulate the internet (Chapter
6); the relevance of the internet to the public sphere (Chapter 7); com munities
(Chapter 8) and the internet in family life (Chapter 9). Chapter 10, the books
con clusion, ties the diferent strands together and also looks forward to the future.
Within this structure, Chapter 4 uses one example of a policy issue, the digital
divide, as a bridge to move from the policy focus to research upon how and why
people do or do not access the internet. A slightly expanded account of the contents
of each chapter follows.
Refection: Yourself as a case study
If you were writing a study of your own use of the internet, where would you start?
What motivated you to learn how to use the internet?
Who and what infuenced you as you developed your skills and knowledge?
(producer-consumers, e.g. Hartley 2006) use it. A list of case studies is included in
the contents section and each case study is also accessible via the index.
A case study approach can be criticised since each study is necessarily short,
and to some degree partial, since these abbreviated vignettes are part of a larger
consideration of the internet itself (a cross-case analysis in Yins terms (2003: 148)).
However, these studies also mark a starting point upon which further research can
be based. All the case studies can be expanded by further research to build additional
insights and knowledge. Such further research can be carried out as part of the
engagement with the book and will add value to the case studies included here,
especially if, paraphrasing Yin, all the evidence gleaned is attended to; alternative
interpretations are adequately considered; the fnding(s) of greatest signifcance to
the researcher are identifed and addressed; and if the elaborated case study builds
upon your own area of interest and expertise (Yin 2003: 137).
i n t r o d u c t i o n 15
Chapter 1 introduces this volume and explains some key terms which are
constant throughout the book. Tese include the importance of a research-driven
approach and the predominant use within the book of the theories of consumption,
domestication and the social shaping of technology. Reference to new media
implies that we are talking about digital media, and we have introduced some key
characteristics of digital information that have helped to promote the dynamic
momentum of convergence that underlies many current new media technologies.
Chapter 2 is a gallop through the history of the internet in terms of people and
places. It uses a vignette and snapshot approach to a story which could be told
as a 35mm feature flm, so it is necessarily an overview, with pointers for further
research. Te chapter outlines central moments and key people in the development
of the internet as we know it today, and takes us to the late-2000s, with more recent
material included in the case studies.
Chapter 3 provides a technological and policy focus. It examines the policy
debates around the internet and introduces and defnes major terms in those debates.
It explores the implications of the outcomes of such debates through an examination
of the policy environments of Australia and China. A glossary of abbreviated and
technical terms is also included at the end of the book.
Chapter 4, focusing on the digital divide, includes a consideration of tele-
communications policy in the US and the UK. Its case studies examine a range of
people who may be seen as falling on the wrong side of the digital divide. Tese
include homeless people in Scotland, people in Britain who are the primary carers of
(typically) a family member with a disability, and US residents who do not have an
internet connection.
Chapter 5 examines attempts to customise the internet and develop aspects of it
to serve a specifc purpose. Tese processes are illustrated through considering the
development of an Irish Gaelic web, the Francophone (French-speaking) resistance
to the dominance of English in the western worlds use of the internet, and a vision
for the future: Web 3.0 and movements towards the Semantic Web.
Chapter 6 considers the challenges of regulating the internet and raises questions
of legal jurisdiction over individuals behaviour online. It does this through two case
studies. Te frst is a look at the pornography industry; the second is an example of
cyber-stalking and online defamation. Chapter 7 looks at the contribution of the
internet to the development of the public sphere in terms of free speech (as illus-
trated by A declaration of the independence of cyberspace). It also includes case studies
on Wikipedia and YouTube.
Chapter 8 addresses the search for community both on- and of- line and points
to the many cases in which online activity is a way of bonding more closely with
existing friendship networks. It does this through three case studies, two of them
16 t h e i n t e r n e t
gendered. Te frst concerns young males and online gaming culture; the second
looks at young women and fan fction writing in the Harry Potter fandom. Te fnal
case study focuses on ethical issues in researching online communities and centres
upon the creation of a community to support recovering heart patients.
Chapter 9 zeroes in on the family. It examines an attempt within a US family to
regulate what they see as an internet addiction, and looks at families that commit
to continuous upgrading of their internet experience. Finally, it considers the role of
the internet for some of the poorest families in the world: those that depend upon
remittances.
Chapter 10 brings together the various threads running through the book. It
examines what we have learned about the internet in terms of the individual, the
household and the community; technology, policy, society and culture. Tis chap-
ter forms the conclusion to the book whilst also acknowledging that the internet
continues to develop and the readers of this book are well positioned to analyse how
this is happening, and the implications of these changes for themselves and their
communities.
READING THIS BOOK
Finally, we can draw attention to how the design of the book enables it to be read
in a variety of ways. Te book has a semi-modular structure and a detailed index.
Trough the use of the contents table and index, readers can pinpoint particular case
studies and examples, reading the book actively to answer specifc questions. Topics
and case studies can provide short-cuts to discovering more about aspects of the
internet independently of what precedes and follows the section in question. Such
an approach requires the reader to mine information by cross referencing the index
with the contents, and with the case studies. Tis strategy requires a more active
exploratory reading style than simply turning the pages, but a combination of this
active searching and conventional reading practices delivers the most detailed and
useful way of working with the book.
Active reading systems vary (see, for example, Kump 1999) but, to summarise,
they include suggestions that the reader can scan, survey, mine, check, recall and
review the information required. Tis strategy presupposes that the reader is pur-
posefully looking for something in particular out of their reading experience this
makes it easier to note or dismiss the information presented. Te refection boxes
and the questions and exercises for each chapter may provide useful prompts.
1. Scanning is a skim or fick through technique, to get a feel for a book. Does
it have many diagrams, boxed sections, indented quotes, illustrations? Are
i n t r o d u c t i o n 17
the chapters very diferent in length, and do they share the same kind of
structure? Is there a contents section, an index, subheadings, summaries,
references, exercises? You might scan a book in the library or bookshop
before deciding whether or not to take it.
2. Surveying goes back over the material to mentally map out the terrain of
the book. If the scan indicated that the information required was placed
in one or more locations, these are found and noted. Tis is also a chance
to look for other relevant areas. Te survey clarifes the features of the
book and can include, for example, checking the index and browsing the
introductions and summaries of chapters that may include the information
required to locate the area(s) where it is dealt with.
3. Mining is the in-depth investigation of the required information, read
carefully, and with links to other related topics followed through if useful
to the matter at hand.
4. Checking is a quick examination of those areas of the book that were not
mined, to make sure that no relevant, or contradicting, information has
been missed. Tis deepens the understanding of the context ofered by the
book for the core information required.
5. Recall includes writing down the information discovered. It occurs best
and most efectively with the book shut. Here it is helpful to remember and
link the information found with the reasons why it was sought; connecting
these together with other relevant ideas and information. Mind maps
(Buzan and Buzan 1996) can be a useful strategy for doing this.
6. Review is a fnal corrective where the reading has been done with a specifc
output in mind (a research report, or an essay). Te book is opened again
and the mind map checked. Tis step ensures that information has been
cor rectly recalled and notes the location at which the information was
found: page number, chapter, and details of the books title, author, pub-
lisher and copyright date.
Schema such as this one can help navigate the contents of a book more efectively
than passively reading from the frst page to the last. Tese strategies also have useful
parallels with the way we follow an information trail on the internet. Indeed, it was
the idea of using a hypertext link to locate, access and open a document on another
computer anywhere else on the network that led to Tim Berners-Lee creating the
WWW (Chapter 2). In doing this, Berners-Lee not only responded to his way of
searching for information, which has parallels with the conventional index, he also
patterned some aspects of the internet in a manner that encouraged users to follow
suit.
18 t h e i n t e r n e t
Summary
n This chapter places the internet in the context of other new media and reminds us that the experience
of the internet will vary considerably depending upon where in the world you live, and upon your social,
economic and educational circumstances. It introduces the concepts of digitisation and of convergence as
these apply to the internet in particular and to new media more generally.
n By explaining the importance of research for offering a detailed understanding about how we and other
people use the internet, the chapter introduces a range of theoretical frameworks which are used in the
case studies that follow. In this book these have been generally subsumed under the heading of a social
shaping of technology approach. They are: the theory of consumption; the domestication of technology; the
social construction of technology and actor-network theory.
n Case studies are critical to the way in which this book examines the internet. The use of case studies
allows a rich, deep investigation of specifc aspects of the internet. It also means that there are areas not
investigated, and important aspects of global history (such as the Cold War) which are examined only in
passing, or through the lens of one or more case studies. Any single volume that deals with the internet
and its history struggles to reconcile breadth, depth and completeness. This book has chosen to value
breadth and depth and indicate the gaps in completeness by drawing its case study examples from a wide
variety of countries and contexts. An active reader will fnish this book with tools which they can use to
develop their own case studies of aspects of the internet that they wish to probe further.
n The chapter ends with an overview of the structure of the book and a suggestion as to an alternative,
or supplementary, way in which to read it. In offering a thumbnail sketch of the chapters to follow, this
introduction provides a survey of material in the book and an idea of the journey ahead.
Chapter 2 offers a brief history of the internet and introduces some key moments, movements and technologies
through which it was developed.
2 HISToRY
INTRODUCTION
New media studies is the exploration and investigation of digital culture. It is
an evolving area since the feld is characterised by innovation and rapid change.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the history of the internet. As one aspect of new
media, the internet is important to all aspects of social, political and civic life; and
behind every technological story lies a human story. As this book is written, Google
remains in the ascendant and has been, for the best part of a decade. Vise recounts a
rueful comment by Microsoft founder, Bill Gates: Google is still, you know, perfect
. . ., Gates had sarcastically told the journalists and technology experts Te bubble
is still foating. You should buy their stock at any price. We had a ten year period
like that (Vise 2006: 252). And Gates is right. Both Microsoft and IBM were once
where Google are now.
Tree of the short stories in this chapter relate to companies which achieved
overwhelming high technology market dominance: IBM with hardware, Microsoft
with software and Google with search. Tese companies achieved virtual monopolies
to the point where IBM and Microsoft were both prosecuted for using unfair
business practices, such as providing services virtually for free that sent competitors
broke. Google is next in line (Schonfeld 2009), and as future innovations emerge
and dominate so Google will also be knocked of its perch. When we look to the
future we need a sense of history to understand what is possible. Tat sense of history
includes knowing about companies that dominated the market, but it also includes
an appreciation of key points of transformation. Alongside these companies and
the beginnings of the internet itself, this chapter covers the invention of the World
Wide Web, the emergence of the open source movement, and considers the notion
that technology is a masculine culture. Even so, the chapter provides a partial
and incomplete picture of a complex history. Completeness is impossible, and this
chapter is a starting point for further investigation and discussion.
Te internet is pivotal to the way in which people living in the western (minority)
world relate to one another. Government policy takes it seriously (see Chapter 3),
20 t h e i n t e r n e t
as do stock markets; but it is also important to individuals and families. In domestic
contexts we make decisions about whether to get a computer, desktop or laptop
and which brand; whether to subscribe to dial-up or broadband; whether to have
a wireless or cabled network or a single computer online; and how to decide who
uses the computer, and when. Such discussions would have been unthinkable in the
middle of the twentieth century, which is when people began to think of building
the internet; and they remain equally unthinkable in the majority of the world today.
Te history of the internet is generally told as a US-based story of individual heroes
and heroic places: places where teams of people made things happen.
As a tale, the history of the internet tends to start with a tiny group of (almost
all) men who were fascinated by an incredibly expensive, rare, exotic technology: the
computer. It was a time when hardware components still needed a soldering iron if
functional changes were required; even changes which would later be achieved by
soft ware. Te drama took place against the background of a life-and-death fear of
nuclear war between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), and the birth of the internet was heralded by two critical international
events:
n Te launch by the USSR of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957. Tis proved the
Soviet Union to be capable of making a satellite that could orbit the earth. Te
R-7 rocket launched the Sputnik satellite and was a prototype intercontinental
ballistic missile designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads. Te realisation
that the USSR had beaten the US to this critical milestone made the political
bureaucracy and the science community (especially specialists in physics and
maths) fearful. Te Sputnik launch triggered a series of changes in nationally-
funded projects and priorities. One of these responses was NASA (the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration agency), while another was ARPA the
Advanced Research Projects Agency. Both agencies were established in 1958.
ARPA was eventually to project manage the formation of the internet. By the
end of 1969 it had masterminded the building of a four-node proof-of-concept
network known as ARPANET.
n Te Cuban missile crisis between the US, USSR and Cuba. Tis started on
15 October 1962 and ended thirteen days later on 28 October 1962. Aerial
photographs taken by US spy planes indicated that Soviet missile bases were
being built in Cuba. Te revelations triggered a high-stakes stand-of between
the US and the USSR, and President Kennedy reiterated the Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD) philosophy concerning nuclear weapons. Intensive diplo-
macy involving the United Nations was brought to bear. Tis period has been
described as the days the world held its breath. Te possibility of computers
across the United States needing to retain control and command functions
h i s t o r y 21
(discussed below) is one reason given for the development of the internet as a
dis tributed network without a central command hub that could be obliterated in
a nuclear attack.
Te heroic tale of the internet is used here as a means of defning, describing and
discussing various components of internet, its architecture and history.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INTERNET
Te internets twenty-ffth anniversary was celebrated in 1994 at an event billed as the
history of the future (Hafner and Lyon 2003: 260). Te celebrations were hosted
by American consulting company BBN: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., which was
keen to claim credit for itself as a cornerstone of the internet development project.
Although ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the US Department
of Defense, is generally credited with founding the internet, BBN believe they also
deserve to be recognised for their 29 October 1969 achievement in installing the
frst ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) link between two
computers; one at a University of California Los Angeles site (UCLA), and the other
at Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
Te frst 1969 ARPANET connection was not the frst time a link had been
made between computers, but it was the frst time a link had been constructed in
a proposed network. It was also the frst link to utilise a switched-packet system
which allocated bandwidth on the connecting communication cables in response
to the requirements of the message to be sent (dynamic allocation techniques).
Prior to switched-packet systems, the usual way to link computers was through pre-
allocating a dedicated channel to the connection. Not only were the links fxed, they
were not interconnecting. Tey could not talk to each other and this made building
a network extremely complicated. To become efcient and efective, the network
commissioned by ARPA had to solve issues of interconnectivity by connecting each
computer to many others, and fnd a way in which those connections could be
simultaneously shared by multiple users.
Computers in those early decades were almost custom-made machines. Te way
in which an operator programmed a computer, or accessed the information held on
it, depended upon the manufacturer and varied with each maker and each model.
Indeed, sometimes a computer had to be physically rebuilt to modify its function.
Computers were also very expensive. Tey were a rare commodity, and it was a
highly specialised skill to use them.
Although computers had entered popular culture on television with the UNIVAC
prediction of the 1952 US Presidential Election results, and through the publicly
viewable working computers in the ground-foor display of IBMs Madison Avenue
22 t h e i n t e r n e t
ofces, the number of engineers, physicists and mathematicians keen to use them
outstripped the supply of available machines. One of the major computing advances
pioneered by BBN and MIT prior to the ARPANET link had been the frst public
demonstration of computer time-sharing in 1962, using a DEC (Digital Equipment
Corporation) computer: the PDP-1 (BBN 2008). In those days, people wanting to
use a computer had to guess the amount of time that was required and book access
in advance. Time-sharing meant that a number of diferent computer users, working
at separate workstations linked to the same magnetic drum memory, were able to
access the computer as if they had the machine to themselves. Partly because of
time-sharing, computer scientists were often interested in queuing theory and how
queues could be made less likely to block efciency in processing. Tese studies led
to the idea of creating packets of information of a fxed size which could be handled
routinely and very quickly by the message processors.
Another problem with the incompatible range of computers in the early 1960s
was that every time there was an advance made by one computer, additional work had
to be done to duplicate that advance elsewhere, or harness it to the beneft of users
of other computers. Hafner and Lyon (2003: 44) comment that software programs
were one-of-a-kind, like original works of art. Tey explain the implication of this as
being: If the scientists doing graphics at Salt Lake City wanted to use the programs
developed by the people at Lincoln Lab, they had to fy to Boston [where Lincoln
Lab was based, at MIT]. Tere was no easy way to send programs backwards and
forwards. Hafner and Lyon comment that if the visiting scientists wanted to start
a similar project on their own machine, they would need to spend considerable
time and money duplicating what they had just seen (2003: 44). ARPANET was
designed to overcome the lack of interconnectivity between diferent kinds and
models of computers, and allow computer users to share resources, software and
ideas.
IBM
The technological system underpinning the internet starts with hardware, the actual machinery involved.
Historically, the abiding brand in computers has been IBM, also known as Big Blue and the PC, the personal
computer. IBM was founded in 1924 by Thomas J. Watson (Snr) as the latest incarnation of a company that had
started in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company. IBM machines in the 1920s were not electronic computers,
they were punch card processors: elecromechanical contraptions that sorted, counted, and manipulated data
stored on rectangular cards punched with holes (Maney 2003: xxiii). Even so, the processors could handle so
much data, so quickly, that the press referred to them as thinking machines and electric brains. They made
information processing far more effcient than was possible by clerical work unaided.
h i s t o r y 23
The frst modern computer to use binary, on-and-off switches to make calculations (Maney 2003: 332)
was invented in 1939 by John Atanasoff, an academic at Iowa State University, together with graduate student
Clifford Berry. Initially their machine used physical switches to make the changes between onoff, which was
much slower than when vacuum tubes were used to perform the same binary functions in an electronic-digital
mode. The vacuum system was used by the pioneer machine ENIAC, the Electrical Numerical Integrator and
Calculator, but the ENIAC patent of 1947 was eventually overturned in the 1970s as being too much based on
Atanasoff and Berrys work. In 1939, as Atanasoff was developing his machine, Watson was being briefed on how
vacuum tubes might be applied to IBMs business. Watson was not a technological visionary. He moved slowly,
seeing threats as well as value in much speedier calculations. Even so, Watson decided to invest in electronics.
IBMs frst electronic calculator was the 603, launched in 1946 at the New York National Business Show.
Its successor, the IBM 701, was developed to compete with Remington Rands UNIVAC. Instead of being a
room-sized computer, like UNIVAC, the 701 was a collection of modularised fridge-sized components that could
be plugged together into a working assembly. By 1955, IBM had established a lead over Remington Rand in
the emerging computer market. At the same time, IBMs near-monopoly in business calculating equipment had
become untenable. In January 1956 Watsons son Tom Watson (Jnr) settled a four-year federal antitrust case
alleging anti-competitive practices. Following settlement, IBM sold their machines as well as leased them, licensed
patents, and allowed competitors to make compatible punch cards.
The focus of IBM on the business market meant that a raft of computers targeted at domestic users could
be introduced by other companies, almost into a product vacuum, and this happened increasingly from the
1970s onwards (Haddon 1988). New brands included the 1977 Trinity, Tandy Radio Shacks TRS-80, Apple II
and Commodore PET, all of which were ready-to-run, a step beyond the self-assembly soldered models aimed
at electronics hobbyists.
Domestic computers often relied upon the home television set as a monitor, but were more versatile than
the popular games consoles which were marketed in parallel with computers. Models powering the take-up of
domestic computing in the UK as well as the US included the Sinclair ZX80 (1980, the frst UK computer priced
at under 100) and its successors, the ZX81 and the Spectrum; the BBC Acorn; the Atari; the Commodore 64
and the Amstrad. Some of these, the Commodore in particular, were marketed directly to domestic customers
in consumer stores, not purely in electronics outlets (Haddon 1988). operating these computers could be a
challenge, however. Murdock, Hartmann and Gray (1992: 149) cite the experience of one woman who had seen
her husband and son lose interest: they were going to do great things with it [the computer], and make
programmes and use it in all sorts of ways. But then they realised what a long time it was going to be to
learn to do this, and a long time putting the programme in. They havent had the time.
Leaving aside business machines, which had been IBMs special focus, the burgeoning development in
computers for domestic applications fragmented the market, allowing many other brands to gain critical mass.
From a high of $68.9 billion in revenue in 1990, [IBM] sales fgures began to slip and profts crumpled. IBM
lost $2.8 billion in 1991; $5 billion in 1992, and $8.1 billion in 1993 (Maney 2003: 444). CEo Lou Gerstner
was able to turn the company around after taking it over in 1993 (Gerstner 2002), but the move to personal
computing for a range of non-business applications had already changed the landscape. New media had become
domesticated, Tim Berners-Lee had woven the WWW, and the global internet revolution was just beginning.
24 t h e i n t e r n e t
Larry Roberts, an MIT-trained electrical engineer, was hired by Bob Taylor of
ARPA to prove that the concept of an interconnected multi-computer network
could work. Roberts was helped by Paul Barans work at RAND Corporation
(Research ANd Development) in Santa Monica, California, which had carried out
substantial research for the US Air Force. Baran had been born in Poland in 1928,
and his birthplace was under Soviet occupation. He was particularly concerned about
security risks to the Command and Control functions of US strategic weapons;
indeed, he was concerned about the risks of a few strategic strikes upon any centrally
organised communications system. Te vulnerability here was that a Soviet missile
attack, such as that feared in 1963 during the Cuban missile crisis, could break down
the US communications system underpinning strategic weapons deployment. Such
a collapse would compromise the US Presidents capacity to Command a retaliatory
attack, or Control (call of) illegitimate and piecemeal responses. RAND had already
decided that US long-distance telecommunications systems were vulnerable to a
missile strike: Barans vision was to create a robust computer network that could
survive one.
Te traditional response to the vulnerabilities of a centralised hub-and-spoke
system was to construct a range of sub-hubs, each supporting a number of connec-
tions (see Diagram 2.1). Tis conferred some protection but meant that each sub-
hub was vulner able and a target, while the viability of communication with each
spoke entirely depended upon the safety of the hub to which they were connected.
Barans idea was to link all the computers in the system via a distributed network,
with each computer operating as a node and having several connections into the
network (see Diagram 2.2). In efect, every computer would be linked to three or
four other computers. Tis meant that if one link were broken, there would still be
a range of ways to move a communication forward since every computer would be
networked to a number of others. Even low-cost, unreliable links would sufce as
long as there were at least three times the minimum number of them (Hafner and
Lyon 2003: 59). Tis idea builds redundancy into the network, since there are
several times the connections required. It is a very safe approach, but it took several
years for Baran to persuade RAND to adopt his vision.
Barans other idea was that each message should also be fragmented into packets.
Tis idea built on advances in queuing theory developed by Leonard Kleinrock at
UCLA. Barans research was carried out independently of, but parallel to, similar
work in the UK by Donald Davies, who coined the term switched-packet network.
Te idea of a distributed switched-packet network was that each message would
be broken up into small packets of information with a standardised header contain-
ing information about destination and the sequence for reassembling the whole
massage. Te header was communicated along with the data segment transferred in
h i s t o r y 25
Diagram 2.1: A hub and spoke system with sub-hubs
Diagram 2.2: A distributed network
26 t h e i n t e r n e t
the packet. It was the header which switched the packet along diferent links in the
network to maximise the efciency of the transit, and each processor in the network
would handle this small packet of information very quickly. Each packet would fnd
its own way through the distributed network to the fnal destination, and would be
reassembled there by the receiving message processor.
Te transfer of information across the network would be a little like sending a
largish library of books from the Pentagon in Washington DC to Los Angeles in
California. Te library would not travel as an entity: it would be divided into truck-
loads, and the number of trucks would be noted. Each truck would be given the
destination address and would travel a diferent route to arrive there, in accordance
with the drivers preferences, weather and road congestion, the towns to be passed
through, and so forth. Once safely at the new location it would be easy to check
that the right number of trucks had arrived. Finally, the cataloguing system applied
by the sender library (for example, the Dewey decimal classifcation system) would
mean that all the books could be efciently reassembled into a functional collection
in their new location.
Te value of packet switching across a distributed network had several elements.
It was more secure, since the message was difused; and it was also more efcient,
since many messages could share the same network at the same time, with each
message broken into properly labelled information packets. Further, in the digital
domain, unlike the Pentagon library, the sending computer retains the information
forwarded (see Chapter 1 for how the properties of information difer from physical
goods). After checking all the received information, the receiving message processor
would contact the sender machine to confrm all the elements had been received.
Without a confrmation, the sending computer keeps re-sending the message until
it gets through.
Microsoft
Microsoft, from Micro computer Software, is the creation of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who formed Traf-Data
while they were still at school. The program helped to control traffc fows in their native Seattle. When Gates
was 15, he and Allen sold the company to city administrators for $20,000. The two entrepreneurs formed
Microsoft in 1975 to market a simplifed version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800, an
early self-assembly microcomputer.
If hardware is a vital part of the internet technological system, software is the element which affects most
users relationship with their computer. Microsoft changed the business model by establishing that, for most
users, usability was more critical than hardware specifcations. Wohl, referring to the early days of the PC
comments:
h i s t o r y 27
[W]e were asked to design classes for senior executiveseach to spend three days learning about the PC and
then to take one home. The client . . . wanted the executives to learn how to program their PCs. Later we learned
that of the several hundred executives who took the course, fewer than 10 ever used their PCs. Programming is
not intended to be part of the business users PC experience. (Wohl 2006: 89)
Microsoft became one of the most valuable companies in the world by relentlessly focusing on its core mission
of a computer on every desk, and Microsoft products running on every computer, says Battelle (2006: 248). In
1981, IBM contracted the recently-incorporated Microsoft to develop an operating system. That IBM application
became MS-DoS, the Microsoft Disk operating System. By 1983 the IBM PC, operating MS-DoS, had become the
industry standard and Microsoft persuaded IBM that it should be permitted to licence its MS-DoS operating
system to manufacturers of PC clones. Microsoft then went on to supply the operating system at a very low
unit cost, allowing it to be bundled with virtually all PC-compatible machines sold. Partly because of the
interaction of the PC platform and the MS-DoS operating system, PCs held the majority market share in the
personal computer market from 1986 onwards (Reimer 2005).
Microsofts frst word processor, Multi-Tool Word, was launched in 1983. This software developed into Microsoft
Word, the core of an integrated suite of offce applications, noted for its commitment to what you see is what
you get (WYSIWYG). This meant that the printed document strongly resembled the document as it appeared
on the screen: a bonus since the program was the frst PC-based application to offer easy changes in font and
typeface. Additionally, Word made use of a wheel-mouse, a Microsoft innovation, and customers could purchase
a mouse-plus-Word package. Initially, these products were not directly marketed to consumers, but were licensed
to other parties for sale under their own brands for a range of machines and platforms.
When Microsoft developed the Windows 3.0 operating system for its 1990 introduction, it did so partly
as a way of distancing itself from the IBM alliance. Windows 3.0 was to become the default operating system
of the early 1990s, bundled with almost all non-IBM PC clones, much cheaper and more versatile than the
IBM products, and it also supported a large range of hardware which made it more attractive to domestic
users. By the time Windows 95 was launched, the WWW had captured popular attention and the launch was
also used to promote MSN, the Microsoft Network, which by 1997 included MSN Hotmail and, from 1999, MSN
Messenger. Microsofts Internet Explorer 1.0 was initially available as add-on software for Windows 95 and
both the Windows and Explorer applications were typically bundled with new PC clones. Early browsers, such
as Netscape Navigator (see the World Wide Web, below), had been used prior to Internet Explorer and the
aggressive marketing of Internet Explorer, especially when bundled with Windows which supplied no uninstaller,
led to what have been called the browser wars (Wang, Wu and Lin 2005).
The US Justice Department fled an antitrust suit against Microsoft in 1998, the year Netscape offcially
closed doors and was bought by AoL (America online), and the year Google was incorporated. In June 2000,
a federal court judge found that the bundling of the Internet Explorer browser within the Windows operating
system violated antitrust laws. During the trial, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was depicted by prosecutors as a
bully and a monopolist (Vise, 2006: 96). The European Commission, starting with a 1993 complaint from Novell,
also sought to make Microsoft build their products to allow compatibility with other companies software. In
2003 they found Gates guilty of anti-competitive practices.
28 t h e i n t e r n e t
To get over the problem that diferent computers could not communicate with
each other, the scientists building the internet decided that the network would
operate with a sub-network. According to a scheme proposed by Wes Clark, who
had built the TX-2 at MITs Lincoln Lab, each computer would have its own IMP
(Interface Message Processor). IMPs were initially based on the early Honeywell 516
computer. Efectively, the host computer only had to communicate with its own
IMP; not the other computers. Te IMPs formed a sub-network which was inter-
connected but autonomous, with each IMP separate from (but linked to) its host
computer(s), and with the network under the control of ARPA. IMPs operated like
modern day routers. Tey didnt read the message itself: only the header concerning
sender, receiver, packet order and data integrity. Tis made it simpler for each packet
to be pulled into the IMP, processed quickly and sent on its way. Sub-network
elements were invisible. Tis design made the network fast, free of congestion and
extremely reliable (Hafner and Lyon 2003: 99).
Roberts published a groundbreaking position paper on ARPANET in 1967. Te
fact that this project was open for discussion, rather than top secret, meant it could
inspire excitement throughout the computer science community. His paper (Roberts
1967) explained that as each packet arrived at the IMP, it would instantly send a copy
forward to the next IMP on its way to the destination computer. Te forward node
switched to by the sending node was eventually based on a continuous evaluation
within the network of the least-delay paths, considering both line availability and
queue lengths (Roberts 1978). Tis process was called hot potato routing because
no machine held the information for very long. Te efect was near-instantaneous.
Data would zip in and out of the nodes so quickly, and the response time from
a human perspective would be so rapid, that it qualifed as a real-time [system]
(Hafner and Lyon 2003: 75). Te receiving machine would check that no errors had
crept into the data and confrm safe receipt, stopping the node from re-sending the
data. Tis error-checking process employed a technique called checksum, in which
the received data is checked to ensure that it sums to a given amount. Te same
system is often used with bar codes to confrm accurate scanning.
Refection: Is market dominance inherently unfair?
Why do you think that regulators in the US and EU thought that Microsofts near-monopoly was a problem?
Do you think that the bundling of software gives them an unfair advantage?
What are the implications of your views?
h i s t o r y 29
In 1968 BBN won the contract to build the IMP network from existing doc-
uments and ideas, and began publicising the initiative among graduate students
around the US. Young computer scientists at the frst node, UCLA, were particularly
excited. Starting a collaborative consultation process that still thrives in computing
circles, Steve Crocker, a UCLA graduate student, initiated the frst ever Request
for Comments: RFC1. Crockers RFC concerned the host-to-host protocols to get
host computers talking to their IMPs, and thus to each other. Te frst applications
written were for login and fle transfer, and the full host-to-host protocol was
named the Network Control Protocol (NCP). Te studentfacultybusiness
military collaboration worked well. By the end of 1969, BBN had added UC Santa
Barbara and the University of Utah to the frst link between the Sigma-7 host (at
UCLA) and a SDS 940 at SRI.
BBN itself was the ffth ARPANET site, connected into the network early
1970, and the frst on the East Coast. As well as featuring a robust matrix of inter-
connections with the redundancy provisions originally envisaged, BBNs design also
featured diagnostic elements and allowed for some remote maintenance (Hafner and
Lyon 2003: 162). Tis speeded up further development and improved reliability,
also enabling the network engineers to spot when the problem lay with the telecoms
connections or signal quality, rather than with the IMPs themselves. Te network
was adding about one node a month and by the end of 1970 the BBN contract
with ARPA had been extended, and the network had moved from an experimental
to an operational system. Meanwhile demand for greater access per IMP led to the
development of Terminal IMPs (or TIPs) enabling the network to be accessed from
terminals, rather than solely via mainframes. Tis meant that a number of terminals
could connect to an individual TIP.
It was decided that the frst International Conference on Computer Com-
munication [would] be held in Washington in October 1972 (Hafner and Lyon
2003: 176). Tis was the ideal opportunity for a public demonstration. At that point
there were 29 nodes to the network with multiple terminal connections per node
and people had begun to refer to the system as the Net, rather than ARPANET.
Te demonstration was a huge success; for hundreds of participants it brought to
life the potential ofered by computer networks. It was almost like the rail industry
disbelieving that airplanes could really fy until they actually saw one in fight, said
Kahn (Hafner and Lyon 2003: 185). Te same could be said about electronic mail.
Although the network had not originally been designed with email in mind, this
application was soon generating huge quantities of trafc and made the internet a
sociable and lively place to be.
30 t h e i n t e r n e t
Refection: The genesis of the internet
The internet started life as a military project.
Have the millions of different uses and users changed its character?
Diagram 2.3: How IMPs and TIPs link to each other, and to hosts
Te ARPANET was not the only developing computer network. In particular,
Daviess UK network had started at NPL, the National Physical Laboratory, and was
growing strongly, as was the French equivalent, Cyclades. Named after the group
of 220 Greek islands which interconnect as a functioning whole, Cyclades was the
brainchild of French computer scientist Louis Pouzin (1973). It had grown out of
Pouzins early association with MITs work on CTSS, a Compatible Time-Sharing
System, and Pouzin had a strong positive relationship both with European re searchers
and with his counterparts in the US. Cycladess operating principle was opposite to
h i s t o r y 31
ARPANETs, however, in that host computers were responsible for check ing the
data transmitted had been safely received. Te host computer would keep sending
out full copies of the data, broken into packets, until it received information from
the destination computer that the message had been safely received and reassembled,
with all elements checked and found present. Te original ARPANET design had
made data integrity a part of the IMPs store-and-forward role, but Cycladess end-
to-end protocol greatly simplifed the packet switching operations of the network.
Te UK and the French systems were interoperable, and by 1976 Cyclades had 20
nodes plus connections to the British and Italian networks.
Meanwhile, work in the Hawaii archipelago had made it clear that networks
could operate using a range of communication platforms. Across the US island state,
it didnt matter whether nodes were connected by cable, microwave radio, satellite
or (later) by fbre optics, digital information could pass between connection points
and then use a diferent platform for the next leg of the journey. Te Hawaiian
experiments also had implications for connecting the US armed services during
manoeuvres: an important priority for ARPA in the Vietnam era. Te desire to see
all available networks capable of talking to each other prompted the creation in
1972 of the International Network Working Group.
BBNs mathematician Bob Kahn had moved to ARPA, (now DARPA, Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency) in early 1972. Kahn and Vint Cerf, one
of the original UCLA grad students who had worked on the protocols for the
frst ARPANET link, collaborated on the challenge of integrating the diverse
international networks. Links between networks had to be transparent to users re-
gardless of the communication platform they used, the equipment they ran and
the speed at which they operated. ARPANET, Cyclades and NPL had to be able to
interconnect. Kahn and Cerf came up with the idea of a gateway which would look
like a straightforward host computer to each of the diferent networks, but which
would allow messages to pass between networks. Te problem was the diferent
organising principles of the separate networks. Intrigued by Pouzins success with
Cyclades they looked carefully at the French system. By May 1974, having discussed
their ideas with British and French collaborators, their paper was ready. Tey called
it A protocol for packet network intercommunication (Cerf and Kahn 1974).
Te idea was to adopt several principles from Cyclades and invert the ARPANET
model to minimise international diferences. Te host computer was to keep a copy
of the entire message while the packets traversed the system, and would re-send
it as necessary. All computers on the internet would wrap their messages inside a
protocol which would be recognised at gateways and handled efciently. Tis meant
that it did not matter if the ways in which messages were communicated difered,
providing they were contained in the standard envelope.
32 t h e i n t e r n e t
Kahns new system was called the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), but
slowed down message transmission at the point where a message moved from one
network to another, because it involved the gateways performing more tasks than
solely routing the message. Having moved to DARPA in 1976 to work with Kahn,
Cerf continued to work on the problem and it was eventually decided to split the
part of the protocol dealing solely with the movement of the packet through the
gateway into a smaller program to be called the Internet Protocol (IP). Tis meant
that gateways between the networks were cheaper and easier to build since all that
was required of them was to receive a packet from one network and pass it into the
next one. All other issues to do with standardising packet sizing, sequencing and
confrmation, so that each packet could travel any network, were to be handled
by the host using TCP. By 1978 TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol had been proposed as the universal standard. It was the internet in
Internet Protocol that was to give the internet its name (Hafner and Lyon 2003:
244).
In 1983 every ARPANET computer switched from using the initial Network
Control Protocol to the new TCP/IP. Even though some governments and European
users favoured a rival protocol (OSI: Open Systems Interconnection), TCP/IP was
tried and tested, bundled with a number of popular computers and was eventually
adopted universally. By the time that TCP/IP had been totally accepted, ARPANET
had been closed down: it was no longer needed as a research project. In 1989,
around the twentieth anniversary of the beginnings of ARPANET, all the IMPs and
TIPs were decommissioned from the network and the computers were migrated
across to bigger, faster networks like NSFNET (the National Science Foundation
Network). At this point Tim Berners-Lee was pondering the possible implications
of integrating HTML and computer networks and was on the verge of creating the
WWW. Te internet as we know it today was about to take shape.
The World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WWW, believed it should be available to everyone. Berners-Lee was
British, a physicist by training, and the key elements of his 1990 invention were put in place while he was
working at CERN, a European particle physics research centre based near Geneva on the FrenchSwiss border.
Michael Dertouzos (1999: x), director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science where Berners-Lee now
works comments: Thousands of computer scientists had been staring for two decades at the same two things
hypertext and computer networks. But only Tim conceived of how to put those two elements together. The
h i s t o r y 33
difference between the pre-1990s version of the internet and one with the web lies in Berners-Lees realisation
of the internets potential for providing an accessible, connected web of information with pieces scattered on
many different computers. This vision depended upon the standardisation of relevant protocols so that travel
between networks, servers and documents could be seamless. All networked computers should be able to
contribute to the web; and all information should be accessible to any user.
People were interested but apart from Robert Cailliau, a colleague at CERN, generally unconvinced. There
had been previous unsuccessful attempts to achieve this kind of idea, and Berners-Lee had yet to prove that
it could work. In 1990 Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer, an innovative machine from a new company set
up by Steve Jobs co-founder of Apple Computer Inc, to start mapping out the programs and protocols needed
to link information held on different machines. The functionality he wanted to achieve was a point-and-click
browser/editor (Berners-Lee 1999: 29), so that a user would be able to click on a hypertext link within a web
page to move through to a different page with more detailed information. The person creating the hypertext
link did not need to have created the page that it clicked through to, nor would it matter where in the world
that page was held, so long as it was accessible.
Berners-Lee started by building the client, the software shell into which he would ft the other elements
of his system. The client program would establish that his computer was requesting information from another
machine. The next element on Berners-Lees to do list was the writing of HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
HTTP allows the client machine to use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to request access to a hypertext
document held on a website located on a remote server. Its through HTTP that one machine accesses the
material held on another. The server machine then communicates back to the user-client, ideally providing
access to the web site or the document requested. (There are a number of HTTP error codes for when things
go wrong, including the frustrating 404 Not Found response.) Berners-Lees point-and-click browser/editor,
running HTTP, would only work if it was possible to identify the location where the information wanted was
held. A destination had to be given when requesting access to material, so Berners-Lee developed the URL, or
Uniform Resource Locator, in order to identify each destination uniquely. Every site to be included on the web
would require its own URL, so that the client machine could use the HTTP language to access information held
Diagram 2.4: A schematic representation of TCP/IP
34 t h e i n t e r n e t
there. Each URL provides details of exactly where the desired information is stored and typically starts with
http://.
Next, Berners-Lee wrote the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) program to make the web pages containing
hypertext links. HTML allows a person reading a web page to click through to another document or website.
Following the HTML protocols, Berners-Lee wrote the software for the web server, defning which part holds
the materials to be accessed by other people using the web. Finally, he set up the frst website: http://info.
cern.ch. (It still exists.) At this point, Berners-Lees NeXT machine held the only web browser, and was both
the frst client and the frst server on the web. It was time for the next step. Robert Cailliau bought his own
NeXT machine and we revelled in being able to put our ideas into practice: communication through shared
hypertext (Berners-Lee 1999: 29). The program-writing period had taken three months, october through to
December 1990. It had been a busy time!
There was another problem. Berners-Lee wanted people accessing the web to fnd something worth reading.
He reprogrammed his web browser, which had been designed to work with Macs, PCs, mainframes and all other
computers, to access FTP (fle transfer protocol) materials as hypertext. FTP resources included many public
posts and discussion forums occurring within established networks, often using the decade-old Usenet system.
This step meant that people who were accustomed to the complexities of accessing Usenet materials were able
to experience the functionality of the web, as well as discovering that much more information was accessible.
Within the frst months several servers were set up across Europe by CERN collaborators. A year later,
December 1991, the frst US server was established at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In November
1992 the worldwide number of servers had risen to 26; by the start of 1993 there were approximately 50
web servers in the world (Berners-Lee 1999: 67), and by late 1993 there were over 500 known web servers,
and the WWW accounted for 1% of internet traffc, which seemed a lot in those days! (The rest was remote
access, e-mail and fle transfer.) (CERN 2008). Between 199193 the hits on Berners-Lees CERN server increased
exponentially:
100 hits per day in Summer 1991
1,000 hits per day in Summer 1992
10,000 hits per day in Summer 1993 (Berners-Lee 1999: 75)
In 1993, Marc Andreessen, a student at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Eric Bina, a faculty member, created the web-browser Mosaic. Andreessen
went on to develop Netscape which was publicly launched in 1995, with its share price more than doubling on
the frst day of trading from US$28 to $71 (Berners-Lee 1999: 106). The browser was much more developed
than Berners-Lees had been. It made the web much more accessible. By the end of 1994, according to Burman,
there were about 10,000 servers connected to the Web, and as many as 10 million users worldwide (2003: 25).
Battelle comments that: from 1993 to 1996, the web grew from 130 sites to more than 600,000 (2006: 40).
The introduction of the web marked the transition from an internet designed predominantly for universities,
researchers and larger organisations (Berners-Lee 1999: 80) to one which could be used at home by individuals.
The WWW reached across the globe and into peoples homes and everyday lives.
h i s t o r y 35
As the European Union makes clear in its rulings against Microsoft, it is ex-
tremely important that there is enough information about the internets software
and hardware components for entrepreneurs to create compatible new products.
No company will purchase a new media player, for example, if that means that
all their existing computers need to be changed. Te barriers to entry become
too great to allow new manufacturers to produce products, and this breaks some
of the rules regulating markets since it prevents the development of a vibrant and
competitive industry. Both IBM and Microsoft became big by guarding access
to, and secrets about, their products. While this is usual business practice, once a
company becomes so big that it almost has an monopoly of an important industry,
the regulators become involved. We look at government policy and regulation of
access to the internet in Chapter 3, and at attempts to regulate the content of the
internet in Chapter 6.
Tere are also mechanisms for the international regulation of the internet. Even
though the internet evolves in unpredictable ways, some critics complain that there
are continuing reminders of its US beginnings, and too much opportunity for US
control of future development. One recent example is the controversy surrounding
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN
was created in 1998 as a way of part-democratising decisions that had previously
been the direct responsibility of US government authorities, but the organisation
is accused of failing to give sufcient weight to non-US perspectives. One example
is given by Coopersmith (2006: 13): In 2005 the George W. Bush administration
upset [ICANN] by refusing, at the last stage of the process, to allow ICANN to issue
an .xxx domain, rising anew concerns about American dominance.
Te Bush administration intervened because the proposal for an Adults only
.xxx generic top-level domain (gTLD) was a highly controversial one for some US
citizens and lobby groups. Te news that ICANN had approved it triggered an
unprecedented level of protest within the USA (Wired 2005). Tis protest was
strengthened because people believed that the US administration had the power
to stop the .xxx plan. Wired comments that the US Department of Commerce has
veto power over ICANN decisions given the US governments role in funding early
Refection: The implications of a non-commercial WWW
What might have been different if Berners-Lee had patented his idea of the WWW?
How might development of the internet been affected?
36 t h e i n t e r n e t
development of the internet (Wired 2005). Critics of the .xxx proposal argued that,
since the Bush administration could stop the creation of an adults only domain,
it would show US government support if it went ahead. Tere were some other
international concerns as well as the US domestic protests, but when ICANN
efectively reversed its earlier position and did not create the .xxx gTLD this was seen
as a sign of US control.
Following the .xxx debates and other controversies around ICANNs cost struc-
ture and the pricing of services, there was speculation that the UN might try to take
over ICANN. Given US opposition to such a UN takeover, this proposal triggered
fears of splitting the internet. Instead, the 2005 World Summit on the Information
Society called for an international Internet Governance Forum, IGF, which frst met
in 2006. Te IGF has an advisory mandate, rather than a decision-making one,
but is structured to be a strong infuence on ICANNs activities. Te IGF is further
evidence of the importance placed by global users of the internet upon having a
voice as part of policy-formation and decision-making processes.
Google
As the internet grew to include unimaginable amounts of information, it needed a way for people to fnd
what they were looking for, even if they did not know where to look. This is the role of the search engine.
Early search engines included Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo and Excite. Like Google, Yahoo and Excite were started
by entrepreneurs linked to Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Battelle (2006: 45) comments that there are three elements to the traditional search engine: the spider (or
crawl), the index, and the search software and user interface. The spider is a computer program that hunts in
a methodical and deliberate way for specifc pieces of information, gathering these together for later use. Any
terms and all strings of words noted during the spiders crawl across the web can become a point of linkage
to a whole document. These items are indexed for subsequent use. Powerful search engines scour their indexes
of all words in sequence on all pages of the web. There may be thousands of documents found, however, so a
search engine also needs to rank results according to importance. If I put we want our notion of relevant to
only include the very best documents into Googles Advanced Search using the this exact wording or phrase
option, for example, I discover the words are from The Anatomy of a Large-scale Hypertextual Web Search
Engine (Brin and Page, n.d.). Larry Page and Sergey Brin invented Google, and their paper relates to the theory
behind the way it works.
Todays search engines link web users with the words of all accessible pages. Apart from password protected
and secure content, search engine indexes provide links to the words, phrases and complete contents of all
websites. Critical alongside the frequency and accuracy of the spiders crawl, and the power of the engines index,
h i s t o r y 37
is the speed of response. Users dont want to wait for long. They also want the best sites for their purposes
to come up frst. For example, searchers will almost always want to access the original Brin and Page paper,
rather than documents that refer to it, like this one. Googles frst impact was the way it ranks sites in its
search results. It ranks each site according to the number of other sites which are linked through to it. The
number of sites linking to a site or document was taken to indicate its relative importance.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their prototype search engine via their uni website in 1996. Both were
graduate students in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Their fascination for mathematics
was clear from the start, and Google is a play on Googol, the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100
zeros, which is a Very Large Number. Pages PhD research was into web page linkages. When someone surfs
the web they follow the links forward, but Page was intrigued by the fact that there was no way to search
backwards. For any specifc web page it was impossible to tell how many other pages linked through to it, or
which pages these were. In 1995 Page addressed this problem by developing a crawler to fnd the links to
each page. The crawler was called BackRub and its role was to identify every link in the entire web. At one
point the BackRub crawler consumed nearly half of Stanfords entire network bandwidth . . . . And on at least
one occasion, the project brought down Stanfords internet connection altogether (Battelle 2006: 78).
Brin, intrigued by the scale and ambition of the project, got involved. Both inventors soon decided they
needed to value links differently. one link might be from a school kid, another from a University and it was
important to differentiate between the two. Page and Brins breakthrough was to create an algorithm dubbed
PageRank after Page that manages to take into account both the number of links into a particular site,
and the number of links into each of the linking sites. The effect of this was that more popular sites rose
to the top of their annotation list, and less popular sites fell toward the bottom (Battelle 2006: 75, 76).
The measure of a sites relative importance, alongside its search engine function, became Googles unique
selling point. In 1998 Page and Brin incorporated their company as Google Inc and concentrated on their
business venture rather than their PhDs. Vise (2006: 214) suggests this date of incorporation was the reason
why Microsoft didnt target Google early on. He comments that Microsofts 1998 antitrust lawsuit, resulting from
the bundling of the Internet Explorer browser with Windows 95, hung over the company and distracted senior
Microsoft management as Google seized the Internet. Googles growth has continued ever since, and has the
dual strategy of fostering new products inside the company while also buying successful start-ups. For example,
Google purchased YouTube in 2006. The launch of the G1 Google phone in 2008, with accessible software to
allow user-innovation, is a direct response to Apples iPhone; while Google Desktop Search challenges Microsofts
dominance over the internal operations of individual computers.
In 2004 Google went from being a company owned by Page and Brin and their venture capitalists (angel
investors) into one in which people and companies can hold shares. This was done by an IPo (Initial Public
offering) which took the form of a geek in-joke when the company announced it had $2,718,281,828 worth of
shares to sell. It was a seemingly meaningless sum which was instantly recognisable to serious math enthusiasts
as the frst ten digits of the mathematical number for e, an irrational constant and the base of the natural
logarithm. Within a year the company was worth over $70 billion; about a quarter of the market capitalisation
of Microsoft (Vise 2006: 251).
38 t h e i n t e r n e t
Such success comes at a price, however. Googles workplace motto Dont be evil was adopted back in 2001,
before it was a listed company, before it grew tenfold, and before it had acquired many of its current business
initiatives and international links. The slogan became far more controversial following Googles move into China
(see Chapter 3), with organisations such as Amnesty International using it to challenge Google and try to call
it to account. There are also concerns over products such as Google Maps Street View: Privacy groups are up
in arms because Google has not made a frm commitment to obscure faces and number plates, says Moses
(2008), referring to the highly detailed, panoramic photos which provide a street-level view of cities the world
over, and which have led to a number of people being unwittingly snapped in embarrassing or compromising
positions.
Google, listing after the dot.com crash in 2000, is the newest mega-player in internet start-ups. Battelle,
comparing Googles experience with Yahoos, comments that Yahoo was humbled by its experience of the tech-
wreck days. It had to watch its stock drop from highs of more than $500 to lows of less than $10 . . . Google
has never known anything but success. The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail (2006: 236).
Refection: The ethics of success
Is it possible to be a globally successful company and hold fast to a dont be evil philosophy?
TECHNOLOGY AS A MASCULINE CULTURE
Tis history of the internet almost entirely features men. Tis domination by one
gender is not accidental. Judy Wajcmans ground-breaking book Feminism Confronts
Technology (1991) uses both a social shaping of technology framework and feminist
analysis. At that time, two things were already clear to feminist researchers. First,
computers were a vital part of society, and second, they were used overwhelmingly
by white, middle-class, well-educated men living in western economies. Wajcmans
argument is that women are excluded from involvement in emerging technologies
because of the ways in which society creates meanings around (constructs)
technology and gender; and controls and allows access to new technologies primarily
h i s t o r y 39
for the beneft of men. She comments (1991: 144) that In our culture, to be in
charge of the very latest technology signifes being involved in directing the future
and so it is a highly valued and mythologised activity. Essentially, argues Wajcman,
high-technology use is a masculine activity.
One reason for this dominance of men in technological felds is that the construct
of woman is oppositional to man. Wajcman (1991: 159) sums up the situation as
being: Technical competence is central to the dominant cultural ideal of masculinity,
and its absence is a key feature of stereotyped femininity. Men hold greater power
in society and claim a range of attributes as being particularly male. One such aspect
is technological competence. Feminists argue that men see themselves the dominant
given in terms of gendered behaviours, while women are positioned as other.
Tis division between men/technological and women/not-techological is
underlined in our social systems in two main ways. First, technological skills that are
culturally assigned to women are not defned as technological: for example, cooking,
knitting, using domestic machinery: Grays technologies of service (1992: 169).
Second, access to high technology is expensive, restricted and requires training and
resources which are disproportionately assigned to men. Tis is not to say that its
impossible for women to work in high technology or contribute to the develop-
ment of hi-tech inventions, but it is to say that women who manage these feats have
to overcome a range of challenges and constraints not faced by men in equivalent
situations.
In her more recent writings, Wajcman (2004: 14) discusses why repeated at-
tempts to recruit women to hi-tech careers in computing, programming, network
and systems development, etc., have not been more successful. Suggesting that most
strategies to promote such careers construct the problem as being womens social-
ization, their aspirations and their values, she comments that these approaches do
not ask the broader questions of whether, and in what way, technoscience and its
institutions could be reshaped to accommodate women. Wajcman notes (2004:.
1415) that most women who work in felds such as computer sciences are required:
to exchange major aspects of their gender identity for a masculine version with-
out prescribing a similar degendering process for men. For example, the current
career structure for a professional scientist dictates long unbroken periods of
intensive study and research that simply do not allow for child care and domestic
responsibilities. In order to succeed, women have to model themselves on men
who have traditionally avoided such commitments.
Some of these issues will be highlighted in future case studies.
40 t h e i n t e r n e t
open Source
The growth of the internet has led to the recognition of a new phenomenon: the productivity of skilled people
who are willing, indeed eager, to work on a shared task for uncertain benefts. Herz (2002) has called the
process of building products using a collaborative dynamic Harnessing the hive; and she refers to the benefts
produced as harvesting the honey. Bruns talks about large communities of users, who act without an all-
controlling, coordinating hierarchy [and] operate along lines which are fuid, fexible, heterarchical, and organized
ad hoc as required by the ongoing process of development (Bruns 2008a: 2). In contrast to a pyramid-like
hierarchy of power; heterarchy describes a fshnet-like arrangement of workers who are theoretical equals. In
heterarchical structures no-one is given a position: roles are developed as a result of ability and commitment.
We will be considering some heterarchical communities later in the book, in terms of gamers and fan
fction writers, as well as through some of the internets newest and most vibrant brands. These include Flickr
and YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. At this point we address the frst hive communities to develop, the pro-
am (professional-level skills acting in an amateur capacity) prosumers who continuously improve open source
software. The term open source refers to a situation where the source codes for a software program have
been made openly available. open source software is developed for people to share by programmers whose
own software development processes include sharing their successes and problems.
open source is often linked to socially friendly versions of the hacker movement, and to the more or
less continuous and self-conscious technical culture of enthusiast programmers, people who built and played
with software for fun (Raymond 2001: 3). Talented software developers are frustrated that the source code
behind proprietary systems like Microsofts Windows cant be legitimately accessed. People cant legally share
proprietary programs with friends. Further, bugs in licensed software take a long time to fx, compared with
what some programmers think should be possible. In 1983 Richard Stallman, a software developer with MIT,
formed the Free Software Movement. He resigned from his programming job in 1984 in order to write GNU
to be a complete Unix-compatible software system which . . . can be given away free to everyone who can
use it (GNU n.d.). GNU stands for Gnus Not Unix, and in 1985 Stallman founded the charitable Free Software
Foundation (www.fsf.org), which attracted widespread voluntary involvement from other software developers.
In addition to working on completely copyright-free software, such as GNU, communities of programmers
formed around specifc software products, or categories of software, such as operating systems. Linux, which has
its roots in GNU and in Unix-compatibility, is one well recognised example of such software. Developed from
work by Finnish software developer Linus Torvalds in 1991, Linux is the current leader in open source software
platforms for operating systems, alongside Apache for Web servers . . . MySQL for databases, Firefox for browsers
and the World Wide Web itself (Tapscott and Williams 2006: 22). Controversy continues over the magnitude
of the debt owed by Linux and other open source software to GNU. Commenting on this controversy in 1999
while a visiting scientist at MIT, Jim Gettys of Compaq said, There are lots of people on this bus; I dont hear
a clamor of support that GNU is more essential than many of the other components; cant take a wheel away,
and end up with a functional vehicle, or an engine, or the seats. I recommend you be happy we have a bus
(Gettys 1999).
h i s t o r y 41
Eric Raymonds online analysis of the dynamic nature of the development of Linux is distilled in The
Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary (Raymond 2001,
rev. edn). Streeter (2003: 659), analysing Raymonds metaphors, comments that the core trope is to portray
Linux-style software development like a bazaar, a real-life competitive marketplace. A bazaar is a market
of separate, yet complementary, traders each displaying their wares and trying to compete with others. This
contrasts with Microsoft-style software production [which] is portrayed as hierarchical and centralised and
thus ineffcient like a cathedral.
The open source movement has been credited with infuencing Netscape to release the source code for its
browser in 1998. Why would companies, talented software developers and gifted amateurs donate their work
in this way? Raymond (2001: 53) thinks that part of the answer lies in ego satisfaction and reputation among
other [peers]. Essentially, open source operates as a gift economy where developers gain recognition for their
talents, and also get personal satisfaction at having solved a problem or written beautiful programmes (2001:
68). Voluntary cultures that work this way are not actually uncommon . . . e.g. science fction fandom, which
unlike hackerdom has long explicitly recognized egoboo (ego-boosting, or the enhancement of ones reputation
among other fans) as the basic drive behind volunteer activity (Raymond 2001: 53).
Summary
n Chapter 2 examines the history of the internet. It does this in two ways: through a narrative of the
development of the frst ARPA network and through fve snapshots of key technological developments and
affliations related to the internet: hardware, software, the World Wide Web, search and the open source
movement.
n The internet has its roots in the Cold War between the western world and the communist bloc, primarily
between the USA and the USSR. A response to the Soviet launch of the frst Sputnik rocket in 1957 and
to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the internet was originally developed as a US military project. Some
people think that the USA administration still controls aspects of the internet.
n The history of the internets development, and of many web-based brands, mostly involves the work of men.
This has led some feminists to question the ways in which power in society is refected in terms of access
and opportunity in relation to high technology.
n In terms of an account of the history of new media, this book is positioned to complement other volumes
in the series which deal with mobile phones and communication; interactive gaming; new media, arts and
cultural production; and digital broadcasting.
Chapter 3 examines policy, offering a comparative study of internet policy in Australia and China as well as
considering the relevance of telecommunications infrastructure and pricing.
3 PoLICY
INTRODUCTION
In every country there are policies in place that decide who provides internet services,
who can access the internet, and what the costs are. In free market economies, these
policies have often been formulated following public debate and with the input of
committees and hearings. Unfortunately, many people fnd policy debates boring or
irrelevant. To them, these debates may simply be about politicians arguing that their
ideas are better than anyone elses. Tis perception may mean that everyday citizens
are put of getting involved in policy debates.
Policy is a vital element of any technology take-up. Its also a riveting indicator of
what aspects of technology the powerful and privileged elites in a society think are
important. Te sorts of priorities that infuence the policy agenda include national
interest issues such as defence, and social priorities such as the opportunity for people
to beneft from technology to improve their own circumstances and to increase the
countrys wealth.
As we see below, social policies, including issues of civil liberties and human
rights, can also impact in unexpected ways upon a nations ability to be creative and
to innovate, in technology as well as in the arts. Indeed, a landmark book by Richard
Florida, Te Rise of the Creative Class (2002), argues that economic development and
creativity is highest in areas that embrace cultural and social diversity in terms of
acting inclusively towards people of diferent backgrounds, sexuality and bohemian
lifestyles. Florida (2002: 249) suggests that Technology, talent and tolerance [are]
the 3 Ts of economic development . . . Each is a necessary but by itself insufcient
condition: To attract creative people, generate innovation and stimulate economic
growth, a place must have all three. Te social impacts of policy and regulation also
afect creativity and technological development.
When we look at the history of a technological development, as we did in Chapter
2, we might usefully ask ourselves what kind of policy environment supported the
developments in question. Tere is a problem here, however. Te retracing of the
historical events that lead over time to the emergence of a technological development
44 t h e i n t e r n e t
seems to create a single path from the present back to the past without acknowledg ing
the many points at which things might have turned out diferently. Science historian
and philosopher Tomas Kuhn wrote an infuential book called Te Structure of
Scientifc Revolutions, originally published in 1962. In that book Kuhn noted (1996:
1) that public ideas of science are drawn mainly from the study of fnished scientifc
achievements even though, he adds, a concept of science drawn from them is no
more likely to ft the enterprise that produced them than an image of a national
culture drawn from a tourist brochure. If Kuhn is correct, there is no inevitable path
of progress: it just seems that way looking back. In contrast, Florida suggests that
certain circumstances can help foster creativity and innovation. We start this chapter
by examining the possibility that, with diferent policy circumstances, computers
and the internet might have frst been developed in the UK.
Policy issues impact upon levels of creativity and innovation. Tey also impact
the regulatory environment. Legislators in most western countries respond to
changing circumstances by tailoring the development of policy and regulation to
maximise benefts, as they see them, and to minimise harm. Tis is fundamentally a
reactive model with seven components. It is a continuing process with components
overlapping and with the sequence repeating, as outlined in Figure 3.1.
Each component in the cycle constitutes a sequential focus, rather than an ord-
ering of absolutely separate/sequential events. Tus the establishment of desirable
outcomes and the frst steps in formulating policy may well be undertaken alongside
information gathering. In democratic countries, regular elections give people the
choice of supporting diferent parties which identify certain issues as important and
1. Identifcation of problems
2. Information gathering regarding the problems
3. Identifcation of desired outcomes
4. Formulation of policy to achieve desired outcomes
5. Enactment of policy
6. Implementation of policy and regulatory regime
7. Evaluation of policy outcomes
which leads to:
1. Identifcation of problems
2. Information gathering regarding the problems
[etc.]
Figure 3.1: An indicative framework for regulation (based on Green 2002: 135)
p o l i c y 45
then put forward possible policy responses to them. For example, in many countries
a growing problem has been recognised with some people not having access to the
internet, while a majority of the population does. Tis situation has been called the
digital divide and it is the major focus of Chapter 4. After looking at the history of
Alan Turing and how the internet might have been developed outside the US, this
chapter goes on to consider aspects of Australian public policy regarding access and
infrastructure for internet use and compares the Australian situation with that of
China. Te aim here is to show how countries difer in the ways they handle matters
of policy, and also to demonstrate in context the technical terms generally used in
the debate so that readers of this book are better placed to contribute to policy
discussions.
Te fnal case study in this chapter, setting the scene for discussions on the digital
divide in Chapter 4, concerns telecommunications policy and provision in the UK
and the USA, with a brief glimpse at India. International debates provide pointers to
issues which drive policy development in other nations. Some terms in this chapter
may seem very technical. Tey are explained as they arise, but they are also included
in the Glossary, at the end of the book.
ALAN TURING AND THE AUTOMATIC
COMPUTING ENGINE
Could the internet have developed outside the United States? Some people think
it almost did. From the 1940s to the 1960s, at the time when modern computers
and the internet were in conceptual and physical development in the US, parallel
research was going on in Britain. One example of this was Alan Turings secret work
on code-breaking at Bletchley Park during WWII (the background to the movie
Enigma (Apted 2001)), and his pre-war theoretical work on computable numbers
and a universal machine which could be programmed to work with diferent rules
(Turing 1936). Tese ideas developed into plans for ACE, the Automatic Computing
Engine, which ultimately informed the development of a Pilot ACE computer in
the UK in 1950. Turings ideas arguably pre-dated work by John Atanasof and
Cliford Berry who, in 1937, developed the AtanasofBerry Computer (ABC). Tis
was subsequently identifed as the frst computer since it was built and shown to
work in 1942. It was not programmable, however, and served primarily to prove that
the concept worked.
Although Turing was excited, after the end of the war, to be joining the UKs
National Physical Laboratory (NPL), work on the realisation of the ACE ground
to a halt, stifed by bureaucracy and secrecy. Even so, Turings work in the NPL
46 t h e i n t e r n e t
brought him into contact with a young scientist called Donald Davies whose work
on computer networks became important from the 1960s onwards. In the 1960s,
Daviess exploration of ways to transmit data down existing telephone lines led
to the concept of packet switching. Te same kind of research, with a diferent
rationale and name, was being carried out in the US by Paul Baran. Barans work
eventually informed plans for the interconnected matrix of ARPANET computers
which seeded the internet.
Daviess work doesnt generally get much recognition in accounts of the internets
formation (but see Roberts 1978) because the internet is a US invention and US
researchers tell its story. British scientists and researchers have parallel stories about
conceptual developments which, due to government policy including the Ofcial
Secrets Act, lack of investment and other inhibitors, were destined never to realise
their full potential. Polish scientists, meanwhile, argue that British accounts of
Alan Turings secret code-breaking successes at Bletchley Park do not acknowledge
adequately the work of the Polish Cipher Bureau, which was frst to crack the
Enigma code and which passed on vital details to France and Britain in the weeks
leading up to WWII.
How might the US environment in which the internet was eventually developed
difer from that in the UK at that time? Some people trace the foundation of the
Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funded the development of the internet,
to President Eisenhowers appreciation of scientists and his keenness, as a man with
a military past, to separate some American scientifc enquiry from direct military
control. Eisenhowers lead science adviser, James R. Killian, had been recruited from
his role as President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he attributed
past US science achievements to the free wheeling methods of outstanding academic
scientists and engineers who had always been free of any inhibiting regimentation
and organization (Killian, cited in Hafner and Lyon 2003: 18). Efectively, this
creative approach is in line with Floridas ideas for promoting innovation.
Circumstances in which the ARPA scientists were to work, collaboratively
involving graduate students and networking with business and academia, were very
diferent from the situation in the UK. In the post-WWII years, for example, not
only was Alan Turings theoretical work on the ACE computer classifed as secret
but, even so, he was forbidden from incorporating his Bletchley Park experience
since this would have revealed his secret code-breaking background. He had to
pretend to have a purely theory-based knowledge. Tese regulations added to the
frustrations of several years delay in building the ACE prototype. Impatient, Turing
left NPL in 1947, moving to the University of Manchester in 1948 to work there
with Professor Max Newman, who had been Turings mentor during his studies
in Cambridge and had worked alongside him at Bletchley Park. While NPL had
p o l i c y 47
foundered, Manchester had built the worlds frst stored-program digital electronic
computer the Manchester Baby (Anderson 2007: 76). At Manchester, Turing
used the computer to investigate artifcial intelligence. From there he went on to
explore pattern formation in nature, especially as this relates to Fibonacci numbers,
where each number in the sequence is the sum of the preceding two.
Te secrecy regime was not the only issue Turing had with the UK authorities.
Turing was homosexual, which was illegal in England and Wales until 1967. In
1952 he was charged and convicted of gross indecency, the legal term used at
that time. His security clearances were removed, meaning that he was no longer
able to collaborate with a number of other scientists in his areas of interest, since
they remained bound by the Secrets Acts and Turing was now classifed as a risky
contact. Tis happened even though Turing had been meticulous about keeping
secrets secret, and even though he was so open about his homosexuality that there
was no real prospect of his being a blackmail victim. As an example of his absolute
discretion in terms of national secrets, the judge knew nothing about his Bletchley
Park role in breaking the Enigma code, which could have made him a national
hero. Tat remained hidden until the 1970s. Turing preferred to accept treatment
for his homosexuality rather than a prison sentence. In 1952 such treatment in-
volved an experimental oestrogen regime, which worked as a chemical castration,
psychoanalysis and probation. Turing had been a world-class marathon runner, but
his lean body grew fat and he developed breasts and became depressed. He com-
mitted suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple in 1954 (Hodges 1992; Holt 2006).
Turings prosecution, his problems with the UKs secrecy regime and his loss of
security clearances are not raised here as part of a debate about whether the UK or
US was more or less homophobic. Te USA was also homophobic at that time.
Te reason for including this section is to illustrate how regulation and policy
debates may seem unexciting but can have far-reaching and sometimes unexpected
implications. It is intriguing to speculate, for example, whether diferent UK policies
on security, secrecy and technology in the late 1940s and early 1950s might have led
to diferent outcomes in the development of computers and networks. In particular,
had Turings time at NPL been productive, and his work with Donald Davies
prolonged, and if that collaboration had become the magnet for the post-Bletchley
code-breakers, instead of Manchester, then events might have progressed diferently.
By the late 1950s to 1960s, the US situation had become entirely unlike that
of Turings post-war UK. Killians views about collaborative work, the involvement
of learner graduate students in the ARPANET project, and the harnessing of
outside opinions and ideas through strategies such as Steve Crockers open Request
for Comments all provided a creative milieu which, for their day, aligns well with
Floridas 3 Ts: technology, talent and tolerance.
48 t h e i n t e r n e t
REGULATING THE INTERNET: A COMPARATIVE
EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIAN AND CHINESE
APPROACHES
Can you imagine the efect upon the internet if every website needed approval before
it could be posted, or if voluntary moderators required a specialist qualifcation
say in technology, ethics and psychology before they were allowed to host a
chat room or discussion board? Perhaps under-18s should get their parents consent
before going online, or have the internet equivalent of a drivers licence before
surfng the web? Tese kinds of restrictive regulations could have meant that the
internets explosive growth might never have happened. Tey would characterise a
highly restrictive regulatory regime. Te fact that our experience of the internet is
very diferent is a refection of the policy approach our governments take, and the
regulations that put those policies into operation.
Tis is not to say that the internet is unregulated in the western world. Prosecutions
of people who use the internet to access child pornography, for example, demonstrate
that web trafc is closely monitored by police where law enforcement authorities
have reason to suspect that a crime is being committed, such as in creating and
circulating images of child sexual abuse. Even so, control of the internet in most
free market societies is via light touch regulation. Light touch regulation means
that an activity is essentially self-regulated by the industry concerned, usually under
the scrutiny of a statutory body. A statutory body is an organisation set up by the
government to regulate an industry. It usually includes industry and consumer
representatives on its committees. Te process of self-regulation means the system
requires no intervention beyond the consumer, the service provider and the industry
body unless the consumer is unhappy with the response or the manner in which
the response is handled, in which case they would typically contact an elected
representative, or write to the papers or take legal action against the regulator.
Refection: Links between social diversity and creativity
Why might Florida and others argue that societies that embrace diversity and difference support creativity
and innovation?
Why might creativity and innovation be important in todays society?
p o l i c y 49
In Australia, for example, light touch regulation means that industry bodies such
as the Internet Industry Association are required by the regulatory (statutory) body,
the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), to draw up codes
of practice and minimum standards. All Internet Service Providers (ISP) within
Australia, and other industry players with Australian connections, must subscribe
to these codes and standards as part of their industry membership. If the public
have complaints, they pursue these through the relevant industry association. Once
regulators have approved the codes of practice and the dispute resolution processes,
the statutory body only become involved when industry self-regulation fails and
consumers have a legitimate complaint that has not been addressed, relating to
content that falls within Australias jurisdiction (ACMA 2008).
Often, where a complaint might be legitimate, the ofending material is produced
by a non-Australian company and held on a server outside Australian control: in
that case Australian law allows the server to be blocked, making it inaccessible to
Australian ISPs. Policy-makers are out of the communication loop unless an issue is
identifed that is not covered by the codes of conduct and which the industry body
is unwilling to address voluntarily. Critics of this model of regulation argue that it is
unfair that individual citizens are required to battle industry associations since the
relative diference in power and resources is so great.
In western nations, the emphasis is generally on encouraging people to use
the internet, not stopping them from doing so. Tis is not the situation in many
countries with diferent legal and regulatory systems. Highly regulated countries
include Myanmar (Burma), Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, China and Vietnam,
where citizens have been arrested and imprisoned for a range of activities which
would be permitted in western countries, including claiming the right to free speech
to criticise their government.
Although Australian law allows the blocking of some content from outside
Australia, the system of waiting for a complaint before action is taken means that
some forbidden content is occasionally seen by some people. Te 2007 Australian
election saw the Labor Party pledge to introduce an ISP-level internet flter to
eliminate illegal content from the internet. However, the defnition of illegal was
unspecifed and later seemed to constitute the kinds of materials which ACMA has
blocked in the past or required to be taken down. Since very few of these cases are
prosecuted, their illegality has not been tested in court. A conservative regulatory
fltering regime efectively removes many freedoms of choice from internet users,
as well as slowing internet speeds across the board as a result of a universal ISP-
level fltering process. Te Labor Party was elected and this proposal caused huge
controversy as its implications became clearer. Further, it led to downward pressure
on Australias digital freedom rating on the HarvardTorontoCambridgeOxford
50 t h e i n t e r n e t
universities-sponsored Open Net Initiative. Tis international watchdog had
already labelled Australia as having some of the most restrictive internet policies of
any Western nation (ONI Australia n.d.) on the basis of the blocked internet sites.
Even if Australia is a poor performer in terms of its citizens digital rights and
internet access, it clearly remains in a dramatically diferent category from the
heavy regulation practised by repressive regimes such as China. In the early years
of the internet, the Chinese government feared that giving people access to more
information would change the political dynamics and risk destabilising the status
quo. Te authorities tried to anticipate the problems that might arise in order to
develop policy and regulations to prevent these problems occurring. Te frst form
of internet regulation adopted [in China] was slightly less than total black out of the
new technology, says Endeshaw (2004: 41). Strategies for ensuring compliance took
the form of laying criminal charges against people for undesirable internet activity,
and the use of prosecutions and court cases as means of intimidation.
In terms of the policy cycle (see earlier this chapter), identifcation of the problem
is followed by gathering information to evaluate the extent and seriousness of the
issue to be addressed. For many countries, the internet has raised issues in terms of
childrens use of the technology and their willingness to interact with strangers. Te
fear is that their openness makes children vulnerable to cyber predators who seek out
minors on the net in order to befriend them.
Pornography is a totally separate issue from cyber predators, but it also causes
huge concern in some countries. In highly regulated nations like China, Saudi Arabia
and Iran, it is illegal to access pornography; no matter whether it is delivered on the
internet, or in terms of printed materials or flms. In all countries it is illegal to
access images of child abuse (although the defnition of child may vary in diferent
countries with the legal age of consent). In many countries there are concerns over
whether it is too easy for children, including young people under 18 but over the
age of consent, to access pornography, on purpose or by mistake including content
which would be legal if it were accessed by an adult. Tese totally separate concerns
about cyber predators, images of child sexual abuse and illegal, inappropriate or
accidental access to adult-only content all drive regulatory activity in the East and
the West.
Other concerns which have diferent impacts in diferent countries include on-
line gambling, hate sites with racist or misogynist content, violent images, terror
sites and perceived over-use (internet addiction) of the technology to the point
where it interferes with everyday life. Once concerns have been identifed and
agreed, policy is developed to respond to these concerns and, hopefully, eliminate
them. Strategies used to gain support for the enactment of new policy include:
public hearings; government committees (some of which may not be public);
p o l i c y 51
harnessing and responding to pressure group advocacy; soliciting comments from
individuals, community groups and from elected parliamentary representatives;
monitoring debates in the media and other discussion in the public sphere (chat
sites, for example, and online petitions). Once new policy is agreed and passed, its
efects are evaluated to ensure that it achieves the ends desired and that there are no
unintended outcomes.
In China, there were two major problems that arose from the decision to all but
ban the internet. Some people continued to use it privately, even though that was
against government policy. Also, given the benefts western countries appeared to
be gaining, Chinese lawmakers gradually decided that the nation might be putting
itself at a competitive disadvantage by forbidding young people to use the internet.
China soon discovered that its attempt to choke the Internet for fear of what it
might do to the political establishment clashed with its commitment to open up the
economy to foreign investment and trade (Endeshaw 2004: 41). China changed it
policy. Te decision to open up the internet had already seen 137 million Chinese
users by the end of 2006 (ONI China n.d.). Te number of Chinese citizens online
overtook the number of US users in 2008, and China now has more internet users
than any other nation on earth.
In terms of embracing the internet in the national interest, Chinas approach
has some similarities with that adopted by Singapore where there is a hierarchy of
heavier vs. weaker regulation in diferent social spheres . . . Heavier regulation in
the home, rather than business, difers from the expected priority of many western
countries (Green 2002: 124). Singapores reversal of the usual western order, where
western regulators see the home as private and thus less regulated than business,
refects Singapores export priorities and recognises that a competitive business
strategy might involve businesses operating under a more lenient regulatory regime.
Ang and Yeo (1998: 17) comment that Information for the home is considered less
critical so censorship of such information is deemed to have less deleterious efect.
Chinas policies balance a desire for stability within its national boundaries with
an ambition to be hugely infuential on the international stage. Leonard (2008a:
113) comments that: some Chinese hope to build a global order in Chinas image.
Given this, there is considerable Chinese eagerness to understand what is cur-
rently making the global order tick, and the internet is an important element of
that dynamic. Indeed, Ernkvist and Strm (2008: 98) talking specifcally about
Chinese control of online gaming, in a manner that can be extrapolated to general
online activity, argue that there are three critically relevant aspects of state policy:
(a) information control, (b) technonationalism, and (c) social fears/pragmatic
nationalism. Technonationalism here indicates a Chinese view that since the
internet was developed in the US, it needs to be re-imagined in a way to make it
52 t h e i n t e r n e t
more culturally Chinese and to ensure that most profts stay in China. Control of
digital information, in combination with the promotion of a nationalist ethic, drives
much of what China tries to do in its internet policy-making.
Dubbed the Great Firewall of China (e.g. Guardian 2008), the nationwide fre-
wall controlling Chinese citizens access to the internet prevents people reading
sensitive information, including: sites run by international human rights groups;
accounts of past events such as the Tiananmen Square clampdown; and dissident
calls for autonomy and independence for Taiwan and Tibet. Information about
Falun Gong has also been banned. Kalathil and Boas (2003: 26) comment that the
authorities have adopted two main strategies: fltering material and the promotion of
self-censorship through regulation, policing and punitive action. Service providers
are required to enforce restrictions: ISPs are forbidden to allow politically sensitive
information to be circulated via the internet. Tey also have to report on internet
users. Website administrators are required to hire censors, known as cleaning ladies
or big mammas, to screen for and quickly remove ofensive material from bulletin
boards and chat rooms (Kalathil and Boas 2003: 26). Such regulations apply equally
to western internet corporations operating in China, such as Google and Yahoo, as
to domestic companies. Although innovative libertarians in the East and the West
continually develop technology and practices for countering Chinese state censor-
ship, it remains a risky activity for a Chinese citizen to venture beyond the Great
Firewall.
Although many countries, like China, have decided that they want more of the
next generation of workers to be digitally literate, the appropriate way to achieve
that outcome will difer from country to country. In Australia, for example, the
Labor government formulated a policy to achieve an education revolution with
every schoolchild in years 912 (ages 1417) having access to their own school-
based computer: computer technology is no longer just a key subject to learn,
it is now the key to learning in almost every subject (ALP 2007). Most western
countries aim to educate young people to enter a digital workforce. In China, the
desired outcome includes greater business efciency. Wong and Nah (2001, cited
by Endeshaw 2004: 51), comment upon Chinas desire to meet the challenges of
the information economy by embracing rapid development of high-technology
sectors. Further, Chinese factories make many components used by other nations to
embrace a high-technology future.
Policy formation and policy enactment processes also depend upon the political
system in place. Te multi-party democratic debate practised in many western
nations is entirely at odds with the authoritarian role of the Chinese Communist
Party, yet commentators are increasingly indicating that there is considerable debate
within the Party. Tis debate is supported by the outputs of think-tanks and of
p o l i c y 53
higher education institutions. A wide variety of opinion seems acceptable, pro-
vided the debates do not include a range of taboo topics, from Falun Gong to Tibet,
Taiwan and Tiananmen. Te dignity and interests of the state (Endeshaw 2004: 46)
are also jealously protected.
In 2005, the US internet company Yahoo earned international condemnation by
providing Chinese authorities with the details of one of their account holders, Shi
Tao, who was subsequently imprisoned by China for ten years for illegally provid-
ing state secrets to foreign entities (Amnesty International n.d.). Te state secrets
concerned a Chinese Communist Party memo to the domestic press warning them
against fuelling unrest by reporting social disturbances around the anniversary of the
Tiananmen Square massacre. Shi Tao had sent this directive to contacts in the US,
who then publicised it. Subsequently, Yahoo, Google, Cisco systems and Microsoft
were summoned to explain their companies policies in China to a US Congress
subcommittee. Te internet frms argued that enabling a censored Internet to grow
in China is better than having no Internet at all, or one controlled by Chinese
search companies (Gunther 2006). Opposing this view, Congressman Lantos, a
Californian Democrat, commented afterwards: Tese companies tell us that they
will change China. But China has already changed them (Gunther 2006). However,
in January 2010 a cyber attack on google.cn prompted it to stop censoring Chinese
search results (Zetter 2010).
Although political repression compromises the potential of the internet to lib-
eral ise Chinese society, there are signs that a discussion is becoming more open
while avoiding the most sensitive topics. Mark Leonard, executive director of the
European Council on Foreign Relations and author of What Does China Tink?
(2008b), describes his astonishment during a 2003 trip to discover that the Beijing-
based Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) had 50 research centres covering
260 disciplines with 4,000 full-time researchers (Leonard 2008a). Tis contrasted
favourably with the sum of all Europes think-tank researchers, which Leonard
estimated as being in the low thousands, while his view was that even the US think-
tank heaven . . . cannot have more than 10,000. Further, the 4,000 researchers in
CASS are a very small fraction of the Chinese think-tank workforce. Tere are
another dozen or so think-tanks in Beijing alone, along with others elsewhere
(Leonard 2008a). In some respects these think-tanks are having a signifcant impact:
Inside China in party forums, but also in universities, in semi-independent
think-tanks, in journals and on the internet debate rages about the direction
of the country: new left economists argue with the new right about inequality;
political theorists argue about the relative importance of elections and the rule
of law; and in the foreign policy realm, Chinas neocons argue with liberal
internationalists about grand strategy. (Leonard 2008a)
54 t h e i n t e r n e t
It may be a surprise that policy in China is so fercely discussed. However, dis-
agreement is not readily recognisable as such since certain key issues are not talked
about at all; political dissenters face persecution; and the kinds of freedom granted
involve the Chinese arguing about whether it is the intellectuals that infuence
decision-makers, or whether groups of decision-makers use pet intellectuals as
informal mouthpieces to advance their own views (Leonard 2008a). In any case,
for some aspects of Chinese social and political life, a range of possible options is
considered and debated in a more open fashion than might be the case with an
adversarial Westminster model of debate. Tis openness might be attributable to
that gap between a top-down process in which the Chinese Communist Party has
almost absolute power to implement policy as it sees ft, and the equally important
negotiated process whereby power is highly fragmented and infuenced by a number
of actors at diferent levels with conficting interests (Ernkvist and Strm 2008: 102).
Tink-tank members are some of these infuential actors and are experimenting,
among other things, with new forms of Chinese-style democratic engagement.
Refection: How much do we know about China?
China is a huge country with a complex history.
It seems to have the capacity to change very quickly, and appears to welcome a range of social and civic
experiments.
If were surprised to learn about the number of paid thinkers in China, as Leonard seems to be, what does
that say about our everyday understandings of the nation?
Surprisingly for many free market nations, some Chinese political scientists and
think-tank researchers believe they have identifed a range of problems with western
democracy. Tese include: falling election turn-outs; disillusionment with elected
leaders; declining political party and trade union membership; and a rise in opinion
poll politics. Some Chinese commentators go so far as to suggest that western-style
politics is essentially a failing model.
Fang Ning, a CASS political scientist, argues that western democracy is like a
fxed-menu restaurant where customers can select the identity of their chef, but have
no say in what dishes he chooses to cook for them. Chinese democracy, on the other
hand, always involves the same chefthe Communist Partybut the policy dishes
which are served up can be chosen la carte (cited in Leonard 2008a). Te small
town of Zeguo in Wenling City ofers one example of this la carte approach. Zeguo
decides its budget priorities on the basis of a model of democratic consultation based
p o l i c y 55
upon an original Athenian democratic process called deliberative polling (Fishkin
et al. 2006). Te results of this experiment with inclusive, community-based demo-
cratic engagement have caused signifcant interest in China and the West, and have
clear possibilities for online models of democracy.
As is the case with Zeguo, Chinas la carte ideas are often trialled in specifc
circumstances, such as the Shenzhen economic zone on the border of Hong Kong,
with the possibility that they will then be allowed to spread organically. Similarly,
a Chinese free-market economy was trialled for many years alongside a state-
controlled market until by the early 1990s, almost all products were sold at market
prices (Leonard 2008a). In China, the identifcation of desired policy outcomes and
the formulation of policy to achieve these are extensively canvassed by researchers,
advisers and intellectuals behind closed doors. To a limited extent such debate is
also in public, on the internet, since the internet is generally freer than the print and
broadcast media.
In both the West and in China, the enactment of policy and its implementation
leads to further consideration of the costs and benefts of these as the implications of
policy development and change become visible and are evaluated. In both systems
countries seek information about the ways in which other nations have handled
the problem. For some Australians, facing the prospect of ISP-level fltering, their
government has borrowed too much from the Chinese approach to regulation.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICIES AND
TECHNOLOGIES
Good internet services depend upon good telecommunications and, like the inter-
net itself, telecom services are afected by government policies. In most western
nations since the 1980s, for example, telecoms monopolies have been broken up.
Tese massive changes in telecom policies were grounded in the 1970s realisations
that free-market economies were increasingly information-based (Bell 1973). Tis
meant that the wealth of developed economies was becoming more dependent upon
information processing and information-linked employment, including education
and management as well as computing and media, than it was upon manufacturing,
resources and agriculture. As society became more dependent upon advanced
communications to access, manipulate, and add value to important information, so
more pressure was placed upon the telecommunications infrastructure. Privatisation
of telecoms was one way in which to raise money to power investment. In many
majority-world (developing) nations, by contrast, telecommunications remains a
monopoly that is regulated by the government, rather than by market forces.
56 t h e i n t e r n e t
In richer countries across most of the twentieth century, the twisted copper
telephone lines and manually-operated telephone exchanges served the everyday
needs of communications across distance. With STD, the Subscriber Trunk
Dialling system in the UK, known as DDD or Direct Distance Dialling in the
US, a level of automation became possible. Tese technologies made manual
phone exchanges obsolete and enabled the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) to
support an increased range of applications and automatically connect long-distance
calls. With the accelerating transition from analogue communications to digital
communications, other ways of moving information could be explored.
Digital information is communicated via an unambiguous sequence of numbers
which form a data stream. Tis difers from analogue information, which resembles
the original source characteristics and is continuously variable. Tus an analogue
telephone call occurs as a result of the sound waves of the voice causing vibrations
which are translated into electronic signals that pass along the wires. In a digital
call, the voice is digitised into discrete units of information, with the fdelity of
trans mission and reproduction depending upon the precision of the samples of
information coded. Tus an analogue-to-digital converter that samples 4,000 times
per second would have higher fdelity to the original that one which samples 2,000
times per second (Brain n.d.). A communications channel that can handle the
digitised version of a voice can also handle other digitised data; for example from a
television channel, or email, or any other digital application.
Te fact that channels which carried digital voice data could also carry digital
information from computers and other communication technologies meant that one
channel could handle inputs and outputs from many diferent information sources,
communicated for a variety of diferent reasons. Te technologies themselves began
to share important characteristics too, since a key function of digital tech no logies
was the conversion of information into, or from, digital form. Developments in
computing and communications in the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to buzzwords
such as convergence to note the ways in which more and more information was
becoming digitised, and thus amenable to being handled in consistent ways using
diferent technological platforms across a spectrum of uses. Essentially, convergence
marked the blurring of borders between:
n Information Technologies (IT: digital processing)
n Telecommunications (information carriage), and
n Media (content the meaning of what was communicated)
Consistency of handling allowed the packaging and repackaging of digital in-
formation within computer networks, and the seamless transfer of data between
them, even though the networks could vary in signifcant ways. Further, the
p o l i c y 57
Increasingly, a diferentiation arose between the products, services and data avail-
able to consumers with broadband access compared to those with dial-up. Dial-up
access depends upon older and cheaper technology, generally using external modems
connecting the computer to the analogue phone lines that service an internet
connection via access to the consumers Internet Service Provider (ISP). Modems
are modulator-demodulators, translating the digital information from the computer
to an analogue form suited to transfer over the POTS. When received at the ISP
in analogue form, the ISP modem translates the information back into digital
data for ISP network connection to the internet. Dial-up connections are much
slower than broadband and are unsuited to data-intensive services such as streaming
video, online game play and the sophisticated graphics and animated sequences
of high-specifcation websites. When they can aford to do so, keen internet users
tend to migrate from dial-up services to broadband with the efect that relative US
rates in late 2008 indicate the 57 per cent of US citizens have broadband in the
home compared with 9 per cent on dial-up (Horrigan 2008a). Tis is one reason
why broadband take-up rates are often used as an indicator of relative economic
development. Defnitions for broadband services tend to focus on minimum data
speeds. Tough these have increased over the years and can be delivered at a low
level through the POTS, high-speed broadband requires more of the data journey
to be via fbre-optics than by cable. Such systems are often referred to by acronyms
such as FTTN (fbre to the node). Tis is not as fast as, but is much cheaper to
install than, FTTH (fbre to the home) or FTTP (fbre to the premises). FTTN
is cheaper because nodes are junctions which then radiate out to service a range of
individual homes and ofces, like telephone exchanges do. FTTH takes the high-
speed connection that one step further by using fbre to connect the home to the
node, as well as the node to the backbone.
At a minimum, broadband requires DSL (digital subscriber line) connection
technology interfacing between the domestic computer user and the POTS
deregulation of telecommunications meant also the de facto deregulation of many
elements of media and IT.
Refection: The Problem of Jargon
Is there a problem with having to learn jargon to take part in policy debates?
What happens if policy discussions are restricted to the well-educated?
58 t h e i n t e r n e t
infrastructure. Alternatively, it may use the bandwidth of cable television services
already provided to the home: even though these cable services may actually use
satellite delivery (OECD 2008). In contrast to a broadband service, the computer
signal travelling via a dial-up service monopolises the phone connection, meaning
that the POTS provides either a computer link or a voice link at any one time. With
broadband, the DSL operates at high frequency in contrast to the low frequency voice
service, so that voice and broadband internet can be accommodated simultaneously.
Te Wests emerging digital economies in the 1980s and 1990s placed immense
pressure upon existing communications networks. Te carrying capacity of the
older infrastructure elements, such as twisted copper wires, was revolutionised by
innovative products. For example, in the 1990s Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber
Line technology (ADSL) made it technologically feasible and economically
attractive to deliver as many as four video channels and high-speed digital data
services in addition to voice to the home over the twisted copper networks of the
telephone companies (Estabrooks 1995: 127). ADSL is a particular kind of DSL
service that allows greater speeds (hence the asymmetricality) of download than of
upload, a feature that was initially a problem with peer-to-peer fle-sharing software
until the development of Bram Cohens open source BitTorrent protocols in 2001
(Tompson 2005). Whereas twisted copper wires had historically been used to
service homes, telecoms providers increasingly laid more coaxial cables. Tese had
previously been used for transmitting large numbers of simultaneous voice calls,
for example, in submarine cables with regular booster points, and their use more
generally had allowed a dramatic increase in the volume of information carried. Like
twisted copper wires, coaxial cabling required physically laying or stringing between
points to be serviced, and rewiring cities became expensive. Even so, Estabrooks
(1995: 88) comments that: the broadband nature of coaxial cable made it feasible to
carry as many as one hundred [cable television] channels.
Although coaxial cable and twisted copper were well-established technologies by
the second half of the twentieth century, there were still many places without a
cabled infrastructure. Further, the breakthrough which allowed the innovation of
new products such as bank Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs), was based on a
revolutionary new technology, fbre-optics. Tese fbres used light signals to transfer
data and could transmit data at higher transmission rates and with lower losses and
[were able] to do this at lower error rates (Mercury 1992). During the 1990s, older
cabling technologies were replaced or augmented by fbre-optics, which also needs
laying; and by satellite and microwave communications which work on point-to-
point transmission and reception without the requirement for hard-wire connections
between those points. Broadband services can be delivered using one of a range of
technological platforms (OECD 2008), or a combination of these.
p o l i c y 59
New technologies and technology upgrades magnifed the capital cost of pro-
viding ICT infrastructure and services, while making them generally more
accessible, and growing the market. Governments came under increasing pressure
from business and consumers to allocate more money to state-owned monopoly
telecoms providers, or to privatise these so that the corporations could raise capital
from private investors. Tese pressures came to a head in the 1980s in the Reagan
(US)/Tatcher (UK) era, and over the fnal decades of that century most of the
worlds developed nations deregulated. Tis meant that the telecoms institutions
were freer to set their own priorities and invest in the areas which they felt were
experiencing greatest demand and ofering greatest market growth. Sometimes this
kind of deregulation is called liberalisation, since the organisation is freed up to
respond to market forces in a laissez-faire, or lets see what happens, environment.
Essentially, liberalisation and deregulation are free market policy approaches that
let the ICT market players themselves determine the costs and oferings of telecom
products and services, rather than a government deciding these.
For a market to operate freely, which is to say unfettered rather than at no
cost, there has to be competition. Where competition is lacking, the single business
pro viding the service is called a monopoly. Since it does not have to compete for
customers, a monopoly can set its own prices according to how it sees its market.
Sometimes a company might decide that its more proftable to deliver very expen-
sive services to a small number of people or organisations at a high proft per client,
rather than delivering more afordable services to a larger number of people at a
smaller margin per consumer. Tis view would have clear implications for economic
growth.
In practice, most national telecom companies were heavily regulated by their
governments and required to service large segments of their populations. Some
people argued that governments were not the best organisations to run telecom
companies, and that an organisation with a monopoly becomes inefcient and
complacent and is generally unwilling to invest in new technologies. Tese various
considerations meant that many of the traditional monopoly telecom carriers were
broken up from the early 1980s onwards with diferent sections of the fragmented
monopoly competing against each other. Tis was the case with the UK 1981
break-up of the British postal, telegraph and telephone (PTT) service, to form Te
Post Ofce and British Telecom (BT). In the US, the break-up of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) had started with an antitrust case in
1974 and resulted in the 1982 division of Ma Bell into seven regional Baby Bells.
Additionally, or alternatively, strong telecommunication companies from other
jurisdictions were allowed to enter many national marketplaces.
60 t h e i n t e r n e t
Te advantage of monopoly telecom carriers, and one reason why they lasted for
so long, was that such companies argued they needed the whole market in order to
provide universal service. An early motto of Ma Bell, for example, was One policy,
one system, universal service (Nohe 1995). Te notion of universal service implied
that anyone who wanted a service, in this case a phone connection, could have
one for a reasonable charge. Afordability was guaranteed by using general revenue
to cross-subsidise hugely expensive connections: for example, remote households
in rugged country. For many, this cross-subsidisation was an essential element of
the carrier being able to deliver services according to their community service ob-
ligation (CSO). As communications became more important in everyday life, so the
implications of an individual being excluded from the telephone service (or later,
the online environment) became greater. Some telecom carriers described this need
to reach everyone as the universal service obligation (USO). While governments
generally accepted that it was in the public interest to promote widespread phone
access, they began to listen to businesses who argued otherwise.
Corporate customers complained that international competitiveness was threat-
ened because their national telecoms supplier was over-charging for services in
order to cross-subsidise unproftable consumers. Tey maintained that monopoly
providers fail to introduce new technologies quickly and at an appropriate price
because they do not need to worry about competition. Further, they suggested that
greater public good was achieved where business was as competitive and as proftable
as possible, thus employing more people and building local wealth. Tey argued it
was in the public interest to break the telecommunications monopoly.
Te breaking-up of monopolies delivered consumer choice at the expense of the
principle of universal service. Te telephone service was no longer provided as a right
to citizens under the USO, instead people qualifed for a phone service by having
the income and status to be a customer. Desirable customers found themselves
benefting from price competition and service improvements, while less-desirable
consumers found themselves waiting a long time for connections and repairs which
were only delivered at signifcant cost. In many countries the government tried to
balance the disadvantage experienced by the dismemberment of the monopolies by
placing conditions upon telecoms companies as part of the licensing regime. Such
conditions might include the maintenance of public phone boxes, or provision of
mobile phone services to small communities and isolated homesteaders. Generally
this approach has led to confict, since the telecom carrier argues that such regulation
imposes an unfair constraint on trade and proftability. Another approach has been
for the government to subsidise the services it wants to see delivered, so that high
costs of access are transferred to the tax payer, rather than the individual telecoms
customer.
p o l i c y 61
After liberalisation via the break-up of the monopolies, and the introduction of
competition, many telecommunications carriers found themselves privatised. Tis
was the case for BT in the UK, and Telstra in Australia, and meant that the capital
value of the corporation was divided into shares, which were ofered for sale on the
local stock exchange. Te money raised usually went to the government to ofset
the public investment in the company which was now owned by shareholders.
Privatisation also allowed the previous monopolies to raise money on the stock
markets to fund modernisation of their infrastructure and to invest in new products
to expand their markets. It is through the mechanism of privatisation that the capital
value of publicly-owned (sometime, nationalised) companies becomes the property
of private individuals and fnancial institutions, and can be traded on the local stock
exchange.
More recently, many of the old telecommunications systems have had their
markets decimated by mobile technologies. As Passerini et al. comment, Wireless
connectivity is driving innovation and business opportunities (2007: 25). Tese
developments can be dated back to the 1970s and the development of frst gen-
eration mobile (1G) technology. Second generation (2G) mobile phones allowed
voice and SMS/texting services, but change accelerated at the start of the twenty-frst
century with the introduction of third generation (3G) capability, which marked
the introduction of mobile access to the internet and coincided with huge increases
in revenues, contributing to the US$1.2 trillion spent on telecommunications in
the US alone in 2004 (Passerini et al. 2007: 25). In the early years, 3G capability
was promoted as linking subscribers with the 3Gs, girls, games and gambling,
recognising that these are key drivers for many masculine early-adopters (Layden
2003; Skeldon 2002: 18). Futurists foresee both a 4G (fourth generation) and a 5G
before 2020 (Ohmori et al. 2000: 134). With each generation, data speeds increase,
as do functionality and choice of features; with dynamic competition between
service providers and handset manufacturers prompting spiralling adoption rates.
Te discussion of telecommunications deregulation (or re-regulation if you see
the market as taking over the regulatory driving seat, instead of the government
(Palmer 1994)) is an example of changes in policy leading to changes in regulatory
practices. Governments attempted to balance diferent claims upon the public
interest, universal service or vibrant industry growth, for instance, with a commitment
to protect those most likely to lose from the shift in the market structure. For the
majority of people living in western countries, deregulation of telecommunications
prompted a dramatic fall in the cost of services and an improvement in service
delivery. It also set the stage for the burgeoning growth of the domestic internet. For
people in poorer countries, however, it is the continuing growth of afordable mobile
62 t h e i n t e r n e t
communications that has ofered the greatest potential to revolutionise lives in terms
of digital access, as we discuss briefy now.
In many countries that were too poor to lay traditional telecommunications cables,
mobile phones ofer a way to bypass piecemeal technological incrementalism. Tis
means that instead of a technical infrastructure being gradually replaced with newer
technology, the country has leap-frogged into advanced technology. Passerini et al.
argue that the rapid adoption of 3G technologies, [means China is] skipping entire
generations of technologies and products (2007: 27). Elsewhere, in the continent
of Africa and in India, the adoption of mobile phones has been compared with the
invention of the telegraph in terms of its virtually unregulated but revolutionary
impact on markets (Carey 1988).
Between 2005 and 2007, the number of mobile subscribers in India doubled,
resulting in over 150 million mobile customers compared with fewer than 50 million
landline subscribers (Abraham 2008: 9). Abrahams research showed that even 2G
capability has the potential to transform markets in poor economies. Specifcally, in
Kerala, fshermen use their phones at sea to fnd out demand and price for catch,
and then fsh to order according to market requirements. Tis strategy conserves
time, fuel and fshing stocks. Out on the water, the fshermen would also send out
alerts on the mobile phones if large shoals were found . . . reducing the number of
fshermen who had to spend time idling on shore (Abraham 2008: 12).
India would be a classic example of a nation which is currently experiencing a
digital divide, both internally and between India and the richer countries of the
West. At the time of Abrahams research, only 3.5 per cent of Indias population
was online, and this networked population was judged to constitute 3.7 per cent of
global internet users (Computer Economics 2007). Tis compared with 69.9 per cent
of the US population, and 62.3 per cent of the UKs (Computer Economics 2007).
Even though technology users in marginal and emerging markets are comparatively
disadvantaged, in India and elsewhere they are resourceful and imaginative,
making ICTs work to their beneft. For those unable to take advantage of the ICT
environment, however, new media greatly magnify the likelihood and the severity
of the digital divide. It is to the social implications of the digital divide that we next
turn.
p o l i c y 63
Summary
n Chapter 3 looks at policy as this affects the internet. It started by considering differences in the regulation
of social and political life that directly infuenced the development of computer technologies in the UK and
the US, particularly as these impacted upon one key British scientist, Alan Turing.
n The second case study compared and contrasted aspects of internet regulation in Australia with analogous
circumstances in China. Some commentators suggest there is more debate in China than has generally been
accepted, as well as some interesting experiments in local democracy. Such comments specifcally exclude
certain categories of dissent which attract draconian sentences. In contrast, although Australia is generally
thought of as a liberal democracy, it seeks to control the internet more than most western nations.
n Finally, we looked at telecommunications policy, which has particular relevance in terms of delivering the
internet to consumers. Although the focus of the case study is mainly upon telecom policy in the US and
the UK, it also includes an aside about the exciting potential of mobile phones to transform communications
in the worlds poorer countries.
Chapter 4 focuses on how a digital divide separates rich countries from the poor, and rich consumers from
people who cannot afford to consume.
4 THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
INTRODUCTION
Are you a digital native? Do you feel at home on the internet? Te chances are that
people born since the 1980s, reading this book, have grown up alongside the World
Wide Web. Even so, theyre only likely to be totally familiar with the internet if they
were born into one of the globes wealthiest countries. According to Internet World
Statistics (2009), the top 20 countries in terms of their contributions to the overall
global population of internet users, account for 76.8 per cent of the worlds internet
users. Tis fgure demonstrates that some 175 countries between them have the
remaining 23.2 per cent of the worlds internet users. Interestingly, the total number
of countries is a disputed fgure. Te UN has a total of 192 members, but excludes
Taiwan, Kosovo, the Vatican City and some nations like Scotland and Greenland
which are not fully independent (UN 2009; Rosenberg 2009).
Te table below also uses data from Internet World Statistics (2009), but the
information has been reworked to put the countries and various non-autonomous
regions in order of the percentage of their citizens who have internet access. Te
top fve countries (plus a semi-autonomous region), and the bottom fve for which
records are available, are shown in Table 4.1.
A country-by-country account of ranked internet participation indicates that
internet sources are largely concentrated in a small number of countries, while the
huge majority of nations share ever decreasing tiny fractions of overall internet
population. Such a distribution graph is described as featuring a long tail. While
Table 4.1 indicates that Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands are the three nations
with the highest percentage of their population online, with well over 4 in 5 people
participating in the internet, a global graph of population participation would have
countries like East Timor and Myanmar, both at 0.1 per cent of their population
using the internet, close to the end of the tail. Participation here considers not just
what we possess but also what we can do, the extent to which we can fulfl various
social roles which in itself refers back to older discussions of social rights and
citizenship (Somerville, 1998 cited in Haddon 2000: 389).
66 t h e i n t e r n e t
Further down this ranked list of percentage of the population participating
in the internet, the UK has 79.8 per cent internet users, New Zealand 79.7 per
cent, Australia 79.6 per cent, South Korea 77.3 per cent, USA 74.1 per cent and
Canada 71.7 per cent. Clearly, percentages difer from raw numbers. If we change
the focus from the percentage of each countrys citizens that have access to the
internet (Table 4.1) and instead look at the top countries in terms of the percentage
they contribute to the global community of internet users (see Table 4.2), we see
that the lists of countries are very diferent. Te top fve countries in each list have
no overlaps, implying that it may be easier for smaller, richer countries to reach
maximum internet take-up, but very hard for such countries to make much impact
on the global population of internet users now that really populous nations such as
China and India are coming online. Te inclusion of China and India in the top fve
countries, in terms of their contribution to the overall population of internet users
in the world, demonstrates dramatic diferences in the percentage of citizens able to
access the internet in a national context.
Taken together, these fgures indicate interesting information about internet
access and opportunity for diferent people living in diferent countries. In 2008,
Table 4.1: Internet users as a percentage of a territorys population, for 30 June 2009
Population Population using
internet
% Internet
users
Falkland Islands* 2,483 2,400 96.7
Iceland 306,694 273,930 89.3
Norway 4,660,539 3,993,400 85.7
Netherlands 16,715,999 14,272,700 85.4
Denmark 5,500,510 4,629,600 84.2
Andorra 83,888 70,040 83.5
216 nations and territories [. . .]
Ethiopia 85,237,338 360,000 0.4
Sierra Leone 5,132,138 13,900 0.3
Bangladesh 156,050,883 500,000 0.3
Myanmar (Burma) 48,137,741 40,000 0.1
Timor-Leste (East Timor) 1,131,612 1,500 0.1
[. . .] 15 entities with 0 users
Source: Data derived from Internet World Statistics, 30 June 2009, Miniwatts Marketing Group,
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm. Tis list includes territories as well as autonomous
countries, with [*] indicating a semi-autonomous territory.
t h e d i g i t a l d i v i d e 67
China overtook the USA in terms of the number of its citizens online, but only
one in four Chinese citizens can access the internet compared with three in four
US citizens. India has the worlds fourth largest internet-user population, but nine
in ten of its citizens (93 per cent) are not online. Such fgures address all access to
the internet and do not diferentiate between dial-up services, which historically
have dominated the market, and the more expensive broadband services. Nowadays,
broadband take-up is often used as an indicator of economic prosperity and, as
Table 4.3 illustrates, the number of broadband subscribers around the world is still
comparatively small.
Leaving aside diferences between broadband and dial-up, half way through 2009,
only 24.7 per cent of the worlds population was online (Internet World Statistics
2009). Tree in every four people globally did not have access to the internet.
Tese global citizens fall on the wrong side of what is termed the digital divide: a
somewhat problematic term used to indicate that there are haves and have-nots
in the digital world. Te divide itself marks the parameters which prevent the have-
nots from joining the haves. Tis pattern of relative privilege not only re-inscribes
the gender and power debates from the early years of the internet in the West, but
ofers grounds for an argument of cultural imperialism (see Chapter 5) whereby
western patterns of training, behaviour and infrastructure are required to keep, for
example, a bank headquarters running, with 24-hour electricity supplies, western-
trained technical support, high-level security protocols, and communication and
network infrastructures that construct this locale as a node for a network developed
and controlled elsewhere. Tis is the issue identifed by Wambi (cited in Bissio
1990), Technology is like a genetic material. It is encoded with the characteristics of
the society which developed it, and it tries to reproduce that society.
Table 4.2: Percentage of worlds internet users, and percentage of a countrys citizens
using the internet, for the top fve countries in terms of numbers of users, 30 June 2009
% of the worlds
internet users
% of nations population
using the internet
China 20.3 25.3
United States of America 13.6 74.1
Japan 5.6 74.0
India 4.9 7.0
Brazil 4.0 34.0
Source: Data derived from Internet World Statistics, 30 June 2009, Miniwatts Marketing Group,
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm.
68 t h e i n t e r n e t
Many nations sufer from being on the wrong side of the digital divide and this
lack of e-knowledge and infrastructure has implications for their economy and their
society. Tis is one reason why, as we saw in Chapter 3, China dropped its policy
of repressing internet use and moved instead to a policy of heavy regulation of the
internet. China, like most growing nations in the world, wants a digitally literate
population.
As well as being an issue internationally, the digital divide is discussed here in
terms of national policies as a challenge for governments within individual nation-
states. Even in wealthy countries like the USA and Japan, the poorest 2025 per cent
of the population is likely to have no internet access (Horrigan 2008b). Although
western governments generally want their citizens to participatwe in high technology
communications such as internet use, their markets tend to be deregulated. Te
provision of ICT goods and services is usually left to the big companies that make up
the market, moderated on occasion by specifc government regulations concerning
access and coverage. Tis approach to providing information and communication
goods and services means that the internet becomes available to those elements
of national populations which are cost-efective to service, and who can aford to
Table 4.3: Top ten countries worldwide for fxed broadband
subscribers, frst quarter 2009
Country Subscribers (million)
China 88
USA 83.9
Japan 30.6
Germany 24.1
France 18
UK 17.6
South Korea 15.7
Italy 12.4
Brazil 10
Canada 9.5
Source: Data from BuddeComm (2009), http://www.budde.com.au,
Key Broadband Statistics, Table 20, Based on Point Topic research for
the Broadband Forum, 2009. Broadband defned as a minimum speed
of 144Kb/s. Fixed broadband includes wireless but is diferentiated
from mobile services. Figures based on self-reporting by carriers.
t h e d i g i t a l d i v i d e 69
pay. ICTs are not always available to those who need them most. Unlike countries,
companies construct their client-base as being customers rather than citizens.
Within the generality of the digital divide there are groups of people who are
specifcally disadvantaged as a result of changed circumstances (Warschauer 2003;
Rooksby and Weckert 2007). Tese are people who have had access to the internet
in the past, but whose circumstances have changed, sometimes termed the nouveau
information poor (Green 2002: 1039). Examples would include the newly un-
employed, the recently retired on low incomes, some people who are divorced or
separated, some migrants, those who relocate to remote or lesser-serviced areas and
young people moving away from afuent homes (ibid.: 1067). Tese internet-
experienced individuals sufer at several levels: not only do they lack access to the
internet, they have a clear idea of how the internet could transform their circ-
umstances and, fnally, they appreciate how the internet could provide a resource
through which other people can ofer support while they negotiate the realities of
their reduced circumstances.
Every country includes a number of citizens, like those indicated above, who
do not make desirable customers for big ICT companies. Such citizens live in
inaccessible places, such as in remote locations with residency numbers too small for
a viable service, or they are too poor, elderly or socially and culturally marginalised.
Typically, these less serviceable citizens are unable to access the internet except
through publicly funded resources such as libraries. In this chapter we examine
some aspects of the digital divide as it afects people living in wealthy countries.
We address digital inequality in the US and we also examine the circumstances of
people who care for others in the UK. First, however, we consider the ways that
some homeless people in Scotland use ICTs.
Refection: Being a digital native
Do you think of yourself as a digital native?
How does your communication life compare with that of your parents when they were your age?
ICTS IN THE LIVES OF SCOTTISH HOMELESS
In the context of three in four of the worlds population being excluded from the
internet, the role of the mobile phone as the globes major technology for connection
and agency should come as no surprise. When we examine the lives of the poorest
70 t h e i n t e r n e t
people in the rich minority world, the same pattern is evident. Claire Bure (2005)
carried out a small research project investigating ICT use among homeless people
in the Scottish cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, focussing specifcally on mobile
phones and internet access. internet access was via a drop-in space for homeless
people; mobile phones were usually hand-me-downs, although they may have been
gifts from case workers, or sometimes they were stolen.
Homelessness is a name given to a variety of complex circumstances which is
generally associated with a heightened level of chaos, vulnerability and un pre-
dict ability. In some cases the people in Bures research were living in dormitory
or borrowed accommodation; in others they were literally on the streets. In these
situations, the mobile ofered the valuable beneft of being portable and thus at
hand, which could be especially important in an emergency or when the user felt
under threat. Te accessibility of mobiles contrasted with the comparatively fxed
locale of internet access points. Phones also had the advantage of tradeability: they
could operate as a currency in extremes and be swapped for drugs and alcohol.
Although phones are valuable, there was a preference among the homeless for
older, bulkier mobiles. Tis was because new, smaller phones are highly vulnerable
to being stolen by other people, requiring vigilance. For these and other reasons,
homeless people moving towards stability in their lives were more likely than the
newly homeless to hold onto a phone and experience it as a stable advantage.
Consequently the mobile phone also operates as an indicator of status and reliability.
Te usefulness of the mobile phone as a technology to enable responsiveness is
underlined by the description of the lifestyle of homelessness as typically transient,
nomadic and built on the immediate gratifcation of needs, so activities tend to be
planned on a minute-to-minute basis (Bure 2005: 117).
Te purpose of Bures study was to investigate whether digital inclusion, which is
to say access to ICTs such as mobile phones and the internet, built social inclusion.
As Haddon points out (2000: 389), Te very words social inclusion have the
merit that they capture this sense of avoiding social isolation. Social inclusion is
the term used for being integrated within wider social and support networks
including family, pre-homeless friends, and social and welfare services; participation
in everyday public activities such as shopping and conversation; and individual
agency, experiencing ones life as autonomous and self-directed. Te internet was
useful in these circumstances, especially for those looking for accommodation,
but was comparatively hard to access. It ofered homeless people the advantage of
an email address as a fxed point of contact in a world where there are few fxed
points and not many reliable contact opportunities. On the other hand, the chaos
of homelessness introduces its own challenges reminiscent of the illiteracy issues of
the majority world: one young homeless respondent who admitted that he was a
t h e d i g i t a l d i v i d e 71
regular drug user claimed that he had fve or six (he couldnt be sure) email addresses
because he could rarely remember his passwords (Bure 2005: 119).
A mobile was seen as ofering its user a greater opportunity for sociality and
privacy [and it] allows that person to be contacted, irrespective of their physical
location, thus improving the chances of the homeless person being able to maintain
their family networks (Bure 2005: 122). Even so, challenges such as battery life,
pay-as-you-go costs, and lack of credit mean that access to a mobile is not a cure-
all for the communications problems of homeless people, even if other problems
of a chaotic lifestyle could be addressed. Bure concludes that it is clear that ICTs
alone do not provide an avenue to social inclusion, although they may have positive
implications (2005: 125). Nonetheless, access to mobile phones confers more, and
more fexible, advantages for those in highly chaotic circumstances compared with
the requirements of fxed access to the internet. Typically, this requires hardware,
software, a weatherproof location and reliable power. If global use of the internet is
going to reach the worlds poorer citizens, the chances are it will be via cheap, simple
mobile phone access (see Chapter 9, Remittances).
Even with equitable access to telecommunications, which means diferent things
as new technologies become available, a number of issues remain, both for the
Scottish homeless and for poorer people across the globe. Tese challenges include
the fnancial, technological, skills and support resources required to be a competent
internet user. In many countries gender is an issue too, with men more able than
women to gain access to the resources required to use the internet. Such issues are as
much a matter of social policy as technology policy. Tis kind of digital divide tends
to be addressed in two ways. First, people are trained to be internet users through the
education system and through work. Second, informal public access and training
is encouraged through community locales such as libraries, and through private
enterprise such as internet cafs. Additionally, those who feel excluded from online
access may lobby and protest so that further avenues for engagement are opened up.
Refection: opening up access to the internet
Why do you think that the worlds poor are more likely to have access to a mobile phone than access to
the internet?
Do you think poor people will eventually be able to access the internet through their phones? Why?
72 t h e i n t e r n e t
DIGITAL INEQUALITY IN THE US
In the time gap between the election of President Obama, and his inauguration, a
number of community associations, pressure groups and research agencies joined
industry and business lobbyists in suggesting the kinds of priorities that they would
like to see the incoming administration adopt. Te Pew internet and American Life
Project was one such research organisation. Its website describes its mission as: Pew
internet explores the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the
work place, schools, health care and civic/political life. Te project is non-partisan
and takes no position on policy issues (Pew 2009). Reports date back to 2000
and provide an invaluable source of processed and analysed information, as well as
making raw data available to researchers.
In December 2008, identifying a range of ways in which the US had fallen behind
leading countries in terms of digital infrastructure, including its ffteenth place in
world rankings in terms of broadband take-up, John Horrigan, the Pew internet
Projects Associate Director for Research, suggested that there have been four phases
of internet development to date. Tese are:
n A 1990s vision of one-to-many communication (such as telemedicine, or online
teaching, where an expert is able to communicate to an audience);
n A late 1990s engagement with many-to-many online communities;
n An early to mid-2000s adoption of many-to-many societal conversations, such
as blogging; and
n Mid- to late 2000s many-to-many collaboration (Horrigan 2008b).
Whereas it might be hard to see an earlier/later temporal boundary between societal
conversations and collaboration, with Twitter (2006) more of a conversation than
anything else, and Wikipedia (2001) highly collaborative; it is certainly the case
that post-2000 has seen a burgeoning of collaborative and Web 2.0 (see Chapter 5)
innovations including such phenomena as MySpace (2003), Second Life (2003),
Flickr (2004) and YouTube (2005).
Alongside his discussion of the ways in which the internet is being developed by
prosumers to address their needs and interests, Horrigan also notes (2008b) that one
in four US residents, 25 per cent of the population, do not have online access. He
identifes a range of reasons for diferences in internet adoption and advancement,
including technological availability (some areas do not have the technological
infrastructure to ofer broadband), and inclination (some people do not see digital
connectivity as relevant to them). Horrigans other two reasons the costs of internet
access, and the difculties of using the technologies required are core characteristics
of the digital divide. His suggestion is that the Obama program might decide that
t h e d i g i t a l d i v i d e 73
government can play a catalytic role in nudging industry to improve usability and
relevance through procurement, thus building the incentive for citizens to be active
online and reducing the barriers to doing so (Horrigan 2008b).
In a more detailed study of the respondents who did not use the internet, this
population was identifed as being older than the norm, with a median age of 61,
and more than twice as likely as users to live in low-income households (Horrigan
2008a). Whereas 18 per cent of non-user respondents had used the internet at some
time, only 10 per cent of the people who werent connected indicated that they
would want to have an internet service. Further questioning about reasons for a lack
of interest indicated that about 9 per cent of people who arent connected see the
internet as too difcult or frustrating, and 7 per cent see it as too expensive. Given
that people who are classifed as older and poorer are less likely to have the internet
connected, how consistent is the data on the opposite population the people most
likely to use broadband in the home?
Totally consistently, over each year from 2005 to 2008, male respondents were
always more likely than females to say they had broadband internet. In 2008, males
reported 58 per cent adoption, females 53 per cent. Broadband was also consistently
associated with age across four age groups. Tus, in the 2008 broadband take-up
fgures by age, 1829 year olds had 70 per cent take-up; 3049 had 69 per cent;
5064 year-olds 50 per cent, and 65 plus year olds had 19 per cent. Te younger
the respondent, the more likely they were to have a broadband service. Education
was also consistently linked to broadband adoption. Tis may be partly because
advanced education increasingly requires students to master internet skills and use
internet equipment to gain a qualifcation. Te higher the level of education, the
more likely the respondent is to have adopted broadband. Te diferential here is 79
per cent for those who have undertaken post-college qualifcations, compared with
28 per cent adoption for respondents who did not complete high school.
Income is also consistently linked with home broadband connections. Of upper
income US respondents, defned as earning more than $100,000 per year, 85 per
cent had a broadband connection compared with 25 per cent of those earning less
than $20,000. High income was more likely than age, education or gender to be
associated with the take-up of domestic broadband. Tis 85 per cent adoption rate
indicates the potential upper level for interest in the internet if all other factors
(such as time, money, support and motivation) could be successfully addressed. Te
older-age, lower-income profle for non-users suggests that more support to develop
relevant skills, and reduced costs combined with content that motivates online
engagement, could be key to increasing take-up.
As might be expected, dial-up users are also typically older and less well-of
than their broadband cousins, to a slightly less dramatic level than is the case with
74 t h e i n t e r n e t
non-users. Of the dial-up sector, 29 per cent have less than $30,000 per year income
compared with 14 per cent of broadband users; the ratio for age is 43 per cent of
dial-up respondents were over 50, compared with 29 per cent of broadband users.
Te Pew internet Project research cited here (Horrigan 2008a) tells us how many
and what percentage. Te fact that aspects of the research are repeated over time also
makes it quasi-longitudinal; we can begin to see how things may have been changing.
However, as a quantitative study, this research does not tell us why US broadband
users and internet non-users fnd themselves in their current circumstances.
People prioritise the things that are important to them. For example, as we see
in the Chapter 8 case study on HeartNet, older people are more likely to choose
email to communicate digitally rather than via blogs, discussion boards or instant
messaging. Email is one internet application that is comparatively well-serviced by
dial-up. It is possible that this group of dial-up users, being older and more likely to
be female, are mainly internet users because they are email users. Until and unless
they see a reason to want to do something else with the internet, such as watching
television programmes that they have missed, which broadcasters are increasingly
making possible (BBC iPlayer 2008), they are content with the level of service
provided by dial-up.
Marketers and sales professionals often discuss the pattern of technology take-up
in terms of Difusion of Innovations theory (Rogers 2003 [1962]). Tis theory has
also been applied to high-tech situations, with a Silicon Valley-based study pub-
lished in 1984 (Rogers and Larsen). It was Rogers who frst suggested that new
ideas and technologies are difused through a society by a process whereby diferent
proportions of that population, with diferent characteristics, decide to use the new
product or process and then infuence others to do so. He identifes fve categories
of adopter: innovators (frst 2.5 per cent); early adopters (next 13.5 per cent); early
majority (further 34 per cent); late majority (34 per cent); and laggards (last 16
per cent). Te term laggards has a negative tone: it might be just as legitimate to
call them contents, or happy as they are. Indeed, some people resist getting the
internet since they see the impact it has upon friends and families.
A content label indicates that digital divide issues may not always exist as a
problem to be solved; at least, not so far as the people themselves are concerned.
Sometimes slow technology uptake is an indication that people feel no need to adopt
the new technology and cannot see how it will enhance their lives. Te challenge of
policy designed to minimise the digital divide is that user-choice should be the only
inhibition to take-up. Skills development, technology support and afordable pricing
should all be built into the adoption packages of policy-makers who would like to
see more people able and motivated to use the internet and, ultimately, broadband.
t h e d i g i t a l d i v i d e 75
CARING FOR OTHERS IN THE UK: A DIGITAL
DIVIDE
In the UK, and in countries around the world, many people with disabilities are
cared for in their own homes by close family members who are neither professionally
trained, nor professionally paid, for this caring role. Indeed, such families often live
in poor fnancial circumstances. Although the carer may be entitled to some social
welfare support from the state, the expenses incurred in supporting a disabled family
member are generally very high. When the costs of caring for a disabled person
are combined with the fnancial implications of withdrawing from the workforce
in order to carry out the caring, the result is a signifcantly reduced income. Te
impact of this reduction is felt both in the present and in the future, since carers
are generally unable to contribute towards a personal pension for retirement, and
are often at a signifcant disadvantage if looking for employment, even after their
caring role is over. For these reasons, households which include a disabled person
and their home-based carer tend to have a lower income and fewer resources than
the general population. Tese factors indicate that carer households are likely to
sufer signifcantly from the digital divide.
Blackburn et al. (2005) carried out research with carers in the UK. Tey surv eyed
approximately 8,000 adult carers (the number was uncertain since many question-
naires were forwarded through voluntary groups) and received 3,014 responses.
Tese responses indicated that the study cohort included more women and a greater
proportion of older carers (over 55) than was generally the case in the UK carer
population. Further, there was an over-representation of carers bearing substantial
responsibilities (caring for more than 20 hours per week) and carers who had been
caring for a long time (more than ten years). All of these dimensions are factors
which might be expected to impact upon internet use. At the same time, these
factors indicate a population which might especially require information and support
delivered in an accessible way to the time and place where it is needed. Te lack of
resources available to these carers means that they are likely to be information poor,
and sufer from information poverty.
Blackburns study was carried out against the background of a UK government
commitment to increase online services for carers. Tis policy commitment
raised some concerns that if new online provision absorbed resources, services
provided through other media (for example, print or telephone) might be reduced
correspondingly. Information and help is particularly crucial for untrained family-
based carers yet Blackburn et al. comment upon high levels of unmet need for
services and that carers are not provided with essential information at a time when
76 t h e i n t e r n e t
they need it and in a form that they can make use of (2005: 202). Other studies
have associated the carer role with a higher risk of depression and a sense of strain
(Molyneux et al. 2008), while Blackburn et al. also suggest that carers are vulnerable
to isolation and social exclusion (2005: 202). People sufering from depression often
fnd everyday activities such as shopping and banking highly stressful and this is
likely to be made worse if the shopper is also juggling patient care. General online
services would help here. Access to the internet has the potential to redress issues
such as the lack of information, absent professional support and social exclusion. It
would also ofer choices to carers and help make their lives easier.
Even so, in Blackburn et al.s study, with 2003 data, half the 3,014 respondents
(50.5 per cent) said they had never used the internet. Of the 1,489 carers who
reported using the internet, 896 (29.7 per cent of the total cohort) reported that
they used the internet once or more per week. Tis was judged to be frequent use.
Male carers and younger carers were much more likely to use the internet, while
people with fewer resources and lower socio-economic status were less likely. Not
being in paid employment or living in rented or other accommodation reduced
the odds by two, Blackburn et al. commented, continuing that Age of the person
cared for also appeared to be a predictor, reducing the odds by two for those caring
for someone aged 18 years or older (Blackburn et al. 2005: 206). Tey indicate
that carers of children and young people under 18 are more likely to have some
free time because of their dependents educational commitments. Carers of older
charges, however, often have extremely limited time for developing and using new
skills. Te respondents to Blackburn et al.s study who had never used the internet
(50 per cent), or used it only rarely (20 per cent), can be considered substantially
disadvantaged.
Refection: What issues are faced by those who have no
access to the internet?
Thinking about your own country, what problems arise, and what issues are faced, by people who do not
currently have internet access?
t h e d i g i t a l d i v i d e 77
In related US research, a Pew internet and American Life project (Madden and
Fox 2006) surveyed adults online to fnd out how many had helped a friend or
loved one cope with a major health crisis or serious health condition in the previous
two years. Of the cohort questioned, 12 per cent had ofered this kind of help and
identifed the internet as playing a crucial or important role. Tese respondents were
classifed as e-caregivers. Madden and Fox then asked the e-caregivers questions
about the specifc role played by the internet at the time. Some 36 per cent identifed
the internets role in helping to fnd general advice and support; 34 per cent said
it had helped provide specifc professional and expert advice, while 26 per cent
reported that it provided information and helped the e-caregiver compare options.
When asked about all of the diferent sources of information they used, 58 per
cent of e-caregivers said the most important source was something they found on
the internet. Only 38 per cent said the most important source was one they found
ofine (Madden and Fox 2006: 23, emphasis in original).
Te notion of accessing the internet to achieve these positive outcomes of
integrating carers within social, professional and informational networks is more
than a matter of providing a computer, however. DiMaggio and Hargittai (2001)
identifed fve factors relating to internet inequality: (i) access to appropriate
technology and equipment; (ii) autonomous use (the capacity for people to use the
internet where and when they wished); (iii) skill levels; (iv) social support in the
area of internet use; and (v), the purposes for which the internet is used (where
economic drivers might trump social ones, for example). Isolated carers, vulnerable
to social exclusion, as well as being older and economically disadvantaged, are likely
to rate poorly against these fve factors. Blackburn et al. suggest that a range of
measures is required to redress the balance. Supported access projects for carers who
are older adults or in poorer socio-economic circumstances, which provide home-
based training and support programmes and cover equipment and online costs may
be important ways of widening internet access (2005: 208).
Te take-home message here is that carers represent a population with specifc
information and support needs. Even though carers are more likely than most to
beneft from internet access, Blackburn et al. (2005) indicate that for reasons of age,
gender and socio-economic status they are less likely than the general population
to be able to access and use digital information. As more services go online, the
implication is that existing inequalities will be magnifed. Even as the absolute
numbers of people excluded from internet access decreases, the relative disadvantage
sufered will be greatly increased.
78 t h e i n t e r n e t
Summary
n This chapter has moved on from the consideration of policy issues to the discussion of peoples lives, and
their uses of ICTs. We start our exploration of the internets importance by noting that many people in
the world, in rich countries as well as poor ones, do not have access to the internet. This is the case for
three-quarters of the worlds population.
n The frst case study in this chapter concerned the relative value of mobile phones and internet access to
homeless people in Scotland, and the uses they made of these technologies when they were able to access
them.
n People in the USA who do not go online are often deterred by the costs of internet access and the
diffculties of acquiring the skills, knowledge and experience required for profcient internet use.
n A case study on UK carers illustrates some challenges faced by the information poor. Although internet
delivery of information can be very cost effective, this is not a beneft if the key publics to be reached
have limited access to the web.
Chapter 5 moves from an examination of people who are excluded from the internet to a consideration of
people who feel their culture is absent, or under-represented on the internet. We will also be considering the
distinctions between Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and the Semantic Web.
5 CUSToMISING THE INTERNET
INTRODUCTION
Does your internet use refect who you are? Is it as individual as your fngerprint?
How much is it determined by what you see as your work? How much by your
leisure and play choices? Tis chapter examines what we mean by Web 2.0, and
the ways in which we tailor our uses of the internet to express ourselves and to
explore the issues and ideas that excite us. Our experience of the internet depends
signifcantly upon our economic resources, education and expectations, and refects
our social, cultural and historical circumstances. We have previously considered
some arguments supporting the idea of technology as being socially constructed.
Tese arguments also apply to the internet. Our idea of the internet is, to some
extent, what we make it.
Tis is not to deny the importance of the inventors, developers, designers and
manufacturers of the hardware and software we use to engage with the internet.
Nor is it to understate the role of the regulator and public policy in reconfguring
the bounds of the internet to which we have access for example,: in China, as
we saw in Chapter 3. Deliberate interventions to customise the web and shape
our internet experience have their roots in particular historical and socio-cultural
circumstances. Tose who design and create internet access tools and experiences
for us exercise choice, and do this for political or entrepreneurial reasons. Tey aim
to ofer something specifc and diferent from other products available to us. Tey
seek to identify a way to cut through, to reset the default activity of key user groups.
Tis chapter examines some relevant examples creating a web environment to
promote the use of Irish Gaelic, and the struggle by French-speakers to resist the
dominance of English.
We recognise our power to choose as part of our participation in markets for
goods and services. Brands grow bigger or decline in response to this power, as in
2008 when the number of people using the social networking site Facebook overtook
those who use MySpace (Techtree 2008). We respond to the choices ofered to us
by corporations and marketers through selecting our preferred way of engaging
with the internet, given our specifc circumstances. In western countries we choose
80 t h e i n t e r n e t
our Internet Service Provider from a range of possible companies; then we opt for
dial-up or broadband access. Our browser choice also says something about us. Do
you choose Internet Explorer, the Microsoft megalith, or the increasingly prevalent
Mozilla Firefox, an open source application and thus a product of the Bazaar, rather
than the Cathedral (Raymond 2001)?
In the West, internet users tend to think in terms of Google or Yahoo, or equi-
valents, when they want to search the web. In China, however, three-quarters of
the online population use Baidu (Chmielewski 2007). Baidu is a locally developed
Chinese search engine, and is also the frst Chinese company listed on the US-
based NASDAQ-100. Founder Robin Li has a Computer Science degree from the
State University of New York, Bufalo, and he worked at InfoSeek in 1997 before
returning to China to set up Baidu in 2000. By 2007, Baidu had 74 per cent of
Chinese online searches against Googles 18 per cent, even though the time a Google
search takes a Chinese-speaking enquirer is signifcantly shorter: 30 seconds versus
55 seconds through Baidu (Chmielewski 2007). It may be that consumers are
motivated by Baidus patriotic slogan We know Chinese best; or it may be that
they are ofended by the Google approach to the Chinese censorship regime which
fags to users whenever they try to access a prohibited site that cannot be displayed
because of local laws. According to Chmielewski (2007), who cites an anonymous
Chinese source, Te Chinese people were quite indignant . . . Tats like coming
hereand saying, Im in your house, Ill eat your food, but let me tellyou upfront
that I dont particularly like it. In China, choosing to use Google as your preferred
search engine would be a very specifc statement.
Alongside these service and software choices, and our consumer decisions about
which computer we use and why, stands our relationship with the internet itself. We
respond to the internet by prioritising diferent activities which refect our interests
and our experience. Do we predominantly use the internet to connect to others via
email or chat, to research information, to post to blogs or contribute to wikis, or to
engage with others through social network sites or in online game play? Each person
has a diferent pattern of engagement.
Herbert Schiller, who was an infuential critic of US media, often wrote from a
perspective that constructs capitalism as a form of control. In his refection upon the
global pervasiveness of US culture, he decided it demonstrated that western lifestyles
have a hold on the imaginations and energy of majority, poorer, countries. Our
technology computerized weapons systems, medical scanners, the Internet sets
the standard to which developing countries aspire (Schiller 2000: 149).
Even prior to the widespread take-up of the internet, Schiller had argued that
the old colonial imperialism has been replaced by a soft cultural and commercial
imperialism which included:
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 81
the English language itself, shopping in American-styled malls . . . the music of
internationally publicised performers, following newsagency reports or watching
the Cable News Network in scores of foreign locales, reading translations of
commercial best-sellers, and eating in franchised fast food restaurants around
the world . . . Te domination that exists today, though still bearing a marked
American imprint, is better understood as transnational corporate cultural
domination. (Schiller 1991: 15)
Te implications of Schillers construction of a pervasive soft imperialism are
particularly serious for smaller nations trying to preserve their language and culture.
English operates as a global lingua franca; a default language spoken by people who
do not share a mother tongue. Magnifying the power of the language, the US is
the dominant exporter of global popular culture and these media products have
signifcant infuence on people around the world (e.g. Miller 1994). In line with
UNESCOs 2002 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, a number of nations
are working to balance this infuence by using the web to communicate alternative
priorities and languages. For the Irish, the ubiquity of the web has spurred calls for
the greater development of Irish Gaelic content to support the maintenance and
advance of a language rescued from extinction. For the French, the Google Books
project became the catalyst for an international campaign. We will consider both of
these examples of cultural self-defence before turning to the construction of social
and cultural capital through Web 2.0 technologies, particularly as these relate to
social networks such as Facebook; and the micro-blogging practices of Twitter.
Refection: Do you agree with the idea of soft imperialism?
Does US culture have a big impact on the way other countries do things?
Is this a problem?
EXPLORING NEW MEDIA USE IN RELATION
TO IRISH GAELIC
Irish Gaelic (Old Irish), one of the Celtic tongues, had been in decline for some
centuries following the English colonisation of Ireland. After huge loss of life and
forced migration during the Great Famine of 184549, at the time of the frst
census to include a language question in 1851, the proportion of the population
claiming to speak Irish as their only language was 5 per cent. Te Gaelic League
82 t h e i n t e r n e t
was set up in 1893 to halt the decline but remained so marginal that even the
1916 Declaration of Independence was written in English (Walsh 2001: 2). By the
1920s, the pro portion of the population claiming any competency with Irish at all
had fallen to 18 per cent (ORourke 2005: 274). Te Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking
areas of Te Republic of Ireland are in previously isolated regions to the north, south
and west of the country, and account for 2.4 per cent of the population (Fleming
and Debski 2007: 85). Historically these rural areas have been extremely poor and
generally peripheral to the national economy. As the twentieth century progressed
and economic conditions improved, people began to predict the death of the Irish
language (Hindley 1990).
Since the formation of the Gaelic League, a number of other strategies have been
employed to help revive Irish. Tese include the launching of an Irish-language
television station TG4 (Kenny 2005), and bilingualism in the Irish school system
with considerable growth in the number of schools outside the Gaeltacht in which
Irish is the medium of education. Te rise in the number of Irish-medium schools
from sixteen in 1972 to 176 in 2000 indicates the symbolic importance of the
language to the country, and a keenness among non-Irish speakers to see their
children educated in a specifcally Irish context (Walsh 2001: 2). Additionally the
Irish sought, successfully, to have the language adopted as one of the ofcial working
languages of the European Union. Recent census data indicates that 43 per cent of
Irelands residents claim competency in Irish; and linguistic research indicates that
510 per cent use the language daily (ORourke 2007: 275). Given that as the
level of exposure to the language decreases, so too does the level of communicative
usage, internet use in Irish has been recognised as a critical element in language
maintenance and development (Fleming and Debski 2007).
Fleming and Debski (2007) examined the internet and SMS texting habits of
Irish children in three diferent educational contexts. Tey constructed internet
use, in clud ing searching, chat and email, along with mobile phone texting, as being
net worked communications. Some of the research participants attended an Irish
language school in an Irish-speaking area where about a third of the students spoke
Irish at home and English was a taught subject (Irish dominant). Others were from
an English background attending a school where Irish is the medium of instruction
(Mixed language). Te third group comprised children from an English background,
attending an English language school in which Irish was taught as a subject (English
dominant).
Two separate classes from each of these three linguistic contexts took part in the
research; one at primary level (1012 years old) and one at upper secondary (1618
years old). Students from theses six classes were involved in completing a self-report
survey that involved some open-question responses, gathering qualitative as well as
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 83
quantitative data, with a total of 125 children participating. All the participating
secondary students, and two-thirds of the primary students, had their own mobile
phone. Fleming and Debskis hypothesis, which is to say the idea they were exploring
through their research, was that if Irish was being used for communication in new
media contexts then it might reveal itself as a modern language and a living language
of communication (Fleming and Debski 2007: 88).
Te two new media questions that Fleming and Debski wished their research
to address were: What are the patterns in [schoolchildrens] use of Irish through
networked communications? and How can these patterns be useful in making
recommendations for the use of modern technology in language maintenance?.
Most children reported that they almost never logged onto Irish websites. Tis was
true for 97.5 per cent (English dominant), 90.5 per cent (Mixed language), and 85
per cent (Irish dominant) of respondents. Te main reason [given] for children not
accessing sites through Irish was that they did not know of any. English was generally
seen by them to be the language of the Internet (Fleming and Debski 2007: 94).
English-dominant children never, or rarely, used Irish for sending emails, whereas
5 per cent of Mixed language and 12 per cent of Irish dominant children reported
sometimes or often using Irish in email communication. In their responses the
children indicated that they sent emails in Irish to friends and family with whom
they would speak Irish in face-to-face situations (Fleming and Debski 2007: 94).
More Irish was used in online chat by all three groups. While not being especially
high, respondents reported using it for words and phrases that sound better in Irish,
for salutations [and . . .] [u]sers tend to use Irish in international chat rooms, both to
show of and to communicate with Irish people without being understood by others
(Fleming and Debski 2007: 94).
Even in text messaging, where at least some children from all three contexts
sometimes used Irish to text, their usage appears to be specifcally related to those
times when they communicate with people with whom they speak Irish face-to-face,
including at school. When the two groups of children from Irish language schools
were asked why they texted school friends in Irish, they tended to answer along the
lines of Id send them in Irish because it might be something to do with school.
Fleming and Debski consider that this response demonstrates the children consider
Irish their school language (2007: 95). A fair to moderate statistical correlation was
established between participants texting behaviour in Irish and the amount they
spoke Irish outside school. Tat is to say, there is a correlation between the amount
of Irish that is spoken in voluntary contexts and the likelihood of using it as the
language of a text communication.
Only one in eight of the children who lived in English-speaking areas had
ever tried to use the internet to learn or improve their Irish, while the Gaeltacht
84 t h e i n t e r n e t
respondents had almost never done so (one in 39). Te children reported several
barriers to the use of new media in supporting their Irish language communications.
Tese barriers included the lack of text prediction on mobile phones, and the absence
of spell checkers for Irish in word processing. Additionally, Irish diacritical marks
the little signs like French accents that help distinguish one word from another,
and which can alter the sound spoken, and which diferentiate between words
are generally not available on mobile phones and are comparatively inaccessible on
computers. In summarising the fndings, Fleming and Debski noted that children
from schools where Irish is the medium of instruction were more likely to change
between using English and Irish, whereas those from the English language schools
had higher tendencies to interject Irish constructions into their everyday speech
(Fleming and Debski 2007: 96), rather than fully use the language.
Classifying the reported usage patterns of the Irish language as generally token-
istic, Fleming and Debski comment that these patterns demonstrate that the Irish
language used is often simplifed, or takes a small interjections form. Even so,
this informal use would suit it to new media communications if the established
disadvantages of diacritical marks, spell checkers and text prediction could be over-
come. Fleming and Debski express concern that in the schools they studied there
are no Irish language computer-based networks connecting children with other Irish
speakers. Such larger digital networks can encourage the children to use the language
in their online communications. Similarly, there is a comparative dearth of Irish
language content on the internet.
Fleming and Debskis concern is that the lack of everyday opportunities to use
Irish outside school means that school students language abilities will diminish over
time. Tey need more services, media and documentation to be made available in
Irish, so they see it as still being relevant to their lives after they leave the school
domain (Fleming and Debski 2007: 99). Tis case study establishes one aspect of
the perceived threat to a minority language posed by the widespread use of English
on the internet. It calls for the creation of better Irish language resources on the web,
and specifc Irish language networks to link Irish speakers and encourage language
use in new media contexts. As we see in Chapter 8, resource development is rarely
a simple matter of if you build it, they will come (Bonniface et al. 2005, 2006a).
Given the widespread community support for the revitalisation of Irish Gaelic,
however, better web resources coupled with an appropriate policy environment may
help build bilingual competencies and further integrate the minority language into
everyday life.
Te next case study concerns attempts to resist the power of the English language
medium to determine the resources available online. It argues that the fact that most
of the big internet companies are English-language based (as Google is) has the
potential to magnify comparative diferences in language usage.
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 85
LA FRANCOPHONIE, EUROPEAN CULTURE
AND THE GOOGLE BOOKS PROJECT
In 2004 Google announced its ambition to digitise the worlds books. Working
originally with fve libraries four in the US and one in the UK Googles stated
aim was to digitise and make available on the web every book which is no longer
in copyright. Te initial target was 15 million volumes in six years, becoming 30
million volumes in ten years. Googles plan for copyright books was to digitise them
to make them searchable at the level of full text contents, including unique strings of
words, with limited portions of the whole available for viewing (Google Books n.d.).
Depending upon Googles agreement with the copyright holder, the person making
the search would be able to access snippets (no agreement with holder) or whole
pages (if so agreed) of the copyright book. At each point, the page or the snippet
displayed would be determined by the word or word-string searched for. In efect,
Google was suggesting that they would create a digital archive of the printed word.
According to Ron Rotunda (n.d.), Professor of Law, the project would narrow
the educational divide by giving every child with web access the ability to search
the collection of the greatest library online. Even so, there was an outcry from
publishers over possible copyright infringement. Te publishing industry went on to
initiate legal action (McGraw Hill v. Google). In 2005 Google announced an opt-out
provision whereby copyright holders could withdraw their books from the project.
Tis failed to placate complainants who argued that it presumes consent whereas
the burden should be on a potential infringer to respect the rights of copyright
holders (Jordan 2007: 33).
In addition to the action from publishers, McGraw-Hill having been joined by
others, including Penguin, Pearson, Simon and Schuster and John Wiley, Google
faced legal action from the Authors Guild in the US, and from other groups
internationally, who believed that Googles activities breached their copyright. Most
of these cases are still pending (Justia.com n.d.) although Google had a win in 2006
when German publisher WBG dropped their action after being advised that it was
Refection: The language of the web
Although Mandarin Chinese is now the majority language on the web, English is used as the default international
language.
Should this be a big concern to speakers of other languages?
86 t h e i n t e r n e t
unlikely to be successful. At the same time, the idea of a web library electrifed
librarians discussions worldwide. Blake (2004), a US Librarian blogger, comments:
If the web is a library, why do we need a building full of books? Why do we need
librarians? Tats an easy question for us to answer, but I dont think it is for much of
the population, and that should scare us.
Jean-Nel Jeanneney, President of the Bibliothque Nationale de France (the
National Library of France), while recognising the dream that a treasure trove of
knowledge, accumulated for centuries, would be opened up to the beneft of all
(Jeanneney 2006: 5), had diferent concerns. Tese started with Googles perceived
Anglo-centric bias, which is always an issue for La Francophonie: the French-speaking
world, and extended from there. Specifcally, Jeanneneys argument developed into
fve key points, as indicated in Figure 5.1.
(i) that the selection of books to be digitised is overwhelmingly English-
language based;
(ii) the presentation of snippets and pages entirely driven by key-word
searches of (iii) Google-digitised books is culturally, contextually and
organisationally questionable;
(iii) the ranking of results has a strong English bias and does not take
into account factors outside the Google algorithm, such as scholars
judgements of importance;
(iv) agreements between Google and source libraries leave the digitised
texts in the hands of Google, a private company, when it is in the
public interest to have these more accessible; and
(v) the US provision for fair use under copyright laws differs
signifcantly from equivalent laws which operate in Europe.
(Bearman 2006)
Source: Adapted from Jeanneney (2006)
Figure 5.1: An outline of Jeanneneys argument against the Google Books project
Jeanneneys frst concern, about the primacy of the English language, led him to say
that there is a need to defend at all costs . . . the other European languages bearing
diverse and complementary cultures (2006: 7). He goes on to assert that Googles
choices will amount to a prioritisation of ideas and arguments that ft into the US
view of the world. Choices and priorities are inevitable since the initial goal of
15 million books represented a fraction of the printed works of the globe, with
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 87
Jeanneneys estimation of published books in the West alone running to over 100
million. Commenting that non-English speaking European scholarship includes
much work translated from English, he expressed concern that there was little
balance in English-speaking scholars evaluations of non-English speaking scholarly
contributions. Indeed, only 3 per cent of the annual published output of the US
is in translation from other languages. Te weight of American publishers may be
overwhelming . . . the dominance of work from the United States may become even
greater than it is today (Jeanneney 2006: 6).
Second, the issue of context caused Jeanneney signifcant concern. Addressing
the matter as if it were a scientifc endeavour, where the sample to be searched is
representative of the whole, Jeanneney commented (2006: 68) that Googles value
as a search tool is hard to judge since the service is accompanied by no precise
information about the limits of the search or the representativeness of the corpus in
which it is carried out. Within a week of Googles announcement, Michael Gorman
(2004), who was to become President of the American Library Association (2005
6), underlined concerns about unrepresentative extracts, this time at the level of the
book. [T]he books in great libraries are much more than the sum of their parts,
he said. Gorman went on to distinguish between information and knowledge:
When it comes to information, a snippet from Page 142 might be useful. When it
comes to recorded knowledge, a snippet from Page 142 must be understood in the
context of pages 1 through 141 or the text was not worth writing and publishing in
the frst place (Gorman 2004).
Tird, it seemed possible that Googles AdWords auction system, a major income
stream for the company which determines top dollar for key advertising placements
on relevant web pages, might introduce commercial elements that have a further
distorting efect upon Googles ranking system. Googles PageRank algorithm,
discussed in Chapter 2, is a patented and commercially secret property. It operates
according to assumptions and instructions that may introduce unacknowledged
distortions and biases. PageRank values websites according to the number of websites
linking to each of them, not by any particular indication of quality. Its likely that a
search about vampires, depending upon the terms used, would prioritise Stephenie
Mayers website well above the site of a world authority on vampire mythology. Tis
would be because Stephenie Meyer is author of the best-selling Twilight series and
would have many fan links. Even though a recognised world authority might have
written as many books, and would have academic credentials, they will inevitably be
less popular. (See Chapter 7 for more about the public sphere.)
According to Jeanneney, his early 2006 searches for Cervantes (the author of Don
Quixote [1605]), used the Spanish Google site. Te search curiously frst brought
up fve works in French, followed by three works in English, before, in the ninth
88 t h e i n t e r n e t
and fnal position, there appeared a collection of excepts of Don Quixote in the
authors own language [Spanish] (2006: 12). Up to the point of digitisation, noted
Jeanneney (2006: 30), books had been the only commercial medium not to carry
advertising, but the Google Books project would frank results to favour Googles
advertisers. Google asserted that their service was not distorted by their advertising.
Tey suggested Google Books provided readers with the beneft of putting them
directly in touch with booksellers and with libraries able to supply the book in which
they were interested, and added there were no plans to charge libraries or booksellers
for these introductions. Googles reassurances did not placate their critics.
Fourth, given that Google is a commercial enterprise, and citing the example of
Netscape which had been very successful and then was suddenly no more, Jeanneney
questioned what would happen to the digitised collection of the Google Books
collaborating libraries were Google to cease trading. Te implication here is that the
online resource is too important to leave solely in the hands of a private corporation,
to be disposed if at its own discretion. Further, Bearman (2006) comments that
None of the contracts with Google made public thus far permit value-added
reuse of scans made for Google in products and services ofered by others. Tis is
important because for old and rare books the act of scanning implies possible risk
and degradation, and thus the results should be available for as many uses as possible
so that further scanning is not required.
Fifth, and fnally, Jeanneney points to the critical importance of liaison between
digitisers, publishers, authors and translators. No success in this feld is imaginable
without the agreement of publishers [. . . and] the protection of the material and the
moral and intellectual rights of the author (the latter rights, insufciently defended
in America, are critical in Europe) (2006: 79). Tis remains an issue in Europe. In
the USA, Google reached a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association
of American Publishers towards the end of 2008, subject to US court approval.
Objectors to this settlement, which include Microsoft and Amazon, had until
September 2009 to lodge their grounds (Singel 2009). Although any court-approved
settlement would only be valid in the US, a number of governments, including
Germany, Canada and New Zealand, also registered objections (Albanese 2009).
Raising the stakes, there are indications that US government lawyers are scrutinising
these Google Book developments with a view to possible future antitrust actions
(Schonfeld 2009).
Jeanneneys response to the threat from Google Book was not simply to repudiate
the Google vision, but to help foster a Europe-wide response by an appeal to the
sensibilities and the civic-mindedness of European citizens. His suggestion of a
digital archive of European print material was swiftly endorsed when twenty-two of
the twenty-four national libraries in the European Union signed the motion he had
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 89
proposed (Jeanneney 2006: 10). Te European Digital Library (BNE Bibliothque
Numrique Europenne) was conceived as a corrective to the apparent excesses and
exclusions of the Google project, and has similarities with initiatives from Yahoo
and Microsoft, and Amazons Search Inside feature. Te European Digital Library
project, as fnally funded, integrated the catalogues and the digital collections of the
National Libraries of [nine European nations] into the European Library: thanks
to the project, all EU countries are now members of the European Library service
(EDL Project n.d.). Tis response underlines the importance nations place upon
the social and cultural content of the internet, and the value they see in providing
resources from a wide range of languages.
Having discussed two attempts to rein in some aspects of internet development,
while promoting others, this chapter considers developers attempts to rewrite the
internet to make it semantic. It is to this project of customisation that we turn now.
WEB 2.0, WEB 3.0 AND THE SEMANTIC WEB
What is Web 2.0? What do people mean when they talk about Web 3.0 or the
Semantic Web? Defnitions of these terms are extraordinarily diverse, and heavily
dependent upon whether they are ofered from a technological, or social sciences,
or a humanities perspective. Even so, with some caveats relating to the Japanese
iMode service discussed below, Web 2.0 is generally positioned as comprising the
web-based and user-based innovations that followed on from the crash in hi-tech
stocks after the 2000 Tech Wreck (BBC News 2000). Web 2.0 initiatives include
collaborative endeavours such as Wikipedia and peer-to-peer fle-sharing protocols
such as BitTorrent, as well as social networks such as those created through Flickr
and Facebook.
Addressing the nature of Web 2.0, Hendler and Golbeck (2008: 15) suggest
that Te fact that the sharing of content can be enhanced by personal connections,
rather than primarily via search or other query techniques, has emerged as a major,
and perhaps defning, aspect of successful Web 2.0 applications. Hendler and
Golbeck support this argument using the example of YouTube. Videos on YouTube
(see Chapter 9) do not become popular as a result of users one by one tagging their
content following on from millions of individual, disconnected searches. Instead,
YouTube videos are made prominent through sharing popular posts via emails, blogs,
social network sites and other recommendations made by key individuals, who often
act as opinion leaders (see Chapter 8). Where these communication practices are
harnessed to commercial ends and promote products to consumers, they are often
called viral marketing or word-of-mouth promotion.
90 t h e i n t e r n e t
In the context of Web 2.0, such linking mechanisms constitute social activity
which builds personal relationships and develops or strengthens networks and taste
cultures: people who share similar views about videos they enjoy. Japanese-style
anime might be an example of one taste culture.
Once a video has made it, getting many thousands of views, it can become
a popular node in the network of videos, which are linked by a number of
metadata features (who they are by, what the main subject is, where the content
originated, etc.). Search in YouTube is primarily enhanced by the social context,
not by the semantic content of what is in the videos (Marcus and Perez, 2007).
While automated technologies to create indexes of these videos are being sought,
the primary indexing comes through the social overlay of the site. (Hendler and
Golbeck 2008: 15)
Te web before Web 2.0 was not called Web 1.0 at the time, it was just the Web.
In retrospect this web, as it was created by Tim Berners-Lee and as it developed
over its frst decade, can be considered to be Web 1.0. Te frst web was defned
by the creation of web pages that linked through to accessible content, and by
the development of efective search and index strategies to uncover and use that
content. Much of the growth of Web 1.0 can be attributed to user-created content,
consequently work done by users in creating digital content is not a new feature of
Web 2.0. Instead, Web 2.0 is defned by new levels of sociality and collaboration,
where users build upon the activities of previous users.
In Web 1.0, a surfer might have accessed a great site and then emailed their
friends about it. Te friends might also access the site, perhaps by copying and past-
ing the address into their browser. Possibly the site had a counter to indicate the
number of visitors, but a user could not generally gauge its popularity before click-
ing through. In Web 2.0, an email would include the link so someone could click
through seamlessly. At the same time, the promo image for site, video, book, etc.
often presents star ratings from other users, along with the number of views, and
these tools help someone decide whether or not to access the material. Trough
accessing a site, and then linking it to a personal blog or social network page, the
user contributes to a network dynamic. Te online activity produces links between
the users social network and the site that afect the likelihood of other people also
fnding, accessing and valuing the same material. Given the importance of these
background linkages to the development of social networks, users produce value
through accessing sites, as well as through crafting, tagging and uploading specifc
content onto them.
It is fortunate that what Hendler and Golbeck term the social overlay of a site has
inherent value, since users tagging practices are inconsistent. Tags are not an efective
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 91
organising tool for most social network sites. In Flickr, the social network centred
upon sharing photos and videos which was bought by Yahoo in 2005, the millions
of content-providing members can organise their 3 billion photos and videos (as at
November 2008) around such themes as photographer, tag, time, text, and group,
and . . . place (Flickr 2009). It is the tag function that allows the content-provider/
photographer to categorise an image or video, to enhance its searchability and allow
the fle to be organised alongside millions of others.
Tags categorise the visual content of all fles posted. Information about a photo
is itself part of the content, and is called metadata: data about data. Once an image
has been posted, depending upon its access parameters, other users of the site can
also add tags. Tis continuing expansion of metadata is sometimes said to create a
cloud of information around the core data, providing a context for it (Bruns 2008a:
173). It is through searching the metadata including time, place and photographer,
as well as content, that much non-verbal material, such as videos and photos, can be
organised. Other parameters that can be included in searches, and in the metadata
about the content posted, include information about the links to and from diferent
items and the activity of browsing itself.
Flickrs tagging criteria uses a folksonomy, defned by Tapscott and Williams
(2006: 42), as essentially a bottom-up, organic taxonomy that organises content on
the web. Whereas taxonomy was the term originally applied to the categorisation
of biological specimens and living species, folksonomy is an ad hoc process relying
on generic practices of tagging existing content using randomly, manually chosen
keywords (Bruns 2008a: 173). Most established taxonomies use an internal hier-
archical organisation. As an example, humans are a species (homo sapiens) and part of
the order of primates. Te primate order also includes the chimpanzee species, and
that of the ring-tailed lemur, along with many others. Te classifcation hierarchy
makes it evident that, while all humans are primates, not all primates are human
since the order primate includes a number of species. Folksonomies are non-
hierarchical; they are fat, and no term has any predefned relationship with any
other. Tis makes it much harder to organise information and relationships other
than via the social overlay of the social network, informed by folksonomy tags.
Even though people who use similar tags are likely to have overlapping interests
(Tapscott and Williams 2006: 42), problems arise in terms of the lack of specifcity
of the tags used. Ambiguity can prevent powerful links at the content level. For
example, Hendler and Golbeck note that many common tags on Flickr include
terms like dad (80,000+ photos), Fred (90,000+ photos), and My (something)
(over 80,000,000 photos). Clearly these terms are not very useful outside specifc
contexts (2008: 16). With Web 2.0, where the tag-terms leave of the social network
takes over.
92 t h e i n t e r n e t
It is notoriously difcult to look into the technological future, but every era tries
to do so and the visions say as much about the people who share them as they
do about technology or the future. Te vision for the Semantic Web, or Web 3.0,
is that it may eventually be able to address Web 2.0s lack of connectivity at the
content level. According to some ways of looking at the web, Web 2.0 builds rich,
deep networks at the level of social actors. Web 3.0 aims to develop equivalent rich,
deep linkages for content, which can be processed in a meaningful way by machines
(Vossen and Hagemann 2007: 282). Te idea is that Web 3.0 adds a machine-
processing activity to the power already provided through social networks. Web 3.0
is Web 2.0 plus the Semantic Web. Tese visions have a good pedigree, but are yet
to become reality. Tey have been developed by the webs inventor, Tim Berners-Lee,
and explained in Te Semantic Web A new form of Web content that is meaningful to
computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities (Berners-Lee et al. 2001).
Te use of the term semantic relates to the communication of meaning. It re-
quires data to be machine-processable, where the semantics determine what a mach-
ine can do with the data beyond simply reading it (Vossen and Hagemann 2007:
289). Berners-Lee et al. (2001) address this requirement for meaning by sug gest ing
that semantic content will be built into new web pages at the time of their creation
as appropriate languages and protocols are developed and become more gen erally
available. Te aim is to make semantic tools easy to use for non-specialists. [T]hese
developments will usher in signifcant new functionality as machines become much
better able to process and understand the data that they merely display at present
(2001: 31).
In contrast to the fat organisational structure, the heterarchy of folksonomies,
the aim of the semantic information is to create hierarchical taxonomies of in forma-
tion. Acknowledging that it is impossible to create a fexible taxonomical model that
also provides a rigid structure, Berners-Lee et al. argue that developers should accept
that paradoxes and unanswerable questions are a price that must be paid to achieve
versatility. We make the language for the rules as expressive as needed to allow the
Web to reason as widely as desired (2001: 32). Te example given of the kind of
paradox that the Semantic Web would need to be able to handle is the status of the
paradoxical sentence Tis sentence is false.
Although Berners-Lees 2001 vision of the Semantic Web is still under con struc-
tion, some of its component parts already exist. For example, Internationalized
Resource Identifers (IRIs) will provide unique, global identifcation which can be
used to structure information in the Semantic Web (Vossen and Hagemann 2007:
292). Tese IRIs can be built upon existing URLs (Uniform Resource Locators),
which often start with http:// to indicate that they take the form of a hypertext
transfer protocol. One application of the IRI approach is the proprietary Digital
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 93
Object Identifer or DOI system. Tis allows the web to link, not to a location as
accessed via a URL, but to a specifc object, document, image or entity. Te DOI
system works regardless of broken web links and the objects actual location. It is like
the diference between dialling a mobile phone number compared with a landline
that requires an area code and a number string which indicates the telephone
exchange centre. Te developing schema for the Semantic Web would ensure that
each element of meaning would have its own IRI which would be understandable to
the machines that process it. Hendler and Golbeck (2008: 19) sum up the potential
thus:
For the Semantic Web, the [. . . IRIs] provide a set of semantic linkages that
applications are starting to take advantage of . . . [F]inding ways to combine
(link) the social structures of the Web 2.0 applications with the semantic
structures of the Semantic Web is a compelling way to bring together two
diferent networking spaces, allowing the total value to increase enormously.
Te plan is for the heterarchy, the same-level linkages of Web 2.0 social and
collaborative networks, to be balanced and made powerful by the hierarchy of
Semantic Web applications. In theory, this combination of heterarchy and hierarchy
will create a Web 3.0 experience that is much greater than the sum of its parts.
Although this is an interesting idea, new visions of the future are constantly evolving
and we can be certain that accurate predictions are achieved as much through luck
as through knowledge.
SOCIAL NETWORKING, WEB 2.0 AND
MOBILITY
Along with defnitions of Web 2.0 that foreground the sharing of content, as argued
by Hendler and Golbeck (2008: 15); or defnitions that privilege metadata tags
(Pesce 2006), some attention should also be paid to the increasing social and cultural
implications of mobility of access to the internet. For most western consumers, this
development was spearheaded by the BlackBerry, which was introduced in 2002 to
provide mobile phone services, web browsing, email, and other wireless applications.
Developed by Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM), their BlackBerry
Connect software is also sometimes used to enable other companies mobile products
to connect to the internet. Mobility of internet access in North America and Europe
thus coincided with the development of a range of Web 2.0 companies, including
collaborative endeavours like Wikipedia and BitTorrent protocols (both started in
2001) and early social network sites, such as Friendster (founded in 2002).
94 t h e i n t e r n e t
Globally, however, the mobile-access concept had already been proven in Japan
where iMode launched in 1999. Within two years, iModes parent company NTT
DoCoMo (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone do communications over the mobile
network) had developed a [US]$187 billion market capitalization, the highest
of any company in Japan (Mullins 2007: 29). Internet-enabled mobile phones
dramatically impacted upon Japanese connectivity rates. At the point of iModes
launch 12.2 per cent of the population had internet access, compared with 39 per
cent of the US population, 21 per cent of the British population and 23 per cent
of the Korean population (Mullins 2007: 30). By 2001, two years later, internet
subscribers ac counted for 44 per cent of the Japanese population (Aizu 2003: 120).
As well as allow ing text-based communication and camera-phone mobile users to
email images and post them to the net, the mobile phone has the potential to gather
and transmit its location, and make available services in the vicinity, says Goggin
(2006: 197) adding:
Weather forecasts, tourist attractions, landmarks, restaurants, gas stations,
repair shops, ATM locations, theatres, public transportation options (including
schedules) are some examples of the information provision fltered to the user
location. (Fraunholz et al. 2005: 1445; cited in Goggin 2006: 197)
Such services are increasingly provided via new generation mobiles such as the
iPhone. Tese applications require 3G technologies (third generation, see Chapter
4), while the information sources discussed are generally internet-based. Opport-
unistic access to in-the-minute information is increasingly able to enrich everyday
activities with cultural and social information, such as using a 3G phone for map
directions. Mobile phone access to the internet is associated with greater sociability,
according to Castells et al. citing Ishii (2004: 56), in contrast with high-intensity
users of the PC Internet . . . , heavy users of the mobile Internet are actually more
active in interpersonal communications and socializing (2007: 92). Even so, it is
only recently that mobile technology has generally supported members of social
networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook who wish to use their phones
to interact with their online profles, and those of their friends, while in transit.
Nicola Green discusses interactional aspects introduced by mobility (collectively
viewing texts and images on a mobile phone while on the move as well as sending
them to other mobile devices, or the posting of an account of everyday travels
through a city while conducting them) (2009: 274). Among the multitudes of
possible applications for these services, mobile internet access helps recruit citizen
scientists to report bird sightings to ornithologists websites (www.birdguides.
com). All these aspects of interactivity indicate the value of internet-enabled mobile
phones for those participating in online social network sites, on-the-move blogging,
feld reporting and citizen journalism (see Chapter 7).
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 95
Twitter is a cross-over social network/micro-blogging service, founded in 2006,
that is reminiscent of SMS (Short Message Service) texting practices of 2G phones.
Permitting messages of up to 140 characters, the constraints upon a tweet (a
Twitter message) are similar to those placed upon SMS texts in the early days of
mobiles when the upper limit was 160 characters. Te aim of Twitter is to write
in the moment of everyday actions, habits, experienceseveryday trivia[since]
this forges connections between individuals who are physically remote from each
other (Crawford 2009: 250). Sometimes these micro-moment posts are also used
to provide up-to-the-minute information about chaotic and breaking news, as was
evident in the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 where Twitter users ofered some
of the on-the-ground citizen-journalism reporting.
People connected into a Twitter network can choose to access their incoming
tweets through a variety of digital media and applications, including email, SMS,
instant messaging clients and the Twitter website. Crawford discusses the dispersed
sense of intimacy generated by regular contact with a wider circle [. . . of ] friends,
acquaintances, colleagues fostered by the sharing of the everyday (2009: 2512).
Indeed, Crawford cites Moyal (1989 [reprinted 1995]) and Rakow (1992) as
evidence that sharing the banalities of the everyday is a form of care-giving. Although
Twitter can be very personal and intimate, it is also possible to read global exchanges
across the continents and in multiple languages via the internet (Twittervision n.d.).
Viewed in this way Twitter makes a surprisingly moving conversational collage,
showcasing both diversity and specifcity. Lev Grossman in Time magazine describes
Twitter as the cocaine of blogging or e-mail but refned into crack (Crawford
2009: 255).
Given that Twitter is a relative newcomer, as well as being a hybrid between a
micro-message blog and a social network site, the major mid-2000s Web 2.0 social
networks were Facebook and MySpace. Te services ofered by Facebook are outlined
as allowing: [U]sers to create profles and articulate connections with other users,
who are then listed as friends. Certain other features, like testimonials, the ability
to join groups of shared interest, and the ability to post pictures are also increasingly
incorporated into online social networking software (Lampe et al. 2006: 167).
Refection: Everyday mobile access to the internet
What do you see as the implications of untethering the internet to the point where it can be accessed cheaply
and easily by mobile phone?
96 t h e i n t e r n e t
Social network members were also critical of the take-up of a number of other Web
2.0 oferings, with such activities as photo and video sharing occurring both within
tools provided in the sites architecture and via specialist sites. MySpace users were
so heavily committed to posting and reviewing YouTube content, for example, that
17.5 per cent of the video-sharing trafc was linked back to MySpace social network
members at the time of YouTubes sale to Google in 2006 (Tancer 2007).
In terms of the social and cultural implications of Web 2.0 social networks, these
are clearly signifcant, if hard to quantify. Tere is some disagreement, for example,
as to whether social networks are primarily used to stay in touch online with people
already known in ofine contexts, or vice versa, or whether these dynamics change
over time and refect specifc circumstances (Lampe et al. 2006). danah boyd (who
eschews capital letters in her name) diferentiates between the social network notion
of friending, partly attributable as a verb to the activities of the frst established social
network site Friendster, and the actual processes of making and being friends:
While some participants believe that people should only indicate meaningful
relationships, it is primarily non-participants who perpetuate the expectation that
Friending is the same as listing ones closest buddies . . . Friendship helps people
write community into being in social network sites. Trough these imagined
egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate
themselves culturally. In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame
through which they can properly socialize with other participants. (boyd 2006)
boyd is making oblique reference here to the idea of social capital.
Social capital is much talked about, and defned in a number of ways. Te notion
of capital constructs these social processes within a notionally economic framework
whereby people invest in their social networks with the expectation that they will
be able to draw upon these networks in difcult times. Adler and Kwon ofer a
recent defnition (2002): Social capital is the goodwill available to individuals and
groups. Its source lies in the structure and content of the actors social relations. Its
efects fow from the information, infuence, and solidarity it makes available to the
actor (2002: 23).
boyds comments also indicate how activity on social networking sites has im-
plications for the cultural project of diferentiating the self through our individual
consumption of goods and services, as explained by the theory of consumption
(Miller 1987). Te goods and services consumed include those implied both by the
social network site and the networks of friends and acquaintances. Tese activities
of self-exploration, community-building and relationship-contexting, carried out
while on the move or in comparatively stationary environments, are central to the
c u s t o m i s i n g t h e i n t e r n e t 97
Summary
n This chapter discusses how each of us has an individual experience on the web. We construct our own
online environment through a range of deliberate choices that are also affected by where we live, the
services that are available and affordable, and the regulatory environment.
n It includes two examples of where the internet has been constructed as a possible beneft for, or a possible
threat to, the development of national culture. The examples chosen were the support of the Irish Gaelic
language in Ireland, and a French librarians response to Google Books.
n Differentiating between the web (by default, Web 1.0), Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web, the discussion
addresses deliberate attempts to create new web functionality. one example is the way in which new media
technologies, such as the iPhone, are being used to access the internet while on the move. Twitter, and
social networking sites such as Facebook, particularly beneft from in-the-minute access.
Chapter 6 introduces some problematic uses of the internet which can act as triggers for legislation and
regulation. Pornography and online defamation will be considered in this context.
cultural work necessarily performed as part of our engagement in social networks; as
part of our activity in building social capital. Notions of community, and especially
web-based community, are explored further in Chapter 8.
6 REGULATIoN AND
LEGISLATIoN: PoRNoGRAPHY
AND CYBER STALKING
INTRODUCTION
What meanings do you associate with the internet? Even acknowledging our
discussion about how everyone confgures their own experience of a technology,
that may seem like a funny question. Given the time spent in previous chapters
investigating the internets beginnings, it is tempting to answer in a technological
or historical or policy framework. Yet these explanations may not quite capture the
meaning that the internet has for you. Your experience is likely to relate to what has
strongly infuenced you in your activities on the internet. You might feel passionate
about game play, for example, or connecting with family and friends through
Facebook; or you may feel fearful having been traumatised by a cyber stalker or
identity thief. Whatever the case, we can assume the meanings youve constructed
for your narrative of the internet difer in signifcant ways from other peoples.
While our ideas of the internet may difer, the chances are that the concepts we
hold overlap sufciently for us to have a sensible conversation about it. Te essential
details of the internet are agreed; it is the discourse around those details that difers
from person to person. If we agree to difer about the meanings we have made in
relation to the internet, what do we mean by discourse? Jonathan Cullers (2002
[1981]: 189, 190) defnition ofers a useful starting point:
[T]he theory of narrative requires a distinction between what I shall call storya
sequence of actions and events, conceived as independent of their manifestation
in discourseand what I shall call discourse, the discursive presentation or
narration of events [. . . Te story is] an invariant core, a constant against which
the variables of narrative presentation can be measured.
100 t h e i n t e r n e t
Another way of saying this is that people can look at the same series of events and
choose to explain them in diferent ways. Going back to our difering notions of
the internet, the details of what we believe the internet to be will be the core, or the
story; the way we think and explain the core to ourselves and others is the discourse,
and it is the narrative that determines the kinds of discourse we use. One persons
internet narrative might focus on exploration; anothers on community; a third on
being swamped by an avalanche of information. Te recognition that discourses
difer leads to the relevance of discourse analysis as a way of exploring and exposing
the principles underlying the use of a specifc narrative or a range of narratives.
Discourse analysis is one research tool used by social constructionists to explain the
complex dynamics of social and cultural meaning-making. Tis is examined further
in a frst section below.
Tis chapter investigates the internet as if it were a risky place requiring regulation,
legislation and care. For some people, some of the time and in some circumstances,
internet use can lead to a number of risky and unpleasant outcomes. Laws and
regulations are in place to limit exposure to signifcant risks. Some of these risks were
a focus of EU Kids Online, a multi-country research network led by Professor Sonia
Livingstone and Dr Leslie Haddon at the LSE and co-sponsored by the LSE and the
European Community Safer Internet Plus Programme.
Between 2006 and 2009 researchers from twenty-one European Union countries
collaborated to examine the fndings of national and international studies of children
and young peoples use of the internet. Te EU Kids Online project conceptualised
risk according to three main categories (Hasebrink et al. 2009: 8): Content, in
which the user is the recipient of a mass communication; Contact, in which the
user participates in risky interpersonal communication; and Conduct in which the
user does things which might have risk, such as revealing personal contact details,
posting compromising images, meeting up with strangers, infringing copyright or
hacking into a network. Tese issues are further examined in Chapter 9 in relation
to children in the family home.
To illustrate diferent ways in which the internet is portrayed, Haddon and
Stald (2008), both part of the EU Kids Online project, conducted a 14-country
review of press coverage concerning the internet for the months of October and
November 2007. Teir research demonstrated that press coverage of internet risks
was much higher than press coverage of internet opportunities and benefts. With
the exception of Denmark, where 81 per cent of press coverage concerned leisure/
play/entertainment stories, and Bulgaria, where it was judged there were too few
stories to categorise, the remaining twelve countries Austria, Belgium, Estonia,
Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and UK had
the largest proportion of their press stories in the category concerning legal/crime/
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 101
police content. No country had the largest share of their press coverage relating the
internet to education.
Although the press may generally focus their internet coverage on legal/crime/
police stories, domestic perceptions of the internet are often presented as a competition
between its educational value and its potential for fun and entertainment. Back in
1997, David Marshall had noted that parents consider computer literacy is the
passage to a comfortable future [. . . but] Te arcade game dimension of the computer
shifts its value from information source to entertainment site (Marshall 1997: 71).
Parents bought computers because they saw them as educational, while children
wanted computers because they saw them as fun. Tese diferent perspectives on
computers and the internet refect diferent ways of conceptualising the internet.
Tis chapter looks at two examples of risk as these afect adults, and for which
there are regulatory and legislative remedies where the risks become substantial.
Pornography is an example of a content risk where a judgement of legal or illegal
content can depend on the participants birth dates, upon the informed consent of
the parties involved in the making of pornography and upon the age of the viewer.
Further, there is some indication of commercial risk (see the discussion of Prodigy
below) in that restricting and regulating online interaction to exclude the possibility
of sexual content can be a risk for the service provider. Consumers may head towards
more liberal and less regulated environments. In contrast, cyber stalking is an
example of a contact risk. Even though there may be no physical danger, it may
be difcult to ensure that an individuals right to protect their reputation, and to
communicate in open and respectful ways, is upheld.
Tese case studies on pornography and cyber stalking are preceded by a
discussion of discourse analysis, developing the theme introduced above, because
it is in constructing and discussing the internet as a place of risk rather than a place
of creativity, education and fun that we open up a number of debates, while closing
down others. Tis consideration of narrative theory and discourse analysis will help
make that process clearer.
Refection: Whats your biggest risk?
Are you aware of taking risks in your online behaviours?
Would these be content, contact or conduct risks?
What might be the consequences of the risks you run?
102 t h e i n t e r n e t
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
When we look at the ways in which people see the same thing diferently it can help
us to understand the complexity of experiences and associations. Parents might see
the computer as an educational tool, children might see it as a games machine or a
way of chatting with friends. Te media might see computer use as a risky activity
and discuss it predominantly in terms of legal, crime and police stories. Howard
Rheingold rationalised his early experiences of a mid-1980s internet community,
the WELL (or Whole Earth Lectronic Link), in terms of a groupmind. He
used the notion of the brain to explain the synergies in knowledge and experience
resulting from internet users getting together in cyberspace and tapping into this
multibrained organism of collective expertise (Rheingold 2000: 109). Here the
terms mind, brain and organism are being used as metaphors. Metaphors can be
useful for communicating meaning through discourse.
One important feature of metaphors is that they dont have to be either/or,
they can be and/also. Multiple metaphors can indicate a range of appropriate and
interesting discourses. Gareth Morgan (2006) developed a series of metaphors to
help people understand complex organisations. He argues that we can use a range
of metaphors to help construct our understandings of organisations, as indicated in
Figure 6.1.
(i) machines, with different parts functioning together as an effcient
whole;
(ii) organisms, growing and evolving;
(iii) brains, with self-organising and interconnecting properties;
(iv) cultures, with their own social realities;
(v) political systems, with confict, competition and regulation;
(vi) psychic prisons, controlling the ways that inmates talk, think and
act;
(vii) continuously changing and constantly in states of fux and transition,
and fnally
(viii) instruments of domination, whereby the organisation becomes a
tool of suppression.
Source: Based on Morgan (2006) Contents Table
Figure 6.1: Morgans metaphors for organisations
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 103
Morgan suggests that not only is it possible to construct meanings concerning a
single organisation according to a number of these metaphors, but also that there
is value in so doing. Multiple metaphors reveal multiple aspects of the organisation
that might otherwise be hidden and not addressed. A willingness to see a range
of possibilities also protects against a belief in certainty: [T]here can be no single
theory or metaphor that gives an all-purpose point of view. Tere can be no correct
theory for structuring everything we do (Morgan 2006: 338). Discourse analysis
helps us to see the role played by metaphors in a text. Discourses can also frame a
range of viewpoints: for example race, class, gender and culture all provide diferent
perspectives for examining and analysing texts. Te use of discourse analysis
acknowledges that people make sense of information using diferent strategies,
perspectives and experiences.
When we talk about a range of possible discourses, we talk about diferent dis-
cursive approaches. Discursively, the history of the internet might be seen as
entirely a project of the US Armed Forces given, as is the case, that ARPA/DARPA
is an agency within the Department of Defense, and the frst beginnings of the
internet were as a result of work commissioned by people who were employed and
funded by the Pentagon. It would have been entirely consistent with the facts if
the narrative in this book had strongly emphasised the militaristic aspects of this
development, especially in view of the Chapter 1 A to E mnemonic of the fve power
groupings behind the development of technology, which places the armed forces
frst. Te narrative presented in Chapter 2, however, was far more centred on the
passion that early internet developers felt for their work, and the ways in which they
collaborated across military, university and business lines.
Tis discursive approach to narrating the story/core of the beginning of the
inter net is somewhat distanced from a construction of the internet as a repressive
outcome of a militaristic plan. Instead, the narrative history of the internet ofered
in Chapter 2 concentrates upon what technology tells us about ourselves and each
other in terms of peoples behaviour and practices with it. Tis is also the function
of the case studies to follow.
PORNOGRAPHY
In terms of a product or service that drives uptake of the internet, spawns new
business models and prompts service and technology upgrades, pornography has
some times been called the killer app. Tis indicates its role in single-handedly
driving consumer demand for an increased range of delivery mechanisms including
new and emerging technologies. Even in a post-feminist world pornography is
104 t h e i n t e r n e t
generally acknowledged to be a product predominantly aimed at males, and in some
circumstances this constructs porn consumers as a desirable advertising demographic.
For many pornography users, the internet is simply a more convenient and accessible
way to obtain material that might otherwise be procured via magazines, videos and
DVDs. Te benefts of internet-delivered pornography can include round-the-clock
access, some free products paid for via advertising, and privacy of consumption
(Fisher and Barak 2001; Albury 2003).
Online pornography use is sometimes an activity that complicates the everyday
life of the adult entertainment user, especially when pornography is accessed
through work-based resources, by under-age youth, or in jurisdictions where it is
illegal. Constructing the internet as a pornographic delivery system might seem
to position the technology predominantly as a means of accessing media content
in private space. Te digital trails that link pornography with the consumer have
the capacity to make the private very public, however, sometimes at signifcant
social and legal cost. Te reverberations of accessing online pornography thus do
not always end with the consumption of the pornography itself. Sometimes porn
consumers experience secondary efects of their construction of the internet when
they are traced via digital trails and called upon to account for their use of work
time or employers technology, or their afliations with certain legal or illegal taste
cultures in pornography.
Te adult entertainment industry, as the pornography business prefers to be
known, generally sufers from a bad press. It has been constructed as exploiting and
de grad ing the women who work in porn, demeaning those men that use it, and
making satisfying relationships harder to achieve in real life (RL). Recent research
with porno graphy users (McKee et al. 2008) indicates a more positive picture. Over
1,000 pornography users completed a survey that showed 57 per cent of respondents
thought it had a positive efect on their lives, with a further 35 per cent saying that
it had no efect on their lives (McKee et al. 2008: 83). (One per cent said it had a
large negative efect, and 6 per cent that it had a small negative efect.) Te kinds of
positive efects attributed to pornography use by these respondents included making
users more relaxed and comfortable about sex, making them more open-minded
and willing to experiment, and making users more tolerant of other peoples sexual
pleasures (2008: 85).
McKee and his co-authors suggest that negative perceptions of porn continue
to circulate because many porn consumers are relatively closeted, if not actually
ashamed, when it comes to their porn consumption (2008: 178), and this might
explain why such a large consumer group about one-third of all adults in western
countries, according to Roy Morgan and similar commercial research organisations
(McKee et al. 2008: 25) is comparatively silent. Research also indicates that
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 105
about 10 to 20 per cent of porn users are women, often consuming porn with their
partners as part of their private sex lives (2008: 27). Such fgures suggest that over
half of adult males in western countries may consume pornography, conforming
with a social stereotype that: Every ordinary man likes porn. We know this because
of magazines like Ralph and Loaded, semi-pornographic mens magazines that are all
about booze, babes and balls (McKee et al. 2008: 25).
Voss attributes the stigma associated with the adult entertainment industry to
the heightened and paradoxical reactions surrounding the non-normativity of
sexuality and commerce (Voss 2007: 6). Tis perception refers to a general public
construction of sexuality as private, and not appropriately commercialised, even if
signifcant numbers of people use online interactions and resources to foster their
private sex lives. Tree-quarters (76 per cent) of the people surveyed by McKee et al.
(2008: 34) spent less than three hours per week using pornography, with 41 per cent
of all respondents accessing porn for less than one hour per week. Te researchers
note that most of their respondents were recruited to their study via a mail-out
to customers by an adult entertainment DVD/video company. Smaller numbers
re sponded to McKees online survey, so these fgures may not fully represent the
experience of people who use the internet to access porn.
As well as noting the paradoxical elements of the hidden market in porn, which
seems to be much larger than public discussion and self-identifcation would indi-
cate, this chapter considers porn as a major driver for the uptake and adoption of
new technologies. Several studies have indicated the central role pornography plays
in driving the development and uptake of new technologies (Coopersmith 2006;
Voss 2007). Tere are four main reasons for this.
First, consumers of pornography are often young adult males: the Ralph and
Loaded reader stereotype. Tis is also the demographic for people most likely to
be early adopters of new technology and can indicate comparatively high levels
of uncommitted income (Coopersmith 2006: 3). Tere appears to be a mutually-
reinforcing linkage between a willingness to use new technology, a capacity to pay
for it, and a desire to access pornographic content that creates an incentive to adopt.
Second, pornography use sometimes involves a social stigma (Voss 2007). Tis
means that users have an incentive to access pornography discreetly and to consume
it in private. Both discretion and privacy of use can be supported in many domestic
online environments. It should be noted here underlining the perception of stigma,
and encouraging the closeted use of porn that some employers have successfully
sacked workers for accessing legal pornography using work computers (McKee et
al. 2008: 49). Although it is arguable as to whether access to pornography would
count as a civil liberty; in a number of countries pornography is heavily censored
or illegal. Tese are often countries where take-up of the internet is less pervasive
106 t h e i n t e r n e t
or comparatively public, with high use of cybercafes, for example. Such countries
include China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Tird, new technologies ideally require a stable income stream to keep the sector
growing while a more varied suite of content products is developed and marketed.
Tis means that people who make and market pornography typically experiment
with technological innovations and are allied with early developers of products and
services. Tis is in contrast with many other media markets. For example, as the large
music producers were trying to rein in the peer-to-peer networks such as Napster, so
the pornography industry was developing its wares. Instead of fghting fle sharing,
some in [the porn] industryestimated to be generating $750 million to $1 billion
per year in revenueare quietly fnding new ways to proft from it, commented
San Francisco Chronicle writer Benny Evangelista (2003), quoting Grokster President
Wayne Rosso as saying Te porn guys are smart, theyve fgured out how to use the
technology.
Finally, porn consumers are motivated to upgrade equipment, services and their
technical skills to take advantage of new services and products such as high-speed
downloads and portable mobile phone content. Tey also choose to engage with
technology in a comparatively anonymous way, preferring to access online sex-related
forums using pseudonyms. Commenting on the mid-1990s competition between
online services Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL, Kara Swisher argues (2003: 401)
that it was the policy of allowing users to develop their own online spaces in private
that allowed AOL to dominate the emerging online market: AOLs anonymous
screen names, unmonitored chat rooms and easy attachment of graphical fles [. . .]
set it apart from the other online services. She adds that a Prodigy executive told
me in 1996, that AOLs privacy policy in chat rooms was [the reason] why AOL
has eight million members and Prodigy had faded to a shadow of its former self
(ibid.: 41).
Unsurprisingly, given the prevalence of pornography on the web, and the en-
thusiasm of some internet users to access it, sex-related terms are amongst the
words most frequently searched for. Indeed, most search engines ofer two separate
reports for purchasers of information about search word frequency: with adult flter
on (which excludes sex-related terms) and without the flter. Frequency of word
search has commercial currency since the use of appropriate search terms can
increase relevant trafc to commercial websites, and thus increase click-through rates
and proftability. Coopersmith (2006) comments that, when all search terms are
included, Wordtracker found that the frst 6 of the top 10 and 10 of the top 20
search terms on several web metacrawlers over a four-month period in late 2005
were pornographic (2006: 5).
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 107
In an earlier report, a 2003 study of peer-to-peer network Gnutella indicated
that 42 per cent of the 22 million searches during the 18-day period investigated
were for pornography, compared with 38 per cent for music (Evangelista 2003).
Te predominantly teenage male LANing communities, where members set up self-
contained Local Area Networks (see Chapter 8), generally have game play as their
primary purpose. Additionally, members often use BitTorrent sites to access porn
and then swap it from hard drives to hard drive in face-to-face (F2F) LANfests,
while taking part in gaming marathons (Green and Guinery 2006). Peer-to-peer
porn sharing ofers dual benefts to users. It normalises porn access and use, since
the material downloaded is also being used by people known to the downloader:
peers in similar circumstances. Further, it by-passes some of the negative associations
of accessing porn using commercial websites, such as explicit pop-up porn and
mouse-trapping (opening multiple porn sites that viewers are unable to click out
of ) (McKee 2008: 186).
Voss argues that the stigma associated with the adult entertainment industry has
afected innovation, including technological innovation, in a number of ways. It
afects the recruitment of people into the industry, with people concerned about
the efect of a period of employment in the porn business upon their future
career prospects and their social and emotional relationships (Voss 2007: 9). At a
business-to-business level, even frms which did not directly deal in adult content
but provided third-party services, such as billing and marketing could sufer from
an association with porn companies, with managers describing how people from
mainstream companies might respond by backing away slowly and making the sign
of the cross (Voss 2007: 10, italics in original). Within the industry itself, however,
there is signifcant interaction and sharing. Tis occurs both on industry-specifc
online message boards (ibid.: 11), where managers and employees get themselves
known and promote their own companies and expertise both publicly and using
private instant messaging, and at regular trade shows. One implication of this is that,
since the porn industry is a relatively stigmatised one, people working in it are likely
to get their next promotion, or their next job, with a competitor so the public and
private links are generally kept positive.
Te cross-industry networks work vertically (following the company hierarchy of
ICT employees, managers, CEO, etc.) and horizontally, with links between people
working in equivalent roles or positions. [N]ews about which new types of billing
programmes, content presentation technology (e.g. high-defnition streaming) and
other tools being used by competing frms across the sector is quickly disseminated
across the industry (Voss 2007: 12). Voss comments, however, that employees
working on new technology development are generally absent from such exchanges
in an attempt to keep leading-edge development secret. She attributes this relative
108 t h e i n t e r n e t
exclusion both to the importance of new technology, products and services to the
porn industry, and to the long hours and overwork of many technology developers
in the industry. [K]nowledge about technology development, and the individuals
who generate and embody such knowledge, is kept frmly away from the network
(ibid.: 13).
Although the porn industry is prone to copycat new ways of delivering pro ducts,
the secrecy allows some competitive advantage since the details of how to make the
innovation work are not always evident from the end product. Voss suggests that
there is an inadequate understanding of intellectual property (IP) law and practice
in the porn industry, possibly as a result of people with this expertise choosing to
work in other sectors. Te lack of knowledge in the industry about legal protection
of products of innovation inadvertently leads to widespread appropriation (which
ironically acts as a further driver towards secrecy) (Voss 2007: 17). Tis suggests
that the rapid adoption and creation of technological advances by porn producers
and distributors may be as much due to market pull and disregard of IP as it is to
factors intrinsic to the adult entertainment industry.
Coopersmith comments that the [m]ost innovative use of the new online tech-
nology was the referral or pass-through ring, which swapped [porn site] visitors
with competitors (2006: 8). Te funding model was a micro-fee for the referring
organisation, or a commission if the referral made a purchase. Tis approach has
parallels with the Amazon model where associated websites pay Amazon a small fee
for customers who access their sites through the Amazon.com link, or vice versa.
Benefts include customer access to a wider range of products, prices and producers
and the beneft to businesses that their products are more likely to be seen by more
consumers.
Te porn industry had early success with linked web sites. Journalist Gareth
Branwyn commented in 1999 that Te most trafcked Web rings are found in the
amateur e-porn and adult Webcam communities. A web ring connects a necklace
of linked sites with each site sharing common navigation features. In theory,
consistently clicking previous or next will bring the user back to the site from
which they started. Tis is made more likely by having a host site that connects with
all the other sites and stands in for any of them where a site may have gone ofine
or been discontinued. Some hosts charge for providing web services; others provide
a free service as a marketing strategy. Branwyn documents almost 58 million unique
visitors visiting free host Porn City in January 1999. Porn City provided free server
space for adult content in return for guaranteed advertising rights in prime locations
on the web pages. Server space is a particularly valuable commodity in the porn
industry since hosts have to be able to handle the special hardware, bandwidth and
security requirements of adult content (Branwyn 1999).
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 109
XXX websites also attract the usual income streams, including advertising and
subscriptions. Model subscription packages began as a basic monthly fee, or a cost
per download from a single site, but period subscriptions to a ring of sites became
increasingly popular once a credit card payment combined with the AVS (Adult
Verifcation System) allowed access to a wide range of free and commercial products
from multiple companies without further charge per view. Participating commercial
sites found that it made better fnancial sense to share subscriptions from many
consumers signing up for a large variety of services rather than fghting other
providers to gather up small numbers of individual customers who were entitled to
access only a few sites.
Echoing concerns about stigma, many online payment options specifcally
exclude services which may possibly include pornography. Early webcam pioneer
Jennifer Ringley broadcast continuous images of her life in her fat 24/7 from
1996, including her relocation from Pennsylvania to Washington DC, and then
from Washington DC to California. Her motivation, credited with seeding the
idea for Big Brother and other reality shows was simply to allow others an insight
into a virtual human zoo . . . I keep JenniCam alive not because I want or need to
be watched, but because I simply dont mind being watched (Burkeman 2004).
She also amassed a fortune from her annual US$15 subscriptions. Eventually, the
internationally famous JenniCam closed in January 2004: Visitors with nothing
better to do than watch her cameras for hours on end occasionally caught sight
of her naked, contravening PayPals regulations and forcing closure of the site
(Burkeman 2004).
Although the payment channels may be restricted, adult entertainment sub-
scription fees tend to increase with interactivity options and the suite of services
available (Coopersmith 2006: 8). Tis mimics what AOL had discovered in the mid-
1990s, to their beneft (Swisher 2003: 401). Te move towards persuading users
to pay more for an increased range of premium services is an example of upselling.
Cross-selling persuades a consumer to buy what they had originally intended, plus an
additional item, whereas upselling persuades the consumer to buy a more expensive
product than the one originally planned. In order to achieve advertising cut-through
with the multiplicity of adult sites available, successful hosts have to be prepared to
spend big on their publicity. Even in the early days, as Branwyn noted (1999), it was
expensive to buy online advertising space linked to premium search terms. Te kind
of desirable internet real estate came into play when consumers typed certain words
into the bigger search engines. Tis meant that when a specifc word was typed,
it would trigger an advertisement, presumably for an adult entertainment service:
Words like sex, anal and blowjob can sell for six fgures (Branwyn 1999).
110 t h e i n t e r n e t
Not all pornography on the web is commercial. McKee et al. identify two main
strands: glossy, expensive couples porn and boy/girl-next-door amateurs porn (2008:
182). Domestic porn production has blossomed since accessible and afordable
technologies were developed which allowed images to be recorded and edited, then
posted on the web.
Tis democratization of pornography is part of a larger trend of innovation from
below by users (as opposed to innovation from above by manufacturers) and the
rise of technical hobbies and do-it-yourself projects among American males of
all classes . . . Now anyone canand many docreate and distribute their own
pornography because barriers to entry and transaction costs have been greatly
reduced. (Coopersmith 2006: 10)
McKee et al. argue (2008: 131) that amateur porn, as a comparatively new phe-
nomenon, allows its creators and users to straddle the boundaries of paired dualities:
celebritiesordinary people; porn starseveryday sexuality; kinkdomesticity; and
publicprivate sexuality. Tey cite Barcans (2002) research on Keith, a domestic
porn producer, as indicating that amateurs are performing their ordinariness, rather
than their stardom and suggest it is this which helps their audiences relate to them
and which makes them attractive (McKee et al. 2008: 132). Barcan comments that
Tis style brings with it a powerful trio of viewer associations and expectations
the expectation of truth, the sense of intimacy, and the mobilisation of voyeurism.
Te absence of a commercial superstructure to this interaction with everyday porn
makes the development of online taste communities and interactive chat much more
straightforward and afordable.
Addressing the ways in which sexuality is lived in everyday life, Rival, Slater
and Miller (1998) compared ethnographic work on sexuality in Amazonian soci-
eties, Trinidad, and on the Internet. Teir paper includes Don Slaters accounts
of feldwork on early cybersex sites that feature the swapping of sexpics and syn-
chronous IRC (Internet Relay Chat), where people use the internet to exchange lines
of text, in public or private contexts, similar to instant messaging conversations.
Sexpics IRC is introduced in terms of its unreality: no material cares or dangers . . .
no enduring commitments; performance is unproblematic; desire is inexhaustible,
as is desirability (Rival et al. 1998: 301).
Nonetheless, this disjuncture between the unproblematic online and the invisible
ofine is more apparent than real. Slater talks about the cross-over between online
and RL as being about far more than sexuality, since participants often venture into
IRC discussions of their RL. Te everyday tends to be characterised as boring, a
drudgery of maintaining self and family . . . a lonely place, a place where one is aware
of ones separation from others including ones partner and family (ibid.: 304). Te
purposes of the juxtaposition of online and ofine by those who take part in sexpics
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 111
IRC seem to take one of three main forms: escapist fantasy play, an exit strategy
which might one day actually be used in RL; or an aphrodisiac for real life (ibid.:
304) to stimulate and enliven the daily reality of domesticity.
Even constructed neutrally and, primarily, as a trigger for online engagement,
there is no doubt that some pornography and some uses of pornography are
problematic for society and for individuals. Pornography made without consent, or
with those unable to give consent involving children, for example, or bestiality is
illegal in almost all global jurisdictions. Violent pornography, where participants are
or appear to be emotionally or physically abused, is likewise illegal in many countries.
For these and other reasons, access to pornography and the content of pornography
is extensively regulated and policed. McKee et al. ofer a Manifesto for Ethical
Porn (2008: 1867) which includes sex education for young people and internet
flters to reduce the chances of under-age access; regulation of access and content,
ethical production practices including safe sex and commitments to performers
positive physical and mental health, and ethical marketing and distribution. Tey
also comment that No one should ever be exposed to porn (or any kind of sexual
interaction) against their will (ibid.: 186).
For those porn consumer who may feel their pornography use has become
problematic, and who wish to alter the ways in which they relate to pornography,
McKee et al. have a range of suggested responses to ethical dilemmas arising from
these perceptions (ibid.: 179181). Tese are not limited to (but do not absolutely
discount) the suggestions of the anti-porn lobby to stop consuming porn entirely
(ibid.: 178). Another source of information on this area is the Center for Internet
Addiction Recoverys (2006) resources on Cybersex/Cyberporn Addiction.
Defnitions of cybersex and cyberporn difer, but cyberporn consumption might be
constructed as a subset of cybersex activities. Cybersex would also include consensual
erotic interactions between sexual partners using texting, webcam and other digital
technologies. Such interactions would take account of those between people who are
partners in long-term sexual relationships, as well as between people who have yet to
meet F2F. As we have seen here, discussions of pornography, as with discussions of
sexuality itself, raise important issues quite apart from those of the technical delivery
of content.
Refection: Worrying content
Some people worry more about hate sites and violent images than they do about pornography.
Which do you see as most concerning? Why?
112 t h e i n t e r n e t
CYBER STALKING AND DEFAMATION
Cyber stalking, cyber harassment, and cyber bullying all refer to the behaviour of an
aggressor to a victim using digital technology. Te terms are generally interchangeable
in everyday life, while the notion of defamation whereby someone has their
reputation attacked has a specifc legal meaning. Tis case study examines a real-
world case of cyber stalking and harassment that partly took the form of defamation.
It is drawn from life to demonstrate the comparative unpredictability and the wide-
ranging afects of this form of attack.
While few people have the time and energy to be dedicated cyber stalkers over
the long term, as reported here, victims who are persecuted in this way fnd it an
immense challenge to continue their daily life unafected. Cyber harassment raises
vital issues about the pervasiveness and unity of the internet in comparison with the
piecemeal nature of legal and regulatory responses. It also touches upon the relative
importance of the right of free speech, sometimes in direct opposition to the right of
individuals to be protected from unwarranted attack. Tis case study examines these
issues in terms of a specifc stalker, Mr Bill White, a US citizen, and his attacks upon
his one-time colleague and Australian academic, Associate Professor Trevor Cullen.
It addresses some of the remedies attempted by Cullen, a professional journalist
and communications academic, and their relative inefectiveness up to (and beyond)
Whites eventual death in 2004. Tis case study is based on work carried out by
Ms Julie Dare for her Honours thesis (2005), and her resulting publications. Both
Cullen and Dare have given their permission for their experiences and their work to
be detailed here.
An internet search for Dr Trevor Cullen produces a series of complex, and as it
happens ironic, results as well as some hundreds of hits. Te frst site listed is a MAKO
site (Movement Against Kindred Ofenders), an Australian organisation dedicated
to publicising sex ofenders, their crimes, sentences and known whereabouts. Te
MAKO site identifes child sex ofender Trevor Cullen, a one-time Brisbane dentist.
Dentist Cullen was convicted in 2004, having frst come to the attention of the
police in 2000. Te irony of this circumstance is that since the late 1990s, White had
been making similar and unfounded allegations about a diferent Trevor Cullen, a
priest and academic. Whites harassment began through the use of fax machines, and
progressed to the internet as that became more accessible. (Hereafter, all references
to Cullen are to the innocent victim of cyber stalker White.)
Many of the posts on the frst pages of the Trevor Cullen search results chart
the attempts of Cullen to defend himself against untrue and defamatory allegations
of paedophilia, at a time when Cullen was still serving in holy orders as a Catholic
priest as well as teaching in a tertiary journal ism program in a small Roman Catholic
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 113
university in Papua New Guinea (PNG). White and Cullen had worked together
briefy at the Divine Word University (DWU) in Mandang PNG in 1996. One
semester into his three-year contract, White was sacked for spreading untrue and
malicious rumours about other members of staf. After his dismissal, and with
time on his hands as a result of persistent unemployment, White carried out his
harassment of current and past DWU stafers, and upon any people (like Professor
John Henningham, Cullens highly respected PhD supervisor) who defended them.
White registered hundreds of websites in the names of his victims and opened
numerous email accounts.
Sir Peter Barter, a former Acting Governor-General of PNG, and a member of
the Governing Council of DWU, was one such victim. He commented: Mr White
has at least 80 email names addresses registered, he has sent countless messages
to infuential people, the media and even messages in my own name to myself
(Barter 2002). Indeed, White often stole the email identities of his targets in order to
further embarrass and harass them. Te saga linking White to Cullen seems to have
begun when Cullen responded to a series of troubling posts by White on the Pacifc
Forum website a year or so after Whites sacking. In July 1998 Cullen wrote to the
web maestro (a non-gendered reference to people who might otherwise be termed
webmasters) asking that action be taken against Whites abusive and defamatory
postings. Instead, his [Cullens] letter was posted on the website, and within two
days White had created a web page in Dr Cullens name alleging he was a paedophile
and had committed academic fraud (Dare 2005). Since Cullen was at that point
in the middle of his PhD research at the University of Queensland, examining the
impact of HIV/AIDS reporting upon the growing South Pacifc epidemic, such
allegations were calculated to have a devastating efect upon Cullens developing
academic career.
Cyber stalking is not a rare occurrence, but it is difcult to counter efectively.
CyberAngels (2009) was launched in 1995 by volunteer citizen support group, the
red-beret Guardian Angels, to help promote internet safety. Tey run mainly US-
based workshops on handling cyber harassment and cyber bullying. WiredSafety
(n.d.) is larger than CyberAngels and has less of a vigilante image. It ofers,
among other services, free internationally accessible web-based training programs
to promote safety on the internet for educators, families, law enforcers and other
citizen and community groups. Along with organisations such as Google and
Microsoft, WiredSafety is a member of the Harvard University-based, Berkman
Center for Internet and Society-supported, Internet Safety Technical Task Force
(ISTTF), whose report on Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies was
set up specifcally to address the challenges posed by social networking sites and
released early in 2009 (SNS Safety 2008). Teir fnal report on safeguarding young
114 t h e i n t e r n e t
people from online risks addresses the development and promotion of technologies
and techniques that aim to create a safer environment for young people using the
internet.
WiredSafety ofers a range of resources for victims of cyber stalking and cyber
harassment, including individualised help, a self-paced interactive guide and online
tutorial materials. Teir advice to people sufering the kinds of attacks perpetrated
by White upon his victims is that Ignoring the communications sent to you is the
best frst step to stopping most cyberstalking/harassment. Unless your situation
involves a truly obsessed or depraved harasser, most will lose interest quickly if they
dont get the reaction they seek (WiredSafety n.d.). Unfortunately, White was such
a depraved harasser. So how did Cullen handle the situation, and with what efect?
White was so obsessional that, in addition to Cullen himself, everyone who
worked with Cullen and whom White judged to be supporting him was also sub -
jected to his attacks. Tis list included colleagues, employers, student guilds, journal-
ists, lawyers and research partners. Te scale of these attacks enabled the dev elop-
ment of an informal victim support group whereby the people that White attacked
banded together to support each other. Even so, the attacks continued grow ing in
pace and scale, to the extent that White at one stage had Cullen linked to sixty-four
defamatory sites. Cullen and his co-victims decided to retaliate, initially in a low-key
way and in measured terms for public consumption, along the lines of exercising a
right of reply. Tis was the role played by many of the publicly posted documents,
some of which are still found on the web. As a result of the harassment, Cullen
and his co-attacked found themselves spending signifcant time and money learn-
ing about the internet and the intricacies of web site construction and legal redress.
In addition to this drain on his resources, Cullen was asked embarrassing ques-
tions by his students and others who did not know the story, and he was concerned
about the impact of the defamatory attacks upon his quest to fnd an academic
position.
In both 2001 and 2003, Cullen went to the Australian police who advised him
that they were powerless to act unless there was a credible likelihood of White
physically attacking him in Australia in person. Tis was not foreseeable since
White lived in the US, had limited fnancial resources, and was unlikely to travel
internationally. At about this time, Cullen, who had recently gained a position at
Edith Cowan University, was spending signifcant sums of money researching his
legal options. His new colleagues had begun to attract Whites fre, and a new set of
students were asking questions. In April 2002, having successfully gained permission
to serve White with legal documents at his Californian home, Cullen sued him for
defamation through the Western Australian Supreme Court, seeking to stop the
attacks, remove the defamatory materials and gain fnancial redress for the harm
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 115
done by his comments. Te situation was complicated by the fact that defamation
at that time was a state matter in Australia and the law consequently varied across
Australias diferent legal jurisdictions. Court costs in the region of Aus$8,000 were
kept as low as possible by a supportive lawyer who donated signifcant time to the
ground-breaking case.
White did not appear at the proceedings, nor did he raise any defence to the
defamatory statements. Dr Cullen was awarded $70,000 in compensatory damages
and a further $25,000 in exemplary damages, in recognition of the deliberate
nature of Whites attacks (Dare 2004: 11). Indeed, the judge commented that the
damages should be sufcient to signal to the public the vindication of his [Cullens]
reputation (Newnes J cited in Dare 2004: 17). Tere was considerable publicity for
this outcome: at the point that the judgment was delivered it was the largest internet
defamation award ever handed down in Australia. Newspaper articles appeared in
Te West Australian (OLeary 2003: 13), Te Sunday Times (of Perth) (Hellard 2003)
and Te Los Angeles Times (Hyman 2003). Tere was also broadcasting coverage,
including an item on Australias ABC 7.30 Report (ODonnell 2003).
Even with an Australian judgment in Cullens favour, however, approaches to
Whites ISP site hosts, to US domain-name suppliers and to search engines such as
Google resulted in no positive action. Given that freedom of speech is vigorously
defended in the US as the First Amendment cornerstone of the Constitution, it
seems that the right of a US citizen to defame took precedence over the right of a
non-US citizen to protection from defamation. Cullen was advised that only a US
Court Order would authorise the removal of the defamatory material. Tis would
have been an extraordinarily expensive and drawn-out process since the Australian
judgment would not have been accepted in a US court, but would have been subject
to an essential re-hearing of the case under US law. White meanwhile had linked
together many of his sites attacking Cullen and his related victims. Tis ring of sites
often has the efect of maximising search engine visibility, moving a site or collection
of sites higher in the order in which they are displayed after a search.
Subsequently, and the genesis is uncertain although it is not Cullens work, one of
Whites victims developed Bill White Exposed (n.d.). Tis website may seem somewhat
ofensive in itself, but that isto a lesser degree and with diferent intentfrom the web
sites through which White attacked his victims.Te content becomes serious half-
way down, after the animated image of the smiling toad, and begins to outline some
of the substantive issues as well as identifying White and his actual address. Te Bill
White Exposed site is the remedy often promoted as an appropriate right of reply
to defamatory material: an equivalent attack in similar terms. Tis right of reply
redress is sometimes suggested as the best possible response to cyber stalking since it
preserves the notion of the internet as a locale for free speech.
116 t h e i n t e r n e t
Dare comments (2005) that: Many critics accuse plaintifs of using the legal
system to stife freedom of expression, efectively chilling robust debate, and situate
the debate within a David and Goliath context, wherein wealthy individuals
and corporations use defamation laws to stife opposition. Te term chilling
here is widely used as in www.chillingefects.org to refer to inhibiting forces
that infuence what is posted. Te efect of this chill is to make online comments
more conservative. It also leads to self-censoring and the withholding of views.
Chillingefects.org has a special section on defamation and ofers university Law
Clinic-based advice on how to avoid viewpoints being frozen out of internet
debates. Often, defamation actions are interpreted as an attack on free speech, rather
than a right to defend ones reputation against baseless lies.
Most discussions of defamation start from the premise that the action is brought
as a way to chill debate or end it altogether. Dare argues diferently in this case.
She suggests that defending Whites right to defame on free speech grounds fails
to ack nowledge the impact of Whites postings in suppressing free speech, and
in disrupting interaction on public discussion sites, such as the Pacifc Forum.
Further, as victim Henningham argues, to the extent that Whites defamatory
state ments about corruption and illegality were believed, it is possible that Whites
Cullen-related attacks on missionaries, medical doctors, aid workers and charitable
organisations had harmful impacts upon thousands of people who might otherwise
have received assistance (cited in Dare 2005).
Te impact of Whites activities in inhibiting free speech also afected the press.
When the media began to take an interest in Cullens forthcoming court case, a
number of journalists contacted White for his side of the story. Tey and their
editors were subsequently subject to their own abusive websites once White realised
they did not see matters as he did. Te hard copy of Te West Australian story
(OLeary 2003) was not posted in the online version of the paper, even though this
would have been expected. Dare (2005) comments that according to the journalist
who covered the story, the newspapers proprietors decided the risk of attracting Bill
Whites attention was too great.
Concluding that Whites defamatory postings by themselves created a de facto
restriction of free speech on the internet, Dares view (2005) is that:
whereas defamation laws operate within a transparent system of laws and
regulations, and are open to debate and review, Whites form of regulation is
completely arbitrary . . . the insidious nature of the threat posed by individuals
such as White a threat that often escapes the notice of the broader public and
the media represents a greater risk to an active and engaged public sphere than
traditional defamation suits.
r e g u l a t i o n a n d l e g i s l a t i o n 117
Dares contribution to this debate was such that Te Honorable Jim McGinty,
Western Australian Attorney-General at the time, asked her permission to circulate
a copy of her Honours thesis to the Standing Committee of [Australian] Attorneys-
General (SCAG) Defamation Working Group.
Tere is no doubt that White, and stalkers like him, have direct efects upon the
lives of those they harass, even where the risk of physical harm is minimal. It is also
clear that conventional remedies, such as a resort to law, further punish the victim
through extracting costs, fees and stress in circumstances that rarely allow a realistic
prospect of recovering those expenses. Victims with a professional reputation to
protect may also fnd themselves under considerable pressure from employers and
social institutions to sue the defamer, since this is one of the few efective ways to
demonstrate to third parties that the defamatory allegations are without substance.
All these circumstances are made more complex where the harasser and the victim
are located in separate legal jurisdictions. Te alternative remedy, which is using the
internet as a vehicle for a right of reply, is also an impost upon the victim who is
required to continually monitor the attacks and develop the skills and knowledge to
respond to them appropriately. In this case, however, Whites death eventually led
to the cessation of most of his websites but only once the contracts he had agreed
with the ISPs hosting them ran out.
Refection: Free Speech on the Internet
Do you think its more important that internet-communicated speech is free or fair?
Who gets to decide what constitutes free or fair speech?
Summary
n Chapter 6 considers constructions of the internet as a risky place, with a specifc focus upon content risk
(pornography) and contact risk (cyber harassment).
n Discussions about the internet as a risky place raise issues about narrative theory, discourse analysis and
metaphor. These are briefy addressed before examining the major case studies of the chapter.
n The internet is considered as a major conduit for accessing pornography and this is constructed as a risky
activity in some circumstances. Pornography is acknowledged as one of the internets killer applications,
118 t h e i n t e r n e t
and as a major driver of technical advance. It can be commercially risky for an organisation to regulate
so heavily that pornography is not accessible via the internet.
n The case study on cyber harassment is based around the experiences of a real person, Associate Professor
Trevor Cullen, whose fght to clear his name involved a range of strategies in response to the attacks of
his persecutor, the late Mr Bill White.
n This chapter has raised issues concerning the public sphere: in terms of media coverage of childrens use
of the internet; in terms of narrative and discourse analysis; and in terms of the importance of free speech
relative to the right not to be defamed.
Chapter 7 focuses upon the relationship between the internet and the public sphere.
7 THE PUBLIC SPHERE
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 6 considered claims that the internet should be a space for free information
exchange, but also a place that might need to be regulated to protect people from
risks, harassment and lies. Tis chapter continues that discussion by examining the
notion of the public sphere as:
a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can
be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere
comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble
to form a public body. . . . Citizens behave as a public body when they confer
in an unrestricted fashion that is with the guarantee of freedom of assembly
and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions about
matters of general interest. . . . Te public sphere as a sphere that mediates
between society and state, in which the public organises itself as the bearer of
public opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere that 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 1989a: 734)
At the time that Habermas was developing his theory, the media of the public
sphere [. . . were] newspapers and magazines, radio and television (1989a: 73). Today,
this list would include the internet. Habermas was careful to distinguish between
mere opinions (cultural assumptions, normative attitudes, collective prejudices and
values) [that] seem to persist unchanged in their natural form as a kind of sediment
of history and public opinion which can by defnition come into existence only
when a reasoning public is supposed (1989a: 74). Tese aspects of Habermass
theory have triggered huge debate. Te idea of a reasoning public implies that
some publics are less reasonable than others, and that judgements can and need
to be made about where reasoning starts and ends in order to accord legitimacy to
public opinion. Indeed, Habermas defnes public opinion as the tasks of criticism
and control which a public body of citizens informally and, in periodic elections,
120 t h e i n t e r n e t
formally as well practices vis--vis the ruling structure organized in the form of
a state (1989a: 73). Public opinion formation in Habermass mind is a grave and
serious responsibility.
Habermas positions the public sphere as growing out of a specifc phase of
bourgeois society in the second half of the eighteenth century, starting more or less
with the revolutionary movements in America (17751783) and in France (1789
1799). Te bourgeois in this sense can be loosely defned as wealthy, educated
men, usually merchants and writers, who were not part of the ruling class and
consequently not involved in parliament. Tese men were also not caught up in
day-to-day fghting or working and had the luxury of being able to participate in
protracted debate. Tey met in the cofee houses of London to read the newspapers
and political pamphlets and discuss the implications for commerce and politics of
the days events, and of revolutionary ideals. At that point, society was a private
realm occupying a position in opposition to the state (Habermas 1989a: 75), but
it was clearly no longer a private domestic authority since it came into existence
through the formation of public opinion.
Habermas argues that the proper functioning of the public sphere was lost when it
became a feld for the competition of interests . . . Laws which obviously have come
about under the pressure of the street can scarcely still be understood as arising
from the consensus of private individuals engaged in public discussion (ibid.: 77). In
particular, when the public sphere expanded beyond the bourgeoisie, it lost not only
its social exclusivity but also the coherence created by bourgeois social institutions
and a relatively high standard of education (ibid.: 77). Many commentators accept
the notion of a public sphere but object to Habermass reservations and qualifcations
about the contemporary public sphere. Some particularly highlight concerns that
the original cofee house culture excluded women and people who had to work for
their income, and was mainly fnanced by wealth generated from the slave trade.
Its a big debate which is summarised, synthesised and developed by McKee (2004),
among others.
Alan McKee (2004) particularly disagrees with claims that the concept of a
coherent public sphere has been compromised by its expansion beyond the bour-
geoisie, and the inclusion of popular culture and the mass media. He argues that
accusations of the contemporary public sphere becoming trivialised, commercialised,
turned into a spectacle, fragmented and creative of political apathy are evidence of
the public sphere becoming more inclusive and moving away from a cultural space
dominated by white, Anglo, middle-class, serious, educated, masculine values.
Trivialisation, according to McKee, is simply conservative speak for womens
per spectives, some of which are emotional as well as political. Commercialisa-
tion relates to middle-class-based judgements about what interests working-class
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 121
audiences, and is sometimes implied in discussions about the dumbing down of
media content. McKee (citing Aaronovitch 2003: 23) comments that programs such
as Big Brother and Wife Swap remind you of that most easily forgotten thing of all;
the possibility of something else. Te chance that there is, after all, an explanation
for the behaviour of people from backgrounds diferent from your own (McKee
2004: 102). Such diversity of perspectives efectively enriches culture.
A complaint against spectacle, in McKees mind, is a complaint against the way
in which matters are addressed in popular culture, as well as the topics discussed and
the content presented. Discussing the political communication purposes of Black
rap music, specifcally the Public Enemy video of By the time I get to Arizona, McKee
comments that the visual, aural and bodily communication of the message is as
critical to the Black public sphere as written rational modes of communication are
to traditional western philosophers (ibid.: 107). Similarly, the complaint against
fragmentation is constructed as a serious, educated regret that not all people engage
with the same material in the same middle-class orderly way at the same time; and
that diferent taste cultures McKees focus is on Queer communities choose to
embrace diversity rather than uniformity (ibid.: 146). Te value of this embracing
of diversity is evident in the legitimising of a range of publics: each entitled to their
own overlapping, or competing, or diametrically opposed, public sphere.
McKees fnal defence of the contemporary public sphere is to argue that popular
culture does not produce political apathy. Using youth culture as his example, McKee
suggests that the problem is one of defnition: political action has been redefned
but the status quo has failed to notice. Whereas political action might once have
meant campaigning for legislation to distribute resources more equitably, it now
aims to change culture rather than legislation, and hopes for recognition rather
than redistribution (ibid.: 174). Te citizen-produced information, knowledge and
cultural products available on the internet are evidence of a huge surge of creative and
culture-changing energy unleashed over the past decade. Overall, McKee suggests
that the public sphere in contemporary culture has moved on from Habermass
restricted ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. Tese days it is multi-class; emotional;
inclusive of genders, sexual orientations, and educational in/experience; diverse
and fragmented. Tis is one way to see the internet and the kinds of information,
knowledge and culture on display.
Moving on from discussing the concept of public sphere, this chapter considers
three case studies. Tese are the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which
campaigns for freedom of speech and other civil liberties in the digital domain;
Wikipedia and YouTube. But frst we will look at the comparatively new phen-
omenon of blogging and citizen-journalism as a way of investigating the identifca-
tion of quality information accessible via the web. Te sheer diversity of information
122 t h e i n t e r n e t
ONLINE RESEARCH AND ASSESSING THE
VALIDITY OF INFORMATION ON THE
INTERNET: THE EXAMPLE OF CITIZEN-
JOURNALISM
Given the opportunities for free speech on the internet, it becomes important to
recognise that not all information is equally valid or equally relevant for any given
purpose. Indeed, much of the information on the internet is incomplete or wrong
and some is actively dangerous and misleading. Selecting appropriate information
for any given purpose requires critical assessment of the uses to which it is to be put.
Using the internet to carry out research is a continuous exercise in critical analysis.
People who search for information do so with a variety of agendas. For example,
someone with a serious illness who has been told by their medical team that there
is nothing more to be done using conventional medicine might deliberately seek
out the details of alternative remedies and support groups which most medical
authorities would suggest that patients avoid. Similarly, people trying to fnd out
the on-the-ground implications of the Iraq War, which started on 20 March 2003,
soon learned about a citizen-journalist Iraqi blogger writing in English, known as
Salam Pax. Tis was not an ofcial source of record, as the well-established quality
available raises a critical question: how do we know which information to pay
attention to, and which to discard? Te web is a repository for scholarly knowledge,
and academic researchers use it to gather reputable information on subjects as diverse
as Anglo-Saxon culture through to the use of zoological parks to support endangered
species. Te web is also chaotic, misleading, fragmented and includes a range of
opinions and superstitions which no commercial publisher would ever consider
dignifying in print. Given the immense amount of information on the internet, we
will shortly consider how to decide which information is reliable, following on from
some further thoughts concerning the public sphere.
Refection: The public sphere
Habermas thought that the public sphere was important for democracy, facilitating participation in society.
one argument supporting internet use might be that it enhances democracy by allowing more voices to
be heard.
What do you think about this argument?
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 123
newspapers see themselves to be: papers such as Te Times of London, the New York
Times and the Washington Post. Paxs blog was alternative news. He wrote about his
daily life in Iraq and ofered a very diferent perspective from the western media and
from Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language news network. What was more, he juxtaposed
what he and relatives witnessed with what was reported in mainstream Western and
Arab news media (Haas 2005: 388).
Te model for establishing validity in the blogosphere is a very diferent process
from that which applies to the western mass media. Bruns (2008a: 6980) discusses
how the conventional media adopt a gatekeeper approach, where newspapers
editorial teams select the staf and the stories that appear in the paper. Written
material is fltered and sub-edited to check quality frst, and then published. Tis
hierarchical and controlled process is contrasted with the approach of blogging and
community-based media production, which is characterised as being publish frst
and then the reader checks the quality afterwards (ibid.: 74). It is a kind of caveat
emptor buyer beware. If this seems like an archaic term, Google gives 1,180,000
web references for its use.
Brunss view is that news blogging works because stories produced by citizen-
journalists set out to achieve diferent ends from those produced by the mass
media. Te story itself is not the fnal product, its just the starting point, because
ultimately the goal of every story is to start discussion, to start a lot of people saying
what they think about it (Foster, quoted in Bruns 2008a: 81). News blogger Salam
Pax provided a personal and credible view of the war as it was experienced in daily
life on the streets of Baghdad, but it was clear that Salam Pax was a pseudonym.
Both words mean peace: the frst in Arabic, the second in Latin; and there was a
clear question of the authenticity of the person behind the name. Tis issue was
sufciently important for Te Guardian newspaper to track Pax down at the end of
May 2003 to establish that there was a person (Salam al-Janabi) behind Salam Paxs
alias (McCarthy 2003).
Like Paxs blogs, McCarthys newspaper story is vivid with the detail of an eye-
witness encounter. Unlike Paxs accounts, it also has the brand of an authoritative
media source, the UKs Guardian newspaper. McCarthys story provided evidence
that Pax existed and that his contribution was important, but it was not an analysis
of his relevance or a discussion of why he became a phenomenon on the internet
and a much-quoted personal perspective on the Iraq War, used by the western mass
media. For analytical and critical information of that kind it is appropriate to refer
to more refective works such as Hamilton and Jenner (2003), or the scholarly
contribution of Haas (2005), or the Literary Criticism account of the importance of
the frst person I autobiographical statement in Gillian Whitlocks (2007) book Soft
Weapons: Autobiography In Transit.
124 t h e i n t e r n e t
Over the past three paragraphs, this chapter has critiqued the relative validity of
Salam Paxs blog according to a range of parameters and purposes, while demonstrating
some of the processes by which it is possible to gauge the acceptability of source
material. Te frst purpose in this critique was to introduce the notion of the citizen-
journalist blog, which is an important internet-related innovation not extensively
discussed elsewhere in this book. As with the various IMC (Independent Media
Center, Indymedia) sites (Indymedia n.d.), whose slogan is dont hate the media,
be the media, the internet has made Paxs contribution to the public sphere much
more relevant and accessible. Tere will have been many diaries kept by articulate,
English-speaking Iraqis, but Paxs is particularly important because it impacted upon
the events as they were unfolding. It provided an on-the-ground view during the
second Gulf War which was read by soldiers and military strategists, as well as by
middle-class intellectuals, schoolchildren and pacifsts. For many people, Paxs blog
was a useful additional source for framing opinions and informing discussion while
the war was in process. Tis was also the case with citizen-journalist coverage of the
Mumbai attacks in November 2008, and is likely to be a recurring pattern in future
incidents of unfolding public trauma.
Allucqure Rosanne Stones (1991) classic case study of the mature-aged disabled
online confdante Julie, who was in fact a persona created by a middle-aged male
psychiatrist, demonstrates how easy it is to be deceived about important matters
of fact when the only evidence for the existence of someone is their internet-based
communication (see Chapter 8). Consequently, in 2003 when Pax frst became
important, and in 2009 when evidence was being collected to develop the example
used here, it became critical to seek proof of authenticity. A frst step was accessing
Wikipedia. Tis was only a frst step since the purpose of the preliminary search
is purely to defne the kinds of authoritative materials that might be available. A
search engine like Google might also have been a starting point had Wikipedia not
produced valuable information.
In fact, it was Wikipedia which contained the useful information that In
May 2003, Te Guardian newspaper tracked the man down and printed a story
indicating that he did indeed live in Iraq, with the given name Salam (Wikipedia
Salam Pax n.d.). Te Wikipedia entry linked to Te Guardian, giving access to
their website (2009). Tis enabled a search for Salam Pax using the guardian.co.uk
search function. A careful scrutiny of stories referring to Salam Pax published in May
2003 revealed the article by Rory McCarthy cited earlier. Its worth noting here that
Wikipedia made a credible starting point, but not an end point. In academic research
it is rarely appropriate to cite Wikipedia articles when the evidence supporting the
entries, the primary sources, can be accessed simply by following relevant links or
hunting further afeld or with diferent search terms.
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 125
McCarthy, as a journalist working for a respectable, globally-recognisable news-
paper, is an authoritative source for most purposes. Unfortunately, a single news-
paper article is generally not sufcient for a piece of academic writing. Since this
in forma tion search was being carried out as part of an academic writing process, the
McCarthy article required further back-up before it could be used with confdence.
Newspaper editors commission and then vet journalists stories and there is no
reason to disbelieve McCarthys contribution, but the article was not produced
according to the gold standard of academic writing, which is via informed/expert
peer review. When scholarly articles are subject to double-blind peer review this
means that all information that might identify the author is removed, and the article
is sent out for assessment by at least two readers or reviewers. Readers are selected
by the journals editor on the basis of their expertise in the feld to which the article
contributes. Te author has no say in which readers will be asked to read the article,
and the readers are not told who the author is. Te idea of the double-blind review
is that the article is judged on the basis of merit, rather than the reputation of the
author. For most academic purposes, scholarly articles from well-known academic
journals are the best possible sources to inform a persuasive, well-founded argument.
Libraries at schools, colleges and universities have a range of databases which make
it possible to search for references to Salam Pax in scholarly journal articles. Tese
databases are available to students and university staf and use various key terms to
help identify relevant information published about Pax in academic journals, and
when. Further, many academic institutions make it possible for library members to
use Google Scholar to access a range of materials online. Google Scholar, like Google
and Google Books, is a full-text database. It can be accessed by clicking on the more
tab on the Google homepage, which releases a drop down menu including both the
Scholar link and an entry point to Google Books. Te full-text database means
that every word in every article or book is stored separately and can be searched for
individually, or as one or more of a string of words in specifc order. By using the
advanced search function, in particular the with the exact phrase feld, it is possible
to ensure that the Google Scholar database is searched for the term Salam+Pax
rather than one word or both separately. At the point when this search was carried
out, Google Scholar identifed 391 separate articles or sources with the term Salam
Pax held on the database. Te same end would have been achieved in the normal
Scholar search by enclosing the term Salam Pax in inverted commas: thats one way
to bypass the need to click through to the exact phrase feld.
Academic libraries often hold online subscriptions to scholarly journals, as well
as collecting and ofering hard-copy print versions of articles. Among the references
ofered by Google Scholar to the search term Salam Pax were several articles held
on secure databases that could be accessed immediately via a researchers personal
126 t h e i n t e r n e t
password, which authenticates the inquirer as a member of an institution with a
valid subscription to the journals. Given this choice, it was possible to select between
available references in the knowledge that a subsection was easily accessible to
online. Google Scholar, based as it is on the same kinds of principles as Larry Pages
PageRank innovation, which underpins the Google search engine itself (Chapter
2), not only references the full text of articles but also includes all the references
that each of those articles cite. Tus, as it displays information about the articles on
its database which refer to Salam Pax, so Google Scholar also displays information
about articles that have referenced the article featured. Indeed, the order in which the
391 database items were ofered in response to the Salam+Pax search term privileged
articles that had been multiply cited. Among the frst three articles (most of the
highest ranked sources were books based on his blog written by Salam Pax himself )
were two with International/Policy Studies titles (Foreign Afairs, Foreign Policy). Tis
feld of study is somewhat removed from the expertise in new media, cultural studies
and communications that had prompted the search, so the status of those journals
is not immediately clear to a researcher with a new media background. Given this,
it makes more sense to look further. Ultimately it was decided to refer to Hamilton
and Jenner (2003) for the three paragraphs that introduced this section, implicitly
comparing their account with the scholarly contribution of Haas (2005).
For new media research, the Hamilton and Jenner article might not appear fully
authoritative for academic purposes since the journal Foreign Afairs is published
by the Council on Foreign Relations and is described as both a journal and a
magazine. A magazine implies commissioned work and a lack of arms length peer
review. Together with the fact that the paper at 2,702 words is short for a peer-
reviewed scholarly article, raises the possibility that the Hamilton and Jenner piece
might not itself be peer-reviewed even though the authors biographies certainly
positioned them as academics. Further, since the Council on Foreign Relations has
been in existence since 1921 and is a nonpartisan and independent membership
organisation (CFR 2009), it seemed likely that there was no direct university
afli ation. A university sponsorship might have made it seem more scholarly to a
university researcher, somewhat ignorant of the International and Policy Studies
feld. Finally, Hamilton and Jenner had commented (2003: 131) that Salam Paxs
authenticity has since been validated by an American newsperson. Tis non-
specifc statement seemed hard to prove or disprove, whereas a number of sources
(Wikipedia, Te Guardian and Haas 2005) had provided verifable information that
Paxs identity had been confrmed by a Guardian reporter (who might also be an
American newsperson). Where possible, when accuracy is particularly important,
the rule of thumb that a piece of information should be checked across three or
more separate sources ofers some defence against hearsay and woolliness.
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 127
Having noted those details about the Hamilton and Jenner (2003) piece, it is
prudent to pay comparatively closer attention to the Haas article (2005). Haas
had been published in Journalism Studies, published by Routledge, and was an
appropriate source for a communications and cultural studies scholarly reference.
Had the research required been more wide-ranging, perhaps informing an in-depth
article on blogging, with particular reference to Salam Pax, more references would
have been required, and more ideas considered for incorporation. A frst step here
might have been to examine other references ofered in response to the Salam+Pax
search, coupled with clicking-through on the Google Scholar link from the Haas
article to the 23 articles that had cited it. Usefully, by using citation links, and the
citations linked to the citations, a researcher can check the updated arguments in
the feld as well as reassuring themselves that the debates around the topic are still
current.
A diferent strategy that might have been followed to prepare the frst three
paragraphs of this section would have been to use the Advanced Scholar Search
function to identify articles by specifc authors, such as Axel Bruns, who is a speci-
alist on blogging and the author of a recent book in the area (2008a). A quick search
indicates that Bruns has had an article published mentioning Pax: referenced in
this book as Bruns 2008b. Further, it would have also been useful to check how
current it is to write about Salam Pax by stipulating that Google Scholar list relevant
Salam+Pax articles from 2008 onwards. Tis is achieved by inserting 2008 into the
frst box on the line marked Date: Return articles published between . . . According
to the Google Scholar website, there were 16 articles referring to Salam Pax published
in 2008, and 25 published in 2007.
For the purposes of the section published here, however, the single Haas (2005)
reference is sufcient. Even so, it was still worth making a separate query via Google
Books. Books is accessed via the same drop down menu as Scholar; triggered via
the more button on the Google homepage. Advanced Books Search again allows
the option of with the exact phrase for Salam+Pax. Google Books provided 302
links to materials in the database referring to Salam Pax, some of which provided
snippet view. Snippet view shows the reader four or fve lines with the sought-for
term in the centre of the snippet. Conroy and Hansons book (2007) was the most
highly ranked reference apart from the books written by Pax himself. It ofers snippet
view and had three snippets visible plus the information that Salam Pax appears on
four pages. Tere are snippets from pages 20, 21 and 22. It is quite possible that the
fourth snippet-view page is the index.
Te next book in the Salam+Pax Google Books list was Whitlock (2007). It ofers
a limited view, which is more extensive than a snippet view. Te page ofered, 27,
had fve references to Salam Pax in a scanned-in text of the full page. Limited view
128 t h e i n t e r n e t
also has a Search in this book facility. Entering Salam Pax (with inverted commas)
yielded a number of page references (without a summary of the total number
on ofer) from which it was clear that Whitlocks (2007) study of Soft Weapons:
Autobiography In Transit, although a literary criticism text, takes a specifc interest
in the eye-witness, frst person account which had particularly recommended Salam
Pax to his readership, and which had been also remarked upon when discussing the
McCarthy (2003) account of Paxs identifcation. On the basis of the information
provided, it could have been worth requesting the book via the library as something
that is likely to be relevant to a larger study of Salam Paxs contribution.
At this point the basic facts had been established, and a reasonable amount of
theory covered. On the basis of information gleaned it was possible to sketch out a
writing plan. To check that the search strategies had been reasonably comprehensive,
however, it was also worth googling Salam Pax. Googles information is less
processed than Wikipedias; it is mainly raw web materials and relatively hard to vali-
date, except through reference to other entries followed by a step-by-step verifcation
trail to arrive at authorities that can be accepted as trustworthy for a given specifc
purpose. Te short-cuts to determining quality in the results of a Google search
mainly rely on the authority of the site indicated, or the author of the material, or
both. Tere were 84,300 Google hits for Salam Pax. Te frst was a piece by Pax,
the second was the Wikipedia entry which had already been used, and the third was
the McCarthy piece from Te Guardian, 30 May 2003, about how Salam Pax had
been sought and found. Tis indicated that Googles ranking system was working
in line with the priorities already followed, even though Google results difer with
country and with language.
It was not until the second page (screen) of Googles 84,300 references that sub-
stantially diferent material was ofered. Here, there was a BBC story. Te BBC
Newsnight (2008) account allowed Salam Pax to update his readers, revealing that he
and his family had left Iraq and were living in the UK. Some measure of quality is
ofered by the BBC website, as would also be the case with a recognised newspaper
or a report from an organisation afliated with a university, with a national govern-
ment, or with a major library. Also on the second screen was a transcript of an ABC
(Australian public broadcasting) in-depth interview program called Enough Rope
(2004). Tis provided a very personal insight into Salam Paxs life, and revealed that
he was gay and his mother was Shia Muslim while his father was a Sunni. However,
it was clear that the Wikipedia, Google Scholar and Google Books searches had
already revealed the really valuable kinds of scholarly information required by an
academic research task.
Clearly this account of how someone might seek quality information on the
internet relies on a range of research tools which might at any stage need revisiting:
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 129
THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION
Some members of the online community construct the internet as the ultimate place
for free speech and open access to information. In choosing the name Electronic
Frontier Foundation at its foundation in 1990, EFF created a sense of afnity
between the internet as it was emerging in the last decade of the twentieth century
and the mythological frontier freedoms of early pioneers. In the frst half of the
nineteenth century, communities such as the Mormons were motivated to move west
to land that eventually became the State of Utah, to establish their own territories
where they could live as they chose under their own rules. Efectively, these pioneers
set up a new frontier in the search for freedom.
Te implication of the EFF title was that people in search of freedoms that
were now circumscribed by everyday life might fnd what they were looking for in
the electronic frontiers of the internet. Te EFF was set up specifcally to protect
freedom of speech on the internet; to promote peoples civil liberties, and to defend
them (EFF 2009). One of the co-founders of EFF was Grateful Dead lyricist John
Perry Barlow who, along with his co-founders, was a member of the WELL online
community.
for example, if Googles Scholar site were closed down, or if it stopped being free or
was no longer linked to a librarys oferings. Tere are also a number of books about
using the web to fnd good information which ofer a more extensive and rounded
set of options. Tese include Alan Novembers (2008), Web Literacy For Educators,
which is as valid for general students as it is for the educators of the title. Te
important thing to remember when using the internet to carry out research is the
standard required for the task in hand. Scholarly work should draw upon scholarly
work, rather than upon Google or Wikipedia. Academic books and journals are
retained and accessible in reliable and permanent ways, whereas Wikipedia is subject
to continuous change (see below), and material accessed via Google can be deleted
at any point. Fortunately the web is an efective doorway to much scholarly work,
although not all of it, which is the point made by Jeanneny (2006: ch. 5).
Refection: What makes an information source trustworthy?
What evidence do you look for before deciding to trust information from the internet?
130 t h e i n t e r n e t
Te early euphoria about the potential freedoms of the internet was challenged by
the reality and the power of government regulation, especially as these were exercised
in attempts to control web-communicated images of pornography. On 8 February
1996 the hugely controversial US Communications Decency Act (CDA), a sub-section
of the Telecommunications Act 1996, was signed into law by President Clinton, prior
to subsequently being declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1997.
On the same day, and explicitly linking the action to the CDA legislation, Barlow
wrote A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (Barlow 1996). Te title of this
statement concerning the principles of internet autonomy tapped into the emotive
history of the US Declaration of Independence and its association with the struggle for
freedom from colonial oppression. It reads as a liberationist manifesto:
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded
by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a
world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how
singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal
concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply
to us. Tey are all based on matter, and there is no matter here. (Barlow 1996)
Material or not, the digital world has proven susceptible to government regulation,
as indicated by the discussions on Chinas controls over the internet (see Chapter
3). Further, experience has taught that one persons free speech can translate into
the unacceptable persecution of another through cyber-harassment and defamatory
comment, as discussed in Chapter 6. Even so, EFF is an efective champion for
the rights of people on the internet, and it has links with equivalent country-based
campaigns in most of the worlds democracies. Its relevance here is to remind us that
information on the internet includes many singular beliefs, and this needs to be
taken into account when deciding what to trust. It is also a reminder that in some
jurisdictions, such as Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam and Iran, even widely-held beliefs
cannot be safely communicated using the internet.
Refection: A declaration of the independence of cyberspace
How realistic is Barlows declaration?
How independent is the internet from the politics and governments of the countries in which it is accessed?
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 131
WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia is the best known and most successful agenda setter in the wiki-based
prosumer-driven category of web content. Wikipedia is also social in the sense
that it gets better if more people use it, since more people can contribute more
knowledge, or can correct details in existing knowledge for which they are experts
(Vossen and Hagemann 2007: 57). Axel Bruns sees both blogs and wikis as key
drivers of Web 2.0 development (see Chapter 5). If citizen journalism such as that
practised by Salam Pax is an example of a blog, and blogging is a foundational Web
2.0 application, wikis are another. Bruns also sees key diferences between wikis and
blogs:
Where blogs are founded in the frst place on a temporal organization and
classifcation of their contents (customarily listing the most recently created
articles in the most prominent position), and therefore proceed from a time-
based logic, wikis instead implement a space-based structure. Wikis enable their
users to create a network of knowledge that is structured ad hoc through multiple
interlinkages between individual pieces of information in the knowledge base;
they represent, in short, a rapidly changing microcosm of the structures of the
wider Web beyond their own technological boundaries. (Bruns 2008a: 102)
Wikis also include mechanisms to see the changes made to pages over time, features
to notify key people when a page is changed, and discussion pages which are tied
into entries where issues can be addressed: as well as other pages for setting policy
and norms (and their associated history and discussion pages) (Stvilia et al. 2008:
986). Tese features are central to the Wikipedia quest for information quality.
Wikipedia arose from the ashes of Nupedia, a project which intended to harness
the skills of volunteer experts but involved professional paid checkers of the content.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Nupedia in 2000, and the later Wikipedia in 2001, was
intrigued by the emerging open source movement and unsure whether the principles
would work in areas other than software, so he set up an online encyclopaedia to
see if it could be done (Pink 2005). Tis was achieved using a seven-step validation
process of article assignment, fact checking, review, copy-editing and approval. Two
of these processes involved back-up open collaboration: open review and open copy-
editing; in both cases the review and copy-editing was ofered to the public only
after professionals had taken the lead. After 18+ months and $250,000, Wales says,
we had 12 articles (Pink 2005).
Soon afterwards, Wales found out about wikis. Tese allow anybody with Web
access to go to a site and edit, delete, or add to whats there. Wales started a wiki
version of the encyclopaedia. Within a month, they had 200 articles. In a year, they
had 18,000. And on 20 September 2004, when the Hebrew edition added an article
132 t h e i n t e r n e t
on Kazakhstans fag, Wikipedia had its one millionth article (Pink 2005). Wales
had demonstrated that open-source principles could work for encyclopedias if the
software and the organising principles were right. Tere is signifcant administrative
work, but its almost all done by volunteers. Tere are duties such as administering
pages, developing software, fnding copyright-free photos, moderating conficts, and
patrolling for vandalism. With only fve paid stafers, volunteers perform most of
it (Tapscott and Williams 2006: 72). Wales has noted, however, that Wikipedia is
not primarily a technological innovation, but a social and design innovation (Wales
cited by Hendler and Golbeck 2008: 15).
Bruns, who uses the term produser where some might use prosumer, argues that
the success of the Wikipedia project indicates four preconditions for efectiveness, as
outlined in Figure 7.1.
1. Trust in the potential capacity of the contributors to meet the
demands of the project in a non-hierarchical way, with barriers to
engagement set as low as possible to include as many produsers as
possible;
2. Solve problems through enabling contributors to work on challenges
that interest them, in ways that interest them, rather than directing
people to work on tasks that someone else has decided are critical;
3. Set up granular content-creation practices; small, separate tasks
requiring a limited set of skills and a limited degree of user
investment. If the consequences of task failure are low and reversible
then produsers can learn on the job and administrative direction is
minimised;
4. share ownership of processes, tasks and outcomes with equal access
to information, and reject infexible production models.
Source: Based on Bruns 2008a: 1920)
Figure 7.1: Brunss preconditions for the creation of an effective wiki
Additionally, there are general principles that Wikipedians should adhere to.
Tey should be unbiased in what they write, and act in good faith to improve the
encyclopedia. Te guidelines are sometimes summed up as Neutral Point of View,
Verifability and No Original Research (Bruns 2008a: 113). Just in case not
everyone follows the rules, a number of semi-protected articles have watch-lists:
people who are notifed when the entry is changed. Watched entries include the
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 133
biographies of political fgures and religious faiths and movements. Te watchers are
vigilant. A study by MIT and IBM found that cases of mass deletions, a common
form of vandalism, were corrected in a median time of 2.8 minutes. When an
obscenity accompanied the mass deletion, the median time dropped to 1.7 minutes
(Pink 2005). Te Wikipedia process has produced a self-correcting, continually
updated site. Further, in 2005 it had over 500,000 articles in English compared with
the 80,000 on ofer in Encyclopedia Britannica. By 2007, the number of articles
in English had risen to two million (Bruns 2008a:107), while some commentators
estimate that an average of almost 2,000 new articles in English is posted every day
(Tapscott and Williams 2006: 76).
So why is Wikipedia generally unacceptable as a stand-alone, academic-quality
reference for research papers and essays? Wired journalist Daniel Pink provides an
answer: Encyclopedias aspire to be infallible. But Wikipedia requires that the perfect
never be the enemy of the good. Citizen editors dont need to make an entry fawless.
Tey just need to make it better. As a result, even many Wikipedians believe the site
is not as good as traditional encyclopedias (Pink 2005). A study by Nature magazine
of 42 science entries revealed that Wikipedia was less reliable than Britannica, but
neither was perfect. Britannica had three errors per article, Wikipedia four (Tapscott
and Williams 2006: 75). Wikipedia swiftly corrected the errors identifed.
As a compensation for always being a work in progress, Wikipedia content is
constantly growing, changing and responding. During the days in which the 2008
Mumbai attacks were in progress, 2629 November, Wikipedia provided a record
of the unfolding events. Tis was less a critique of the mass media, which tends to
be the focus of citizen-journalist blogs, but was instead a chronicling of history
as it happens (Bruns 2008a: 104). For many people who watched the three-day
horror unfold, including professional journalists, the new pages on Wikipedia, the
tweets on Twitter, and images on Flickr and YouTube, ofered an organic multi-
dimensionality missing from the polished, packaged, professional news services.
According to Wales, wikis let people who share a passion also share a project (Pink
2005). A revitalised prosumer-driven public sphere is emerging from that passionate
participation.
YOUTUBE
Google bought YouTube in a $1.65 billion share deal in October 2006, valuing
the smaller company at approximately 3 per cent of Google. When the deal was
announced, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, stated that YouTube complements Googles
mission to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and
useful (Google 2006). Implicitly, the information Schmidt referred to in terms
134 t h e i n t e r n e t
of YouTube was digital video: both prosumer-made and paid-professional. In
improving the searchability of the YouTube archive, and ofering YouTube video
sources as relevant items of information alongside websites, pdfs and other language-
based documents, Google was arguably adding value to what was already a vibrant
and growing video community, and improving the services Google ofered to its
core search clients. Since that time searches on Google increasingly ofer relevant
YouTube content, and there has been signifcant integration of written and visual
data sources within the Google databases. At the point where it was acquired, the
YouTube service was growing exponentially with more than 100 million video views
every day with 65,000 new videos uploaded daily (Google 2006). It had come a
long way for an idea which was not yet two years old.
YouTube was started in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, a graphic designer and
user interface expert, Steve Chen a Taiwanese-born engineer, and Jawed Karim a
computer scientist who had migrated from Germany to the US in his early teens.
Tey had all previously worked for PayPal, and had become millionaires when that
company was bought by eBay in 2002. Teir idea was to set up a site that allowed
registered users to upload short digital videos, of less than ten minutes, typically
from cell phones, cameras and camcorders, for other people to access. Anyone could
access the open content, but only community members could post. Indicating that
the YouTube community was an important element in the deal, Google announced
that the YouTube management team would continue to operate the company
independently. By April 2008, there were over 80 million YouTube videos (Burgess
2008: 102).
When Google bought his company, Hurley claimed that Our community has
played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new
clip culture (Google 2006). Like Wikipedia, YouTube had dramatically rewritten
the possibilities for interactive participation in the public sphere. Building upon the
social networking potential, leveraged to a signifcant extent by the social networking
site MySpace, which was providing 17.5 per cent of all YouTube trafc at the point
of sale (Tancer 2006), YouTube registers the total number of times each video has
been viewed and ofers users the opportunity to rate and comment on videos they
watch. Given the huge audience accessing the service, and the tens of thousands
of videos uploaded daily, YouTubes community members were readily able to fnd
content of interest and share it with friends while still gaining a sense of an overall
YouTube brand and service.
YouTube was not a fle-sharing service in the ways in which Kazaa and Napster
had been, however. When YouTube users access the material that interests them, the
video is not downloaded onto viewers computers, thus avoiding some of the legal
issues associated with peer-to-peer systems. Instead, images are streamed from the
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 135
YouTube site but the links to access specifc video content can be easily embedded
in blogs, websites and emails and forwarded virally from one person to another.
Because YouTube controls the videos posted on its site, they are in a position to
remove pornography and other material banned by the sites rules. Tey can also
respond to cease and desist notices from copyright holders. Even so, one strategy
adopted by YouTube to minimize friction with old media such as flm and television
companies is a range of forward-looking agreements under which some copyright
material is allowed on the site. As BBC News business editor Tim Weber indicated:
According to the theory of the long tail where niche content can attract
relatively large audiences by being fndable and available on demand it could
create a win-win situation. Old media conglomerates can fnally reach the
audiences that have abandoned them for the on-demand world of the internet.
(Weber 2006)
Writing about Viral video, YouTube and the dynamics of participatory culture,
Jean Burgess (2008: 101) defnes viral marketing as the attempt to exploit the net-
work efects of word-of-mouth and internet communication in order to induce a
massive number of users to pass on marketing messages and brand information
voluntarily. YouTube ofers examples of viral video and internet memes (a
meme is the smallest possible element of culture, analogous to the gene in biology),
artistic fragments and ideas that are adopted by large communities of users and then
employed as part of the indicators of community membership. Burgess notes that
internet memes spread and mutate via distributed networks in ways that the original
producers cannot determine and control (2008: 101). Indeed, according to Burgess,
these memes sometimes become the mechanisms via which cultural practices are
originated, adopted and (sometimes) retained within social networks, and cultural
value can be attributed to the extent that it [the meme] acts as a hub for further
creative activity by a wide range of participants in this social network [YouTube]
(2008: 102, italics in original).
Burgesss example, All your chocolate rain are belong to us builds upon a turn
of the century viral Flash animation of the opening sequence of the European
version of the Japanese game Zero Wing, where the plot of the game is explained in
a poorly translated context scene in which the beleaguered captain of a battleship
is told All your base are belong to us. Like the LAN clan Big Dikk Pimpzs (BDP)
REPRESENT!!1 grafti (Green and Guinery 2006), the in-joke comes from
enjoying a claim to authority which includes a display of inadequacy (see Chapter
8). In the case of REPRESENT!!1, the failing is that, in demanding the audiences
respect (as do the Nas lyrics for the song of the same name), the author has let slip
the Shift key so that the fnal exclamation mark has become 1. In the case of All
136 t h e i n t e r n e t
your base are belong to us, the fun lies in appreciating the poor translation within
the claim.
In a site of over 80 million videos, and rising, very few can reach a level of prom-
inence equivalent to, say, Harry Potter in the world of publishing. Te YouTube
equivalent to the fan fction communities (Chapter 8) are those which take a popular
text and rework it to create something new that speaks in a diferent way to the fan
community. Tis is the case with Tay Zondays user-created music video Chocolate
rain (Zonday n.d.), an anti-racist self-penned song which had been viewed over 47
million times as at February 2010. According to Burgess it was the combination of
oddness and earnest amateurism that caught the attention of an internet community
4chan.org whose members swarmed YouTube to push Chocolate Rain up the
rankings initially, motivated . . . around absurdist and sometimes cruel frathouse
culture (2008: 104).
Once the song had achieved some salience, a number of parodies, remixes and
mash-ups followed. Tese include a Star Wars/Vader spoof drawing attention to the
fact that Zonday turns away from his microphone to breathe; Vanilla Snow, which is
a white response to the chocolate black; and All your Chocolate Rain are belong
to us (All your . . . n.d.) a mash-up of the original song. Te term mash-up here
borrows from the notion of a major trafc pile-up, indicating that images from two
or more sources have been combined together to create the revised, or re-imagined,
work. In this case, the mash-up edits Chocolate Rain with the fash sequence from
Zero Wing, while the resulting melange advertises itself on YouTube as Te worlds
most nonsensical mistranslation in the style of the worlds most nonsensical anti-
racism song.
Starting out as a small element of a larger study of 4,300 highly popular YouTube
videos, undertaken with Joshua Green (Burgess and Green 2009), Burgesss analysis
of the Chocolate Rain meme argues that the textual hooks and key signifers that
catch the attention of the audience cannot be identifed in advance of community
take-up. Once they have been widely celebrated, however, the hooks and signifers
are available for plugging into other forms, texts and intertextsthey become part
of the available cultural repertoire of vernacular video . . . even apparently pointless,
nihilistic and playful forms of creativity are contributions to knowledge (Burgess
2008: 106). Te point that Burgess makes here is that the success of these prosumer
videos lies not in their professionalism, or necessarily their inherent qualities of
production or performance, but in their capacity to ofer cultural material, a meme,
that can be appropriated and circulated by the audience/community. Sometimes,
the audience/community is recognised by a professional performer taking a popular
internet meme and making a song from it. Tis reverse experience was the case with
the Numa-Numa meme, remixed by Rihanna (Milian 2008).
t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e 137
Summary
n This chapter introduces and critiques Habermass notion of the public sphere before considering how we can
be confdent in the usefulness of information we fnd on the internet. The work of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation is used to underline the variety of singular views accessible through the internet, as well as
reminding us that some people are unable to use the internet to circulate even mainstream views because
of repressive governments.
n Blogging and wikis are identifed as particularly representing the new dynamism of Web 2.0. Blogging is
addressed in the case study on Salam Pax, which also examines how to evaluate web-based information,
while the history and operation of Wikipedia is discussed separately.
n The case study on YouTube introduces the notion of the internet meme through a consideration of Burgesss
work (2008) on the chocolate rain meme.
Chapter 8 builds on web-based social networks to look at online communities.
Te community is not a passive recipient of the user-created viral video. Instead,
community members do necessary and additional work by essentialising elements
of the video in a manner which allows the cultural fragments to acquire specifc
meanings in new contexts. Such circulation typically takes the form of an in-joke,
as with the BDP REPRESENT!!1 image (Green and Guinery 2009). Tis would
be a meaningless text to people other than gamers. Te value of the joke lies in the
fact that the only people the BDP LAN clan are interested in impressing are other
gamers. In creating and sharing new popular culture meanings from older materials,
communities and social networks are also creating new ties between members and
setting boundaries of practice that distinguish them from outsiders.
Refection: User-led culture
How does your use of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other social network-based sites differ from conventional
information-driven internet searches?
8 CoMMUNITY
INTRODUCTION
What is your view of community? How does it interrelate with your view of the
internet? Do you use the internet and its various elements of social media: IM
[instant messaging], chat rooms, social network sites, email, blogging (SNS Safety
2008: 21), as ways in which to build and maintain community? For most readers
of this book, the internet is a key element in the development and maintenance
of community. Clearly, there are any number of internet-related case studies that
could have been considered in this chapter. Many organisations use websites and
email lists to build communities around a shared passion: some succeed. One of the
most infuential and extraordinary examples of the building of an internet-based
community of interest is the US MoveOn organisation.
Set up in 1998 by internet start-up millionaires Wes Boyd and Joan Blades,
MoveOn.org originally arose out of their desire for the Clinton administration
to move on from the scandal surrounding President Clintons afair with Monica
Lewinsky and return to a left-wing political agenda. Te movement attracted the
attention of seriously wealthy George Soros and also gained support from other left-
inclined citizens. By 2003, claims Wolf (2004), MoveOns email list had reached 2.3
million subscribers. Although this momentum did not unseat President George W.
Bushs bid in the 2004 Presidential elections for a second term, it may have been part
of the dynamic that tipped the balance in favour of a more radical agenda with the
election of President Barack Obama in 2008. At that point, MoveOn claimed 4.2
million members (Move On 2008).
Obamas presidential campaign has been celebrated as the moment when the
internet came of age in mobilising everyday citizens across the US, both to work for
the eventual Democratic win and to contribute huge numbers of small donations
to fund the costs of the campaign (Miller 2008). MoveOn.org was only one part of
that dynamic, but it is an important indicator of the potential for bringing together
communities of like-minded individuals. Indeed, there were over 1,000 election
parties in towns and other geographical communities across the US facilitated by
140 t h e i n t e r n e t
MoveOn in the wake of Obamas success. Te MoveOn.org phenomenon has also
spawned equivalent organisations in other countries. One example is GetUp.org.au
in Australia (Get Up 2009), while Avaaz.org (Avaaz 2009) operates in 14 languages
and has a mission to raise international awareness about global issues and matters of
social justice around the world. In the UK the TeyWorkForYou.com organisation
is another way in which the internet is being used to enable voters to scrutinise and
infuence the democratic process by making the actions of members of parliament
more visible, and making elected representatives more accountable (Tey Work For
You 2009).
But are these coalitions of interests and political agendas really communities? Are
they movements, but not communities? Te answer to these questions depends
in part upon how people defne the terms they use, how they feel about the com-
munication they experience and how emotionally invested they are in the groups
concerned. Certainly, one persons online group can be another persons community.
In the frst half of the twentieth century, research on community often started
with, and overlapped, research on family. Tus Arensberg and Kimballs (1940)
Harvard-sponsored study of Family and Community in Ireland and Young and
Willmotts study of Family and Kinship in East London (1957) examined working-class
communities in rural and urban settings, respectively, underlining the importance
of family within community. In contrast, Talcott Parsons (1943) essay Te kinship
system of the contemporary United States, theorised that the dominant feature of
American society was that of the isolated nuclear family, and triggered extensive
research for several decades to determine whether or not the nuclear family was
isolated from their extended kinship network (Sussman 1965), or whether support
and care continued through mechanisms such as a sense of mutual obligation and a
desire to get together (Anderson 1971).
To some extent research in these decades examined community either as an
adjunct to co-located family, or as a local replacement for distant family. In part-
icular, the ofering of small services, such as child-minding required proximity.
Where family were distant or unavailable such services tended to be exchanged
within the community on a reciprocal basis, building social networks and communal
obligations. Over time it was recognised that many functions of community are also
carried out at a distance, using technologies including ICTs and the car, and that the
focus on locality may have been overemphasised (Litwark and Szelenyi 1969). In
particular, family would travel to care for a distant family member in times of illness,
stress or turmoil (Baldassar 2007).
In the early days of the internet there was substantial discussion about whether
online communities could ever have the richness and depth of physical, geographical
communities (Green 1999). People talked about their experiences online in terms of
c o m m u n i t y 141
the quality of connection. Howard Rheingolds defnition that virtual communities
are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on
those public discussions long enough, with sufcient human feeling, to form webs
of personal relationships in cyberspace (Rheingold 2000: xx), suggests that com-
munity is brought into being through afective investment. Shawn Wilbur also sees
emotional engagement as central: for those who doubt the possibility of online
intimacy, I can only speak of . . . hours sitting at my keyboard with tears streaming
down my face, or convulsed with laughter (Wilbur 1997: 18).
A complementary opinion, that community is related to perception rather than
grounded in location can be drawn from the work of Benedict Anderson (1991
[1983]), who comments in Imagined Communities that every community, including
those located in geographical space, is imagined because the members of even the
smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even
hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. He goes
on to comment that all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face
contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined (Anderson 1991: 6).
Finally, Daniel Miller and Don Slater carried out ethnographic feldwork in
Trinidad, in the West Indies, to examine Trinidadian uses of the internet. Tey con-
cluded that online community was not a shadowy placeless substitution for real
community, but a way in which Trinidadians could engage with an existing com-
munity diferently. In particular, online community allowed deeper (more spiritual)
engagement, with greater opportunity to absorb the impact of a communication and
to craft a reply, without slowing down the exchange as a letter does (Miller and Slater
2000: 1823). Trinidadians also found it easy to integrate internet use into every day
family and community life. Te implication of Miller and Slaters work (ibid.) is that
the internet is part of real life: theres nothing virtual about it; and the communities
found on the internet are similarly authentic communities operating in a diferent
context from face-to-face communities. Often the two contexts complemented each
other, as with the use of the internet to unite members of the global Trinidadian
diaspora with their friends and family still living on the island.
Tere is continuing research attention being paid to how online communities
function and organise themselves and the benefts they deliver ofine to their online
members. Tree case studies are used here to explore diferent aspects of online
community and how these relate to face-to-face communities. Korean LANing
takes the (generally masculine) culture of interactive gaming and examines how
this has been celebrated and made into an event phenomenon in South Korea, and
what this says both about cultural specifcity of online communities and about the
public investments made by Koreans in their internet infrastructure. Te generally
masculine case study of online games is contrasted with that of fan fction writers
142 t h e i n t e r n e t
LAN CULTURE
Te Republic of Korea (South Korea) has adopted computer gaming in a way unlike
elsewhere. For example, compared with other game-invested countries, like the US
(36 per cent) and Japan (39 per cent), 65.9 per cent of Korean women play online
games (Carr et al. 2006: 163). In a country with a population of around 50 million,
but with a popular culture reach well beyond its borders, Lineage II is Koreas answer
to the American title World of Warcraft, and second in global reach (Beavis 2007:
545). Tese Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)
attract millions of subscribers (Carr et al. 2006: 27). In 2005, the Korean online
game market was worth US$1.4 billion, accounting for 56% of the entire Asia
Pacifc market share (Jin and Chee 2008: 38); by March 2007 this amounted to
32% of the worlds online gaming market (ibid.: 42).
Korean citizens commitment to online interactivity in domestic contexts and at
PC bangs (Korean internet cafs) mirrors an over-arching national commitment to
digital technology. According to Hwang and Park (2009: 234), in 2007 the South
Korean IT industrys share in total GDP exceeded 16.9 per cent and its contribution
to GDP growth was 30 per cent. While there were only 100 PC bangs in 1997,
at the time of the 1990s Asian economic crisis, the fight to small entrepreneurial
businesses as a way of avoiding unemployment has been credited with fuelling the
growth in PC bang numbers to 25,000 by May 2002. At this point, the market
peaked before stabilising at 20,000 in 2005 because of market saturation and
the growing access to broadband services in the home (Jin and Chee 2008: 48).
Approximately 90 per cent of Korean households were connected to broadband
services by 2007 (MIC 2007).
and readers, who are typically young women and teenage girls. Te fnal case study,
HeartNet, has been chosen to interrogate the notion of whether online communities
can ofer support for older internet users that are beyond the everyday capacity
of most ofine communities. Is there a particular advantage to building up social
capital in an online community?
Refection: What makes a community?
Do you see yourself as belonging to one or more communities?
What is it that makes a community, rather than a neighbourhood or online group?
c o m m u n i t y 143
Te research, development and national priority given to a fast broadband infra-
structure make online connection easily accessible and comparatively cheap, driving
high participation rates. Te average Korean citizen enjoys fast, afordable access
and download speeds unparalleled elsewhere apart from Japan (BuddeComm 2009).
Another element of the dynamic which supports online game-play is attributed to
historical and socio-cultural factors in that Korea was colonised by Japan in the early
years of the twentieth century, and many console games are produced in Japan.
Although the ban on Japanese cultural products, including console games, flms and
music was lifted in 1998, the historic tension between the two countries has proven
persistent and difcult to surmount, especially since such global console game
companies as Sony, Nintendo and Sega are Japanese (Jin and Chee 2008: 47). Tis
avoidance of Japanese cultural products has helped to promote the growth of online
gaming in Korea, which is part of a burgeoning global market for video games that
seems to withstand economic crises, even while other entertainment sectors falter.
Tracey Jennings, a Canadian partner in consultancy giant Price Waterhouse
Coopers, comments that the global video games market still shows signifcant
growth: 18 per cent in 2008 is quite remarkable when you contrast that to the num-
ber of [entertainment] segments that have been contracting. She attributes this
resilience to: video games not being dependent on advertising revenue; the con-
tinuing popularity of newer platforms such as the Wii, Nintendo DS, XBox 360 and
PS3; broadband adoption since this enables better engagement with MMORPGs;
and the take-up of wireless which facilitates smart phone gaming, as with the
iPhone (Jennings 2009).
Just as not all computer games involve internet access, not all players play the
same kinds of games. For instance, many Korean women play online puzzle and
card games, rather than the mainstream titles advertised on television or lining the
shelves of computer game retailers (Carr et al. 2006: 2), while their sons might
play militaristic FPS (frst person shooter) titles. Diferentiation in the games
market means that not all gamers have the same potential attraction to marketers.
Commercial games developers tend to invest in high profle games with massive
production budgets. Such games . . . continue to be aggressively marketed at
youthful, male consumers (Carr et al. 2006: 2).
In Korea, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT 2004) has identifed on-
line games as being the central industry that will complete the IT revolution due
to the combination of content and high technologies (ibid.: 6). Seoul held the frst
ever World Cyber Games in 2000, attracting a feld of 174 competitors representing
17 countries, and continued hosting the games for the next three years, with the
number of countries increasing to the point where 74 nations were represented in
the 2007 competition in Seattle, Washington (Hutchins 2008: 855, 856). E-game
144 t h e i n t e r n e t
skills and competencies are honed in Koreas local PC bangs through engagement
with LAN culture, typically involving groups of adolescent boys and young men.
In the early days of the internet, LANs were Local Area Networks (usually housed
in a set of connected spaces, such as a school, or the foor of an ofce block) (Green
and Guinery 2006), although LANs and their Wide Area equivalents, WANs, are
now subsumed into generic networks, [t]he LAN title has now been appropriated
by LANers, and recognises their reinvented skills which allow them to setup a
temporary, portable network in a specifc locality (ibid.). Such activities require
extensive collaboration both in terms of technological skills and game-playing.
Te assembled computers are all connected and powered up so that they are both
interlinked and online. LANers also wear headsets to keep their aural feed localised
so that they can still hear each other when shouting out comments, instructions
and witticisms during a game (ibid.). Jin and Chee (2008) credit the engagement
in games and similar activities with assisting Korean youth to construct tight-knit
communities . . . [they have] become another channel of human relationships, in
other words, part of peoples actual lives (ibid.: 39).
Writing about Malaysia, Nichols et al. (2006: 13) record the testosterone-fuelled
dynamic of players engaged in the LAN arena:
Tis huge dimly-lit cavern is flled with more than a thousand PCs, each with
a trendily-dressed young gamer, all with headphones clamped to their heads,
hunched over keyboard and mouse, frantically clicking and tapping. Some
have small groups of friends behind them, egging them on; others are playing
solo. . . . What is happening here is not immediately obvious to the uninitiated.
It might appear that these gamers are wrapped up in their own little fantasy
worlds, oblivious to everyone around them. In fact, theyre not. Most of them
are playing games as part of teams composed of several others in the room. Te
LAN or local area network means that all the computers you see are linked
together . . . there are a great many games being played back and forth across the
network [and the internet] all at the same time, each with its own rhythm of
triumph and defeat, exhilaration and disappointment.
Along with acknowledging that much online gaming is an important communal and
community-building activity (Morris 2004), recent writing has as often focused on
the positive social impacts of gaming as any perceived negative ones. Te out-dated
perceptions of Nintendo (no-friend-o) (Marshall 1997) have been countered by
researchers as diverse as journalist Steven Johnson (2005) and psychology professor
Kevin Durkin (Durkin and Barber 2002). Tese commentators argue that online
games can be highly interactive and educational, and that games players are likely
to be sociable, with strong friendships and positive parental relationships. Tis
perception has been underlined by Jin and Chees (2008) ethnographic study of PC
bangs.
c o m m u n i t y 145
Noting that the PC bang is a de facto community centre to which young people
are drawn during their journey from school to home, or to one of the after-hours
cramming colleges, Jin and Chee comment that almost all youth interviewed talked
about their online activities in relation to obligation and duty, whether it was to
their friends and promised times for logging on or [whether it was] to their guild,
clan or band of blood brothers (2008: 50). Costs are reasonable, at US$1 per hour
playing, but the sociability access means that not all participants would be playing
all the time, as with players who are watched by friends.
Carl, a gamer, explained why he chooses to play at PC bangs, even though he has
his own computer at home: Te diference is that home is alone and the PC bang
is with people. . . . PC bang can be more together, and you know, Koreans like to be
together . . . so that makes PC bang culture. When we play the [same] game at home
we feel something empty (Jin and Chee 2008: 51). Tere is also an online micro-
economy in building virtual game items for sale on Korean gamer site Itembay.com
and its equivalents. Tis can lead to incomes of US$100 per week for dedicated
players. In a community with 93 per cent unemployment in the 1519 age group,
and a job market distorted by compulsory male service in the armed forces, this
makes online competency a credible skill for young people who are out of work,
and possibly an act of celebrating civilian life, since, according to Carl, there is
no Internet during army service (Jin and Chee 2008: 512). Games are therefore
implicated in issues of autonomy, self-esteem and social status, as well as ofering
intrinsic rewards in terms of skill development and incremental achievement.
Tese insights are reinforced by participant-observer work with a teenage male
Australian LANing clan BDP which operates in domestic rather than internet caf
contexts (see Chapter 7). In a more privileged environment, albeit with slower
internet speeds, middle-class LANers gain efective online access as part of a family
broadband and telecom subscription, and set about persuading their parent(s) to
increase the download quota. At this point the gamer has
access to any other non-fltered communication channels available from
MSN, chats, blogs through to porn and engagement in the copyright infringing
download communities accessing music, flms, TV programming and alter native
digital media. Such investments in online materials become a status point for
the young person concerned the person in a given peer circle with the greatest
internet access, and the largest capacity for storing downloaded materials, is in
a good position to develop key-guest status for the evolving LANparty culture
. . . Alongside the playing of the game, the interconnected gamers set up a peer-
to-peer fle sharing network allowing the accumulation of desired wares (TV,
flms, games, music, photos and other digital media) from each others hard
drives. (Green and Guinery 2006)
146 t h e i n t e r n e t
While gaming skills are often honed in known friendship circles, real recognition
is ofered by impressing strangers. Tis can either happen at LANfests, weekend-
long community LAN parties which resonate Nichols et al.s description of the
Malaysian LAN arena (2006: 13), cited earlier, or online. Te trick online is to
use the games programs to identify servers with active games in progress that are
not located so far away as to slow the play down, as indicated by the ping rate.
Desirable games also have enough players to make the game interesting, but do not
have so many gamers online that individual game-play techniques are lost. One
of the biggest compliments that can be paid to a teenage gamer is for a clan leader
to ask the LANer if they are interested in becoming a clan member (Green and
Guinery 2006). Among the reciprocal community commitments incumbent upon
join ing a clan of strangers is the undertaking on the part of a new member to be
avail able at certain times and for given hours, and to upskill, developing an under-
stand ing of clan strengths and strategies. In return there is an implied undertaking
that the senior clan members will mentor the newbies (n00bs). LANing culture
as with hacker culture, open source, blogging and wikipedia culture valorises
excess and builds in tests of commitment (Green and Guinery 2006). It also builds
community.
In the same way that diferent clan members will have diferentiated skills and
separate roles as part of the online clan, so they also have complementary areas of
technical expertise. It becomes important for each clan to have access to a LANer
who has the skills to pimp their machines, modifying them to the highest possible
gaming specifcations (specs) by improving, for example, the graphics resolution.
Judging between fast, powerful, ft-for-purpose machines is one of the tests of
strength often trialled at LANfests. It is the equivalent of a shoot out. Speccing a
machine involves increasing the hard drive capacity to allow for the storage of an
ever-greater downloaded library of material and priming the machine to make it
operate faster than specifcations would usually allow thereby increasing frame rate
(Green and Guinery 2006). Tese modifcations might run the risk of overheating
the CPU, central processor unit, which consequently requires a range of cooling
solutions from fans through to heat sinks.
At the ultimate, gamers aspire to water-cooled computers, to fat screen non-
refective monitors and enhanced video graphics cards to optimise the game aes-
thetics (and the blood splatter patterns) . . . with sound-surround audio and neon
illuminated working computer innards. It is at LANfests, surrounded by local
gamers with all their hardware, fles and games on display, that participants are
introduced to new games, technology and downloads. Te community-based LANs
become a clan of clans (or a group of groups). Red Flag LAN (RFLAN) is one
such LAN community, immortalised as many are in a YouTube documentary
(RFLAN 2006) (Green and Guinery 2006).
c o m m u n i t y 147
Tis gaming case study refers to the construction of game communities online
and ofine by gamers who make appointments in real-time contexts to go online to
serve a specifc role in shared enterprises with established collaborators. Often these
engagements start out involving friends and acquaintances already known ofine
at home, at school, and from PC bang environments. Gaming clan members tend
to develop a range of complementary online specialisations; in a FPS context one
might be a radio operator, another could be an armaments specialist. When playing
online, good gamers might be spotted and recruited by clan leaders not personally
known to the gamer, and inducted into a new online clan: a community with a
range of rights, responsibilities and obligations.
Gamers activities also have implications for the community development of their
technology skills. While FPS gaming culture is often pervasive among young male
players in the western world, RTS (real-time strategy) culture is particularly marked
in Korea where the most efective gamers are national celebrities. Boxer, the gamer
alter-ego of Lim Yo Hwan, has a fan club of more than half a million members, and
professional gamers act like any other celebrities, marrying supermodels, making
vast amounts of money, and engaging in other such activities deemed worthy of
spectacle and intrigue (Jin and Chee 2008: 49).
Refection: The value of online video games
Even though many games are criticised for their violent content, and for being a waste of time, do you see
any value in developing skills in online game-play?
FAN FICTION COMMUNITIES
With their beginnings in original 1930s fan communities dating back to the early
days of Hollywood, and to science fction fanzines (Tomas 2006: 226), fan fction
communities do more than get together online to talk about their passion: they
produce and consume materials which reinforce aspects of their fan identities,
allowing them to enjoy richer, prosumer fan experiences.
Henry Jenkins, writing about Convergence Culture (2006), uses the stand-out
Harry Potter (HP) fan community to discuss fan fction. One reason why the HP
community is so huge is the power of the brand itself, based on the books by J.K.
Rowling, and the fact that the fans include millions of teenage readers willing to
experiment with innovative ways of communicating using new media. Green and
148 t h e i n t e r n e t
Guinery (2004), in a participant-observer account of a fan fction community, noted
that the phenomenal growth of the HP fandom can be directly related to take-up
of the internet, and to middle-class readers internet access. Harry Potter frst made
an appearance in 1997, in Te Philosophers or Te Sorcerers Stone, depending upon
the publishers market. At that time, the character of Harry was eleven, and much of
his audience was of a similar age. Tey were about to discover the internet. In many
western countries, a majority of two-parent families with school-aged children were
online by 2000 (e.g. ABS 2001). From the parents point of view, this may have
been to support the kids education: from the childrens points of view, this new
connectivity opened many possibilities to explore aspects of culture that they had
already found interesting. One area of engagement for HP fans was the online fan
fction communities.
Communities depend on individuals engaging with the general exchanges, pro-
jecting themselves and their identity in an ongoing conversation. Tis dynamic was
aided by the unfolding HP narrative, which did not conclude until the pub lication
of the seventh and fnal book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in 2007. In an
earlier era, Nancy Baym analysed the importance of the space between episodes of
soap operas to the Usenet fan groups who discussed them:
Te viewers relationship with characters, the viewers understanding of socio-
emotional experience, and soap operas narrative structure, in which moments
of maximal suspense are always followed by temporal gaps, work together to
ensure that fans will use the gaps during and between shows to discuss with one
another possible outcomes and possible interpretations of what has been seen.
(Baym 1995: 143)
Te HP universe comprised an increasing number of books and flms, but there were
spaces between these long spaces, as far as the fans were concerned. Speculation,
analysis and fantasy in these spaces fuelled the rampant growth of many fan fction
sites, and a proliferation of stories. For example, between 16 August and 4 October
2004, HP fan fction writers posted an additional 9,196 stories on one general
fan fction site, fanfction.net, at a time when the HP node had 147,067 stories,
compared with its nearest rival, Lord of the Rings, with 33,189 stories (Green
and Guinery 2004). Fanfction.net writers form only one of a number of HP
communities, as the discussion of the Sugar Quill site indicates below.
Tere are critical diferences between many of these groups in terms of whether
the HP focus is a specialist node in a general fan fction site (as with fanfction.net)
or whether it caters only and specifcally for HP fans (as Sugar Quill does). Other
dimensions include whether anyone can post anything, or whether all stores are
read and polished prior to acceptance: do they need to go through a beta-reading
c o m m u n i t y 149
process? Beta reading takes its name from beta testing in computer programming:
fans seek out advice on the rough drafts of their nearly completed stories so that they
can smooth out bugs and take them to the next level (Jenkins 2006: 179). Tis
mentoring and support improves the writing of both the mentor and the mentee.
Some sites only take narratives entirely consistent with J.K. Rowlings vision,
indicating a fully moderated site in which assessors make informed judgement.
Others accept related stories, or stories that accept part of the canon, for example,
popular author Midnight Blue gives the setting of her evolving fan fction Te
Mirror of Maybe as after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and as an alternative to
the events detailed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, [this] is a Slash story
involving Harry Potter and Severus Snape (cited in Green and Guinery 2004).
A further diference between sites is whether the stories posted are suitable for
all ages, or whether they are categorised as suited for adults only (no matter the
age of the author). Unlike the Adult Verifcation System that goes hand in hand
with credit card use for porn sites, however, fans can access 18-plus sites such as
restrictedsection.org through declaring themselves to be adult. Authors are asked
to indicate what makes each story adult-only: for example, Please put a warning
if your story contains content that may be ofensive to some authors [sic], such as
m/m [male-on-male] sex, graphic sex or violence, violent sex, character death, major
angst, BDSM [Bondage, Dominance and Sadomasochism], non-con (rape) etc
(cited in Green and Guinery 2004). Adult-content HP fan fction includes a range
of specialist pairings such as Twincest: incest between one of the sets of HP twins; or
Weasleycest: incest within the Weasley family. Tosenberger comments that the sheer
size of the fandom means it is a collection of subgroups, and each subgroup can
churn out its own stories for its own audience with impunity (2008: 191).
Trough their construction of the HP narrative, and their conjectures about
motives and consequences, fans present themselves as identities with whom others
might agree (positive afrmation), or disagree (ofering the chance for engagement
through exchange). Even now that the over-arching narrative of the Harry Potter
canon is concluded, fans can still explore pretty little tree-lined side streets ancillary
to the accepted story. As Sweeney Agonistes, editor of Sugar Quill, (n.d.) put it in
an interview, fan fction writers are not correcting J.K. Rowlings text but delighting
in it: I dont write to fanfc to fx things, I write it to . . . speculate on what might
have led up to something, or what could result from some other thing. A story that
leaves these wonderful corners isnt a story that needs fxing, its a story that invites
exploration (Jenkins 2006: 1812). Tat exploration is most enticingly carried out
in a community context.
Many HP communities have been started and run by teenage fans. One such,
central to Jenkinss account of the HP Fandom, was Te Daily Prophet, www.
150 t h e i n t e r n e t
dprophet.com, a newspaper circulating at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry and part of the HP canon. Heather Lawver, the sites founder, was home-
schooled so lacked an everyday exposure to school newsletters but had a clear idea
about what her paper should look like and how to coordinate her hundreds of HP
fan-contributors around the world. She also knew how to market the scheme to
journalists parents. As she explained it in her open letter To the adults, Te Daily
Prophet brings the world of literature to life . . . exploring books, diving into the
characters and analysing great literature . . . By creating this faux world we are
learning, creating, and enjoying ourselves in a friendly utopian society. Te site
has experienced many down times, partly because of Lawvers health problems and
possibly because of Warner Bros professionalization of the Daily Prophet title, but
the fan newspaper is only one of the contributions Lawver made to HP fandom. Te
other involved her contribution to cross-site community action against Warner Bros
when they instituted what came to be known as Te Potter War.
Te Potter War began in 2000 after Warner Bros bought the merchandising
rights to everything apart from J.K. Rowlings books. Its legal department followed
standard operating procedure. Treatening letters were automatically sent to
site owners who [had] registered Web domain names that included trademarked
words from the Potter universe, wrote Weise in USA Today (Weise 2001), adding
But most of these were fan sites set up by children and teens. Tey were terrifed
by ofcial letters demanding that the domain be handed over lest the matter be
referred to company lawyers. In the UK, a Warner Bros letter to British teenager
Claire Field informed her that her site Te boy who lived was likely to cause
consumer confusion or dilution of intellectual property rights. Field and her father
hired lawyers to negotiate with Warner Bros and went public, circulating negative
publicity about the action in the mass media (Bringers n.d.). Alistair Alexander,
a seasoned web campaigner, set up potterwar.org.uk (now defunct) to support a
number of teenagers in the UK and internationally who had received Warner Bros
cease and desist notices.
In the US, Lawver set up her own Defense Against the Dark Arts campaign
(dprophet.com/dada) Protecting Fans From the Real You-Know-Who and led a
fan boycott of all HP merchandise. Lawver commented that Warner Bros under-
estimated how interconnected out fandom was. Tey underestimated the fact that
we knew those kids in Poland [an example shed given Jenkins] and we knew the
rinky dink sites and we cared about them (Jenkins 2006: 186). Te HP community
had developed links across the various subgroups; including language, culture and
national afliations, with a particularly efective trans-Atlantic axis. Eventually even
Warner Bros got the message: We didnt know what we had on our hands early on
in dealing with Harry Potter . . . as soon as we realized we were causing consternation
c o m m u n i t y 151
to children or their parents, we stopped it (Warner spokeswoman and brand
manager Diane Nelson, quoted in Jenkins 2006: 187). In fact, the action against
Claire Field lasted over three months before Warner Bros dropped the demand for
the transference of the domain name.
Trough her involvement with Te Daily Prophet, Lawver, the home-schooled
Potter fan, had learned about: coordinating an international online community;
writing and editing a digital newspaper; educational and pedagogical arguments
for prosumer involvement; organising and running public relations campaigns;
and copyright law. Outside the fan communities, educators began to argue about
whether prosumer activity was a threat to a childs learning (it distracted them
from their studies: the displacement argument), or whether it was an almost ideal
collaborative learning milieu. Spurred on by Jenkinss (2004) remark that some of
the best writing instruction takes place outside the classroom in online communities,
teacher-educator Angela Tomas investigated online community Middle Earth
Insanity to explore the social processes of fan fction engagement. She comments
that the range of practices within the community is quite astonishing: collaborative
writing of fan fction, the teaching of each other about the intricate details and
specialised knowledge of the feld . . ., and dealing with management issues related
to a 200-member community, adding that For a group of predominantly 1317
year-olds the level of writing, discussion and negotiation involved in these practices
is remarkably sophisticated (2006: 229).
Notwithstanding Sugar Quill Sweeney Agonistes view that fan fction does not
set out to fx the canon, Tomas notes (2006: 234) that Middle Earth Insanity,
which is partly based on Star Wars, includes a number of female Jedi knights which
is at odds with Lucass original epics. Similarly, she comments that slash fction
. . . in which same-sex relationships are explored can, for some young prosumers,
provide a medium for exploring these issues and for seeing themselves refected
in texts that might otherwise marginalise them (Tomas 2006: 236). Naturally,
for predominantly teenage and young adult prosumer communities, romantic
attraction, desire, love and sex are major themes.
Once stories deviate dramatically from the accepted canon, with a romantic pair-
ing of Harry Potter with Draco Malfoy, for example, the oeuvre is referred to as
fanon the non-canon world according to fans creative, minority or subversive
engagements with the text. Given that many members of fan communities engage
with other members in face-to-face contexts such as schools, as well as online, what
people are prepared to write or not write; or read or not read; becomes part of their
public persona. Te range of identities that can be constructed using the many
online HP FF [fan fction] genres, however, permits wide scope for FF members to
identify with dissident constructions of the HP narrative and helps to add to the
152 t h e i n t e r n e t
momentum with which his fame increases (Green and Guinery 2004). At the same
time, fanon dissenters occasionally feel embraced by the mainstream canon. One
such moment is linked to the scene in the flm of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban where Draco blows Harry an origami bird in a Defence Against the Dark
Arts class. It looks like a blown kiss, and the Harry/Draco slash prosumers certainly
read it that way. Another instance is Rowlings indication that Dumbledore was
gay and had loved Grindelwald . . . Slash fans are often accused of distorting or
misreading texts, so this public validation of their method of reading is a somewhat
rare pleasure (Tosenberger 2008: 187).
Linking back to Chapter 6 and discussions of the mainly male audience for visual
pornography, Tosenberger notes that most writers of slash fan fction indeed,
most writers of all fan fction are female. Te existence of slash complicate[s]
conventional notions about womens interests in erotica in general and the types of
erotica women were supposed to be interested in (i.e. heterosexual romance novels)
. . . PWPs (Plot? What plot? or Porn without plot) abound (2008: 189, 194).
Tosenberger also argues that the large slash communities allow safe space for the
exploration of queerness and non-hetero sexuality in the company of supportive
prosumer communities in a way that celebrates the exuberant bliss (jouissance: 201)
of young adult sex:
In an era when representations of adolescent sexuality are both exploited and
policed, Potter fandom is an arena in which fans of all ages, genders and sexual
orientations can tell stories to satisfy their own desires; this freedom is especially
valuable for younger fans, whose self-expressions are heavily monitored in
institutional settings . . . Potter fandom is a lively, intellectually stimulating, and
tolerant interpretive community. (Tosenberger 2008: 202)
Refection: Nurturing the fans
Do you agree that organisations which buy popular culture products need to protect their investments?
Should fans be exempt from the usual constraints of Intellectual Property law?
HEARTNET AND SOME ONLINE
RESEARCH ISSUES
Many avid gamers and fan fction writers have grown up alongside the internet and
have integrated online connection into their communication repertoires, relating
c o m m u n i t y 153
digitally with their F2F friends, as well as forming communities with people they
are unlikely to meet in person. Diferent communication issues impact upon
com munity membership for those who come to the internet as mature adults.
HeartNet Australia, heartnet.com.au, was set up as an online research community to
investigate these communication dynamics. Jointly funded by the ARC, Australian
Research Council and the NHFA, National Heart Foundation of Australia (WA
division), HeartNet was designed to help people recovering from heart disease to
support each other in adopting heart-healthy attitudes and behaviours in a semi-
moderated environment, where the lay (not medically-trained) moderator checked
in every few hours.
Te concept of moderation is critical to most well-run communities. It implies
that there is a group of people with administrator rights: able to remove objection-
able posts, or exclude people who repeatedly contravene the rules from further
participation in the community. Moderators are usually volunteers drawn from a
pool of keen community members. Tey may be paid, but the necessity to secure
an income stream or raise enough money to fund salaries means that the website
tends not to be controlled by members, which can afect the sense of community
that develops there. Volunteer moderators are likely to take on roles in addition to
the disciplining of participants and the control of content. Many moderators in fan
fction communities, for example, will also be beta readers and prosumers in their
own right. In HeartNet, the key moderator and administrator has been the PhD
student working on the project. Tere have been two; Leesa Bonniface (now Leesa
Costello) and Lynsey Uridge. Supporting the research students are the projects
Chief Investigators and a number of specialist web administrators.
At one point, when the community had grown to ten times the size originally
anticipated, four members were invited to become moderators. Tis case study part-
icularly concerns two of these, Rich and Francis (not their real names). In addition to
members who act as moderators, most sites have rules and recommended operating
procedures. In a community such as HeartNet there is a combination of warnings
and terms and conditions. Warnings include the instruction to participants not to
act upon health or medical information posted on the site without frst consulting
their physician. Terms and conditions include the informed consent provisions
required by a research project: letting participants know that they can leave at any
time, and that the site is for research and posts may be published provided the
community member is not identifable.
In the past, most research into online communities was carried out on sites which
were not designed as research projects. Tis raised a number of ethical issues such as:
is it all right for a researcher to quote from a public discussion board even if none of
the people involved in the discussion have agreed to be quoted? If a sites moderator
154 t h e i n t e r n e t
and administrator have agreed to the research, does everyone else involved have to
agree too? For university-based research most of these issues are discussed between
the researchers and the Faculty or University Human Research Ethics Committee.
Tese precautions are taken in part to prevent the sense of betrayal recorded by Stone
(1991), when an early group of internet-users discovered that the online friend they
thought was a disabled older woman Julie was, in fact, a male psychiatrist. When
Julies confdantes learned abut the deception, their reactions varied from humorous
resignation to blind rage (Stone 1992: 82), and some felt totally betrayed. Full
disclosure of the research process at the outset of the online relationship is deemed
to protect against such distress.
Te fact that the internet is accessible round the clock, assuming technology and
connectivity, means that online support is more accessible and available than via
other avenues. Given that this is not a medicalised community, in that moderation
is by the community and not by medical workers, HeartNet members know and
share the reality of the daily challenges of living with heart disease, rather than
promoting an idealised medical model of care and rehabilitation. Phase 2 attracted
many positive comments, reassuring to the researchers and to HeartNet members:
(Jane): I discovered this site while surfng the net. I havent really sought much
support since my heart attack which was nearly a year ago, but wish I had since
it would have made those darker days a lot easier to get through. An American
heart patient . . . joined the community (Sam): I have a lot to be positive about
and feel grateful to have found this site full of caring people. Further, some
returnees, who had experienced the frst iteration of the site, were warm with
acknowledgement (Betty): the site is taking of in leeps [sic] and bounds. You
should all be so proud. (Bonniface et al. 2005)
In line with Rheingolds views (cited earlier), human feeling would appear to be a
touchstone of community. Tat feeling may be intense, and is not always positive.
For example, in the second year of the sites successful operation, it became all too
clear to the research team that the fostered community had indeed become organic: it
split over a high-stakes dispute, over some six to eight months, between two groups
of community members which led to ofcial proceedings, social welfare investiga-
tions, psychological assessments, indications of a suicide risk and, unsurprisingly,
extensive Ethics Committee involvement (Green and Costello 2009: 462). Te
split represented the fracture in the previously strong friendship between Rich and
Francis.
Te word members, above, is put into inverted commas because several of the
afected parties resigned from HeartNet. Tis may have been because they were
unhappy at the researchers and moderators attempts to defuse the situation, or
c o m m u n i t y 155
possibly so that moderators would no longer be able to intervene in the continuing
incendiary exchanges via private message. (In online community terms, these pro-
tracted altercations are often called fame wars.) Additionally, there were issues with
authenticity. Upon joining, members had been advised to use only nicknames and
the internal private messaging system to communicate with other people, and to
protect their privacy in the public domain of the discussion board. Tis worked well
in theory, but had soon given way to authentic communications including face-to-
face meetings and community walks, which are clearly of beneft to heart patients.
Indeed, such authenticity had also been seen as indicative of community-creation
(Bonniface et al. 2006b).
So, what had caused the fracture? In brief, Rich was a keen sportsperson and a
positive competitor, while Francis had excellent IT skills. Rich, looking for some
beneft side-efects to patients medication regimes, to counter the many negatives,
posted a comment about one of his drugs:
It is little wonder that this medication [specifed earlier] is a BANNED
SUBSTANCE by the IOC [International Olympic Committee]. It helps to stop
tremors. I recently completed the semi automatic mini 14 assault rife course as
a sniper with the [. . . Service]. I managed to secure 29 kill shots out of 30. . . .
I can only put this level of accuracy down to the fact that I didnt develop the
shakes as most shooters do. (Green and Costello 2009: 466)
Gavin, a friend of Francis, replied to this post, suggesting that Rich needed to be
retrained when he came of the medication in case someone was killed as a result of
inexpert sniper fre. Although Francis was not involved in this exchange, Gavin had
identifed himself as Franciss friend. He was later removed from the community
when he failed to provide any means of contact other than a free web-based email.
Gavins phone and address details both had errors in them, and he was not prepared
to communicate with any of the research group. Since his bona fdes were impossible
to determine at a time of rising tension, this led to exclusion. In the meantime, the
situation continued to escalate with Leanne, a friend of Richs, responding to Gavin
that Rich had shot well before his heart attack and continues to shoot well following
his heart attack and suggesting that if Gavin was worried about Rich killing someone
then he had better stay out of the way (Green and Costello 2009: 467). Tis was
interpreted by Gavin and Franciss group as a death threat and the research team
were asked to exclude Leanne, which they declined to do, arguing that her statement
might be ill-advised, but it was not a threat.
Given the strong bonds of friendship that had existed between the parties, Richs
up-front personality, and the regime of regular but intermittent moderating, there
had been occasions when Rich has posted to the discussion boards and signed of
156 t h e i n t e r n e t
with his own photo and his real name instead of his avatar. It was very simple for
any well-established member of the community to have enough information on
Rich to contact his employers. Someone did this anonymously and in guaranteed
confdence, reporting to Richs employers that he had been talking about his sniper
training, his work and his professional life inappropriately on the site. Tis had
devastating consequences. Richs gun licence was removed pending an internal
investigation and psychological reports. Rather than, as he saw it, let down his
team by being unavailable for armed duty, Rich took leave while the investigation
proceeded. Te site exploded with accusations and retaliations. Gavin, Francis and
their supporters were criticised by other community members who suspected that
they had been involved in shopping Rich, even though Francis obtained a letter
from Richs employers warranting that the person who had contacted them was not
Francis.
Table 8.1: Lines of confict in the HeartNet case study
Rich, a sportsman. Francis, an IT expert.
Leanne, a friend of Rich. Gavin, a friend of Francis (excluded when
his identity could not be established and he
refused to respond to administrators except
via a free email service).
Jackie, a friend of Francis.
Other of Richs friends resign when an
anonymous tip-of, apparently from
a HeartNet member, leads to Richs
employers investigating Richs posts on
the site.
Some of Franciss friends tell researchers that
confict on the site is afecting their health.
Researchers exclude them on these grounds,
although non-members are still able to visit
as guests.
It was about this time that some members of the disputing parties informed the
research team that the stress of the situation was making them ill. Teir view was
that some of the attackers should be expelled. Instead, the team took the view that if
the stress was afecting members health, then the research injunction to frst do no
harm had to apply and the members who felt unwell should be excluded on medical
grounds. Although one member was subsequently reinstated with a doctors letter,
this person experienced the tension as starting again, felt physically afected and was
again excluded. Tis person immediately set up a competitor site and invited their
supporters to split HeartNet and join them. At this point Francis and his supporters
c o m m u n i t y 157
had left the site; while a number of Rich supporters also resigned at what they saw
as a breach of privacy and integrity, with the content of Richs posts having been frst
made public to his employers, by the anonymous complainant, and then subject to
discussions between the employers investigation committee and the research team.
Ultimately, Rich was reinstated in his professional work role although
reprimanded. Te strain had clearly taken a toll and his posts were far less personal
thereafter. It seemed as though things had calmed down until a dynamic of negative
reciprocity came into play. One of the benefts of a functional online community
is the development of reciprocal gifting whereby members give each other time,
regard, concern and support. Such gift economies (Cheal 1988) entail emotional
investment and build social capital. Te opposite dynamic also works, sucking
regard, concern and support from a social system. Tis was the spiral in which
HeartNet was unravelling.
Past-members, who had resigned or been asked to leave on health grounds,
nonetheless kept returning, either to the site, or in communications with the re-
search team. In particular, Francis was continuing to receive hate mail from people
who had resigned from HeartNet. He wanted to see them expelled, but the research
team explained this was impossible since the named perpetrators were not cur rently
members. Administrators gave an undertaking not to readmit the ofending ex-
members to membership, but this was deemed unsatisfactory. Jackie, one of Franciss
friends, and at that point still a member, started to contact senior fgures in the
Heart charity, the university and the research funding organisations demanding that
justice be done and Rich supporters be expelled. Francis joined in some of these
communications. Te situation escalated to the point that some senior leaders of
organisations associated with the research received literally dozens of emails from
Jackie, some of which stated that her own health was under threat. Reluctantly,
and with support from ethics advisors, the team decided to terminate Jackies
membership on the grounds of her burgeoning health stresses.
Francis posted to a blog that he knew was read by site members that he was so
unwell as a result of the stress that he was unable to work and was living on disability
benefts. Jackie was also known to be living on single-parent benefts:
Both were thrown into turmoil when the social welfare agencies responsible
for administering their payments launched an investigation as a result of a tip-
of alleging that they were an undeclared couple living together, which had
direct implications for their level of social support and the rules of their income
streams. Further, Franciss landlord was contacted by social welfare investigators
and averse to trouble the landlord gave Francis notice, telling him that his
lease would not be renewed at the end of its term. (Green and Costello 2009:
470)
158 t h e i n t e r n e t
Francis and Jackie assumed that the source of the tip-of, which the social services
accepted as justifed, had been one of the Rich supporters. Jackie felt that she
needed to move towns to establish her status as a single person, while Francis
argued that HeartNet had made him homeless. Tere were also a number of other
developments that continued to reverberate for another year. However, a partially
successful attempt at conciliation, involving the University Ethics Ofcer and the
Chair, Human Research Ethics Committee, has allowed the site to return to a
quieter version of its former self for the time being.
What this case study makes clear is that communities are brought into existence
in new media contexts and they behave in both good and bad ways, like human
communities in other settings. Tere has been a lot of discussion (including a num-
ber of publications from the HeartNet project) about the positive benefts and
round-the-clock accessibility of online communities. Tese perspectives are valid.
Less publicised are the consequences of major discord among community members.
Researchers in the feld intending to fnd ethical ways to investigate these issues
would be wise to consider worst-case scenarios.
Refection: the role of moderators
Do you think that online communities need moderators?
Which people or organisations operate as moderators in F2F community?
Summary
n This chapter examined the notion of online community and placed it in the context of being a collaborative
space where people offer each other support and emotional engagement.
n The frst two case studies typically involve gendered groups of teenagers and young adults. LAN FPS online
game-play culture is traditionally male, whereas fan fction writing and reading is more likely to attract
young women. Both involve the development of expertise and skills in collaboration.
n The fnal case study investigated a crisis in a research community set up to support recovering heart
patients. The crisis was unable to be resolved satisfactorily and the community fractured. It is suggested
that this parallels processes that also happen in F2F community.
Chapter 9 moves the book forward from considering community to a consideration of family contexts for
internet use.
9 INTERNET IN FAMILY LIFE
INTRODUCTION
Tis chapter is concerned with the internet in everyday life. It is in the home that
internet use is most likely to express the choices, pleasures and preferences of the
user; rather than the requirements of their employment. Even so, the home is a site
of work for some members of the family; especially the mother, but also including
children at school who have homework. For these domestically bound workers, the
internet can be a home away from home a place of relaxation within the world
of domestic labour. According to Morley, For many men, the home is principally a
site of leisure and rest (in contrast to their work obligations in the public sphere); for
many women (if not most) the home is a site of labour (both physical and emotional)
and responsibility (Morley 1995: 316).
An examination of ICT use in families with children provides a wealth of
information about power and priorities across axes of age/generation and gender. A
generation ago, Livingstone argued (1992: 113) that:
Te accounting practices through which people understand and explain the
role of domestic technologies in their lives refect their gender relations and
family dynamics. Talk about television or the telephone, for example, is imbued
with notions of who lets who use what, of moral judgements of the others
activities, of the expression of needs and desires, of justifcations and confict, of
separateness and mutuality.
Te same dynamics are equally true of the internet as they were of television and
the telephone, particularly in homes where there is only one computer online.
Researchers addressing technology fows into and out of the domestic sphere often
refer to the Domestication model ofered by Silverstone et al. (1992: 19), discussed in
Chapter 1, involving appropriation, conversion, objectifcation and incorporation.
Whereas appropriation examines the processes through which a technology enters
the home, conversion marks the exporting of the benefts of the technology from
inside the household to the wider public sphere. It demonstrates that ICTs ofer
signifcant social benefts, as well as educational and entertainment opportunities.
160 t h e i n t e r n e t
While better grades in school may be one way of benefting from the conversion of
domestic ICT access, ICT use is also harnessed to build social status and networks
of interactions, sometimes through such activities as opinion leadership (see
below). Tis dynamic is evident in the discussion of LANing circles in Chapter 8.
According to Silverstone (1994: 130), conversion defnes the relationship between
the household and the outside world the boundary across which artefacts and
meanings, texts and technologies pass as the household defnes and claims for itself
and its members a status in neighbourhood, work and peer groups in the wider
society. Silverstones discussion of texts and meanings underlines the fact that the
diferent frameworks used in this book can interrelate with each other.
A technology is integrated within the home sitting on a table, connected to a
specifc power socket spatially located through the process of objectifcation. In a
complementary manner, incorporation describes the way in which use of the tech-
nology is integrated within the temporal rhythms of the households daily life. It
also marks the way in which the household, or its members, incorporate themselves
into audiences and communities that produce and consume the chosen media and
technologies. In this way, the members of the household can be related to various
online communities such as those discussed in Chapter 8. For example, using a
computer to access 24-hour coverage of a Big Brother household, and contributing
to chat, converts online access into an audience membership as part of an imagined
community of viewers and participants (Anderson 1991). Audience participation
provides access to information and opinions that, through conversion, can be traded
in F2F discussions and social exchanges in the days to come (Hill 2002).
Refection: Applying the domestication model
Thinking of your most recent ICT acquisition, can you identify the processes and decisions through which it
was appropriated, incorporated, objectifed and converted?
Many commentators have investigated the gendered dimension of domestication
processes, and one particularly useful contribution to this debate is that of Ann
Moyal. In researching peoples uses of communication technologies, Moyal (1995)
draws a useful distinction between instrumental and intrinsic uses of technology.
An instrumental use occurs when the technologys role is to achieve a particular
outcome such as making appointments, shopping, seeking information, timetables,
entertainments, making business arrangements, dealing with emergencies, accidents
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 161
[and] household crises (Moyal 1995: 285). ICTs and digital media permit further
value-adding over and above other instrumental communication channels. One
example of this might be the utilisation of web-based business directories that allow
potential clients to browse catalogues and order online. E-tailer Amazon, through its
use of cross-selling to market book B to purchasers who have already bought book A,
is one example of an online service that has product advantages for many consumers.
Online shopping services such as Amazon can simplify complex instrumental
activities such as researching, wish-listing and ultimately acquiring goods.
In contrast, Moyals intrinsic uses included personal communication with relat-
ives, friends, volunteer work, counselling, and intimate discussion and exchange
(Moyal 1995: 285). Te fact that instrumental and intrinsic uses are very diferent
was indicated by Ann Moyals in-depth interviews plus diaries of phone use. Two
hundred Australian women aged from 15 to over 75 were involved in the research.
Except for those who worked from home, who made 1012 instrumental calls per
week, women averaged 26 instrumental calls over a seven day period (ibid.: 287).
Tis instru mental activity contrasted with 2028 intrinsic calls per week averaging
about 1520 minutes, but which could last up to an hour (ibid.: 288). Tere is likely
to be regional and generational variation here, especially since Moyals work was
carried out before the domestication of internet access, but the grounds for distinc-
tion between instrumental and intrinsic are likely to apply across ICTs.
Te major purpose served by Moyals respondents intrinsic calls was kinkeeping
(Moyal 1995: 289). Tis was the term she used for the process by which callers
used prolonged and frequent communication to maintain and strengthen their links
with family and friends (kith and kin). Kinkeeping means that people who are
emotionally connected with one another are also closely aware of what is going on
in each others lives. Friendship and afection are strengthened and deepened as a
result of extended contact. Moyal identifed a major gender aspect to this emotional
work, whereby kinkeeping was particularly recognised as womens business. She
cites Lana Rakows (1988) US studies to comment that intrinsic phone calls are
both gendered work and gender work, in that it is work that women do to
hold together the fabric of the community, build and maintain relationships, and
accomplish both care-giving and receiving functions (Moyal 1995: 304).
Tis pattern of kinkeeping usage continues into internet activities, where women
are far more likely than men to be found using email, chat and Skype in intrinsic
ways (see, for example, Dare 2006). Tis kinkeeping communication, carried out
between women to strengthen and nurture them in their emotional and relational
labour of supporting friends, families and each other, extends the domestic sphere
beyond the confnes of the home and constructs a virtual domestic environment in
which the private and personal of the everyday fows freely and easily.
162 t h e i n t e r n e t
In addition to including case studies that address the internet in domestic family
life, debates around internet addiction and the importance of innovation in family
uses of ICTs, this fnal section of the book highlights how much the majority worlds
experience of technology difers from that of the Wests. In particular, this chapter
considers ways in which families, separated by nations and sometimes continents,
use ICTs to sustain dependencies and supportive relationships. For example,
remittances sent from family members in richer countries to their relatives in poorer
ones span transnational distances and link migrants in new countries and their
partly dependent relatives left behind. First, however, we return to the consideration
of online risk, frst encountered in Chapter 6, to investigate further the who lets
who use what dynamics of childrens use of the internet in domestic spaces. Te
focus now moves to the parentchild relationship in terms of the regulation of risk.
FAMILY REGULATION OF THE INTERNET
Does someone you know worry about the time you spend online? Are they concerned
that your digital life is impacting badly upon your everyday life? Maybe time seems
to disappear when youre on a social network site, or in a game, or blogging, and
other priorities are left untouched? Tese are displacement issues. Te fear in dis-
placement is that time spent online may take the place of more valuable activities,
and such concern is grounded in a notion of an appropriate balance between the
time spent online and the time ofine. Once issues of values and appropriateness are
raised in a discussion, it becomes clear that we are talking about subjective judge-
ments. Judgements indicate a struggle over possible choices and they replay old
arguments that have also been applied to other media such as the time spent
watch ing television, or playing music, or reading books. You, or the people making
the judgements, are constructing an image of what life might be like if you used the
internet less, or diferently. Such judgements are one way to communicate peoples
priorities.
Maybe you see the idea of a distinction between online and ofine as an old-
fashioned throwback to the 1990s: after all, internet use is real life, and the two
aspects blur. It can be the same with perceptions of positives and negatives. What
one family perceives to be the development of technical skills and media literacy,
another may judge to be internet addiction. As we saw with the discussion of press
coverage in Chapter 6, and the classifcation of content, contact and conduct risks,
people are more likely to worry about negative consequences of the internet while
taking positive benefts as a given. Hasebrink et al. (2009: 89) identify the positives
and negatives of childrens online activities as indicated in Table 9.1
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 163
Many issues of greatest concern to parents and policy makers, although they
may occur infrequently, involve a range of risks. For example, a child might access
in ap pro priate content, and then go on to use chat and messaging services to talk
about what they have seen. As a result, they might come into contact with strangers
and conduct themselves inappropriately, possibly revealing personal informa tion,
publishing personal photos or agreeing to meeting ofine. Te fact that some of
these risks are experienced within the childs home might make the activities seem
less real or less dangerous. Further, Lobe et al. (2007: 17) argue that childrens lives
are often lived in the interstices of adult spaces and timetables, and . . . children may
be expected to circumvent, evade or subvert adult expectations or norms for their
behaviour. It can be suggested that risk-taking is a normal part of child development.
Discussions of these kinds of online stranger danger risks rarely emphasise how
infrequently they occur, that their incidence in the US, at least is heavily in
decline. Schrock and boyd (2008: 10) cite Finkelhor (2008) when they say the
Table 9.1: Opportunities and risks of childrens online activities
Opportunities Risks
Motivations Consequences Motivations Consequences
General usage Technical skills,
media literacy
General usage Time addiction,
dependency
Education and
learning
Knowledge, skills,
career advancement
Commercial
interests
Financial consequences,
exploitation of personal
data
Participation and
civic engagement
Civic engagement Aggression Harm, anxiety,
aggressiveness
Creativity Creative skills Sexuality Personal contact with
strangers, harm, sexual
concerns
Identity and social
connection
Identity and social
connection
Values, ideology Distorted understandings
(of health, politics etc)
Source: Based on Hasebrink et al. (2009: 89).
Note: Figure 9.1 adapts two Hasebrink tables that also integrate the perspectives of: Content, child
as recipient; Contact, child as participant; and Conduct, child as actor, roles.
164 t h e i n t e r n e t
[minus] 53 per cent change in reports of sexual ofences against children from
1992 to 2006 . . . is both signifcant and real. Te fnal report of the Internet Safety
Technical Task Force, commissioned by the State Attorneys General of the United
States in response to a perceived increase in risky behaviour as a result of childrens
participation in social networking sites notes that children at risk online are also
more likely to be at risk in other situations: Depression, abuse and substances are
all strongly correlated with various risky behaviors that lead to poor choices with
respect to online activities. A poor home environment that includes confict and
poor parentchild relationships is correlated with a host of online risks (Wolak et al.
2003; Ybarra and Mitchell 2004; SNS Safety 2008: 20).
Tere is also concern that young people growing into adulthood risk being judged
by future employers and others on the basis of their teenage postings, photo graphic
and otherwise, on public or password-protected websites. Tis happened to 22-year
old Ray Lam, a New Democratic Party candidate for an elected role in Canada,
whose Facebook party photos were the centre of a media storm and provoked his
resignation from the provincial election (CBC News 2009). Consequently, risks
of online activity can be projected into the future as well as being located in the
present. Such risks have led to work from, for example, Ann Cavoukian (2009),
the Information Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, to educate younger users about
their privacy, including the creation of an interactive website MyPrivacy, MyChoice,
Mylife (Youthprivacy.ca).
It is unsurprising that in a context of the internet being a risky place, most parents
attempt to regulate the ways in which their children go online. Tis is often done
in terms of the placement of the internet-connected computer for example, by
putting it in a public area, and by restricting when it can be used and what it can
be used for. Te fnal report of the EU Kids Online project cautions, however, that
Rules and restrictions do not ft well with the ethos of modern parenting, especially
in some countries, and it is unclear that parental strategies are efective in reducing
childrens exposure to risk or increasing their resilience to cope (Livingstone and
Haddon 2009: 4). Later, the report goes on to say that parents adopt a range of
strategies for mediating online activity: First, imposing rules and restrictions;
second, social approaches watching, sharing, talking about the internet with their
children; and third, using technical tools such as fltering, monitoring (Livingstone
and Haddon, 2009: 27).
Often, family rules centre on the use of the internet for specifc activities. Te
use of social media such as internet messaging, chat, social networking, email and
blog ging (SNS Safety 2008: 21) tend to be the top online activities [. . . of ] youth
who are solicited and harassed, according to Ybarra and Mitchell (2008), and these
activities are often regulated within the family. It should be noted that the majority of
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 165
cases of sexual solicitation and harassment are thought by the victims to be people of
their own age (minors) or of unknown age, and some of these could be construed as
firting (SNS Safety 2008, pp. 1516). Harassment is not straight-forwardly related
to the amount of time online, however, since youth who are not solicited are much
more likely to indicate that gaming is one of their top Internet uses as compared to
those who are solicited (Ybarra and Mitchell 2008) (SNS Safety 2008: 445). Tis
is an interesting inversion of many media-sponsored moral panics (Cohen 1980)
about games taking over the lives of adolescents. Such stories are often circulated by
the old media, in newspaper articles and on television, even though there is growing
evidence that online game play may ofer benefts.
Although we looked at gamer communities in Chapter 8, we have not addressed
the pervasive media commentary about problems associated with online game-play.
Such reports stretch back to at least 1993 (Kelly and Rheingold 1993) and can be
readily uncovered with an internet search (e.g. Freeman 2008), although there are
alternative perspectives that counter this dominant trend (Johnson 2005) arguing
that many adolescents gain considerable social and educational benefts from game-
playing. As well as links into their peer group community, gamers are more likely to
be sociable teenagers with positive family relationships (Durkin and Barber 2002).
Telephone research conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project with
1,102 children aged 1217, and their parents, suggests that Fully 97 per cent of
teens age[d] 1217 play computer, web, portable or console games . . . for most teens,
gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience
(Pew 2008: i, iii). In making positive statements about the social aspects of gaming,
researchers do not always have a high opinion about the actual narrative subtlety of
such games as Grand Teft Auto: the actual content of the game is often childish or
gratuitously menacing . . . much of the role play inside the gaming world alternates
between drive-by shooting and princess rescuing (Johnson 2005: 3940).
All these issues are brought to bear in the family context because of contests over
power and autonomy; the intentions and responsibilities of parents to supervise and
regulate online activity, and the fun and freedoms of maturing adolescents, chafng
against family restrictions. Parents and children negotiate these parameters, which
change over time as children get older (ACMA 2007: 14). Interestingly, many parents
say they trust their children to choose appropriate internet activities most of the
time. In a 2007 Australian study of 751 households, involving telephone interviews
with parents and 1,003 children of the households aged between 817 completing
diaries, researchers found that Most parents trust their childs judgement about the
internet and, at least some of the time, leave it up to him/her to choose what is
done on the internet (83 per cent). Tis includes two-thirds who trust their childs
judgement all/most of the time (66 per cent) (ACMA 2007: 21).
166 t h e i n t e r n e t
Tis does not mean that there are no rules around internet use in the home.
Many families include some or all of the following rules and restrictions: [not
allowed to] talk to people they dont know online, use email, instant messaging, chat
rooms, create profle, access certain websites, download music, flms, games, buy
online, give out personal information (Livingstone and Haddon 2009: 28 n.26).
Such strategies may become less viable as more houses adopt wireless connectivity
and as more teenagers get mobile access to the internet. Further, no domestic regime
can guarantee to prevent childrens access to undesirable material, since restricted
children will often access the internet in other locations, such as the homes of their
relatively less-supervised friends. Indeed, there is often disagreement between parents
and children about the very kinds of rules that are in place. Livingstone and Bober
(2005) found that: children and parents gave diferent answers to questions of the
incidence of risk (children report more online risk than parents) and to questions
of domestic rules (parents report more rules about internet use than children)
(summarised in Lobe et al. 2007: 24).
Parents accept that children change as they mature, and parental rules and be havi-
our refects this. For example, in a qualitative Australian research study involving in
depth interviews with parents and children, separately, one parent commented that
He used to let me see the [onscreen] conversations but he wont let me see them
now. But thats fne. If I come up and talk to him, he clicks the button and takes the
screen of (Green et al. 2004: 90). Domestic rules about internet use reveal the ways
in which the family unit prioritises and models particular behaviours and attitudes.
Tey are a locale through which family relations are tried, tested, negotiated and
changed; particularly around axes of gender (ACMA 2007: 7), age (ACMA 2007:
10), and generation in terms of an ongoing discussion between children and their
mothers and fathers; together and separately.
Parents attitudes to online activity can usually be placed on a continuum from
seeing their children as autonomous individuals who are able to make appropriate
choices, through to more authoritarian approaches where parents know best.
As supervisors, parents negotiate their childrens access to the internet and work
to develop agreement around a hierarchy of uses. Tis hierarchy includes parents
preferred and promoted uses of the internet for work and study purposes,
acceptable leisure activities, and forbidden or illegitimate usage of the internet. In
the qualitative study mentioned above, given that parents are generally trusting of
childrens activities, the most common concern they express is that children spend
too much time online. Interviewing parent and child separately reveals the difering
perceptions at work (Holloway et al. 2004):
Father of two, Xavier, expressed his concern about (what he perceived as) his
teenage sons excessive use of the internet: Well I think theres far too much
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 167
time . . . Gavinll spend a whole day on it. I try to get him to come to the footy
on Sunday. No. Hes available for friends [for online gaming and chat on the
internet]. Hell spend all day on the computer (Xavier).
Son Gavin (16), in a separate interview, anticipated that this criticism had
been made and felt compelled to counter it: Well he [dad] makes comments like
saying Im not ft enough cause I spent too much time on the computer but I
play soccer a lot. Like, I do sport perhaps everyday at school . . . I mean, I think,
such a piece of crap (Gavin).
Father and son here are in an age-old contest about who wants whom to do what
when. Te internet is just one location in which these family-life dynamics are
explored, and the son, Gavin, is clearly aware of the explicit accusation that he
spends too much time on the computer. For some parents, and their children, the
accusation is that the child is actually addicted to game-playing.
INTERNET ADDICTION
Lobe et al. argue that, in addition to various forms of specifc content, contact and
conduct risks, a perceived risk of internet use is the possible development of time
addiction, dependency (Lobe et al. 2007: 9). Tere has been considerable discussion
over the past decade as to whether the internet in general, and online gaming in
particular, is addictive (e.g. Widyanto and Grifths 2007). A part-UNESCO-
funded report which looks at the efects of game-playing on gamers comments
that addiction in a non-medical sense is an extremely controversial concept . . . for
example, the concept is almost exclusively used by people who perceive the activ-
ity in question as a deviation from the norm and a deviation from the desirable
(Nordicom 2004: 34). While such statements leave open the possibility that people
can become addicted to the internet, they highlight the fact that people make
judge ments about others internet activity. Such judgements can lead to complicated
inter personal power struggles, especially between older children and their parents,
and result in confict and concern.
Allison et al. (2006) discuss at length the clinical case of an 18-year-old North
American student from the Pacifc Northwest. Mr As parents referred him for
psychiatric assessment concerning his online game playing; initially in Diablo II and
subsequently World of Warcraft. He had been playing games for several years at the
point where his parents and he had sought psychiatric assessment:
Mr As parents were particularly hoping that the evaluation team would view
his game playing as a manifestation of treatable obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD), but they worried that it might be a form of addiction. Mr A reported
that his life had been taken over by the game-playing: I play 1216 hours a day,
I do not sleep and Ive never had a girlfriend. (Allison et al. 2006: 381)
168 t h e i n t e r n e t
While Mr As internet activities were certainly associated with a range of behaviours
that impacted upon his family relationships and his everyday life, the issue of cause
and efect was left unresolved in the analysis. Te case study stops short of arguing
in favour of the existence or otherwise of a clinical condition of internet addiction
and instead leaves open the possibility that Mr As extensive engagement with online
games might be a coping strategy which allowed him to avoid a range of psycho-
logical challenges identifed by the clinical team, none of which could clearly be
established as an efect of his game-playing. Instead, there was some suggestion that
Mr As early experience of gaming was as a retreat from the pressures of his parents
continuous house moves (14 times in 18 years) and a refuge from problems at school.
In the early days of public take-up of the internet, Storm King, a US online
theorist, asked a key question: Is the internet addictive, or are addicts using the
internet? (King 1996). Case studies of internet addiction tend not to deal with
this salient perspective. In particular, they discount the pleasurable efect for some
internet users of identifying an activity in which they are recognised for their skill
and competency. Tis sense of enjoyment is likely to be heightened where other
aspects of an internet users life make them feel powerless or marginalised.
Refection: Internet addiction
Do you know anyone who you would say is addicted to the internet?
Does their online life offer them an opportunity for recognition and respect?
INNOVATIVE FAMILIES
Families with school-aged children are a site for a huge amount of innovation
and creativity. Two reasons help account for this. First, parents try to equip dep-
endent children with access to the technologies and experiences that they feel are
important for their childrens future. Second, as children grow older and develop
their own income streams, they often use that money to buy goods and technologies
that enhance their lives, add value to the equipment provided in their parents
household(s) and establish their status as people with independent spending capacity.
Tese dynamics prompt the acquisition of new and upgraded technologies and the
family dynamics supporting technological innovation are considered here.
We have already noted the power contests between parents and children as
children mature and claim autonomy and independence. We have also noted, in
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 169
Chapter 8, the importance of peer groups in the lives of young people. Essentially, in
forming the tight-knit communities (Jin and Chee 2008: 39) characteristic of much
teenager society, young adults are negotiating a family of peers able to ofer support
as they move into the next stage of life and prepare to leave home. Te success
with which older children negotiate this leaving home phase is important to their
parents sense of self-esteem as well as their own. Research carried out among parents
indicates that self evaluations in the middle years of adulthood are strongly linked to
perceptions of adult children, particularly childrens personal and social adjustment
(Ryf et al. 1996: 417). It is relevant here that parents value their childrens perceived
happiness, rather than narrower measures concerning their fnancial success.
Teenagers and young adults are often in paid employment, part-time or full-
time, while still resident in their parents family home. In these circumstances young
adults in afuent families may enjoy disposable resources that will not be matched
for some decades in terms of discretionary spending power. With the infrastructure
expenses of daily life accommodation, food and services mainly funded by
their parents, most of what they earn can be spent as they choose. Many young
people are consequently in a key position to be innovators and early adopters of new
technologies. Te characteristics of such technology users include:
being risk-takers (they are less likely to perceive risk, and are more able to cope
with loss) opinion leaders, younger, educated, with a higher disposable income,
socially mobile (upscale) and socially involved (in formal and informal groups).
Tey are active information seekers in their area of interest and likely to be less
dogmatic than non-innovators, more open-minded and inner-directed (follow
their own judgement). Tey may seek variety and stimulation. Tey may need to
feel (or self-identify as) unique. (Green 2002: 31, citing Schifman et al. 1997)
Tey are also most likely to be male (Wajcman 1991). Te fortuitous economic circ-
umstances of some older children still living in the family home coincide with strong
pressures to keep up with other members of their social circle, as well as to make
a specifc contribution to collective activities, such as improved technology for one
person that can then be accessed by the group.
Internationally, in western countries, the demographic most likely to have internet
access are couple-families with school-aged children (Kennedy et al. 2008). Te
relevance of the couple, rather than the single parent household is one of resources:
couples usually have more money. In a recent study, being a couple with children
at home was an equivalent indicator of internet access as having high education
qualifcations (88 per cent) and being in the highest income bands (89 per cent)
(ABS 2008). Maria Bakardjieva (2005) cites one of her Canadian interviewees as
saying When we got the computer frst, it was basically for the kids (ibid.: 93).
170 t h e i n t e r n e t
Although there are likely to be more fnancial resources available to couples of the
same age who do not have children, couples with children are more likely to have
internet access. Its the presence of children that increases internet access rates.
Tis perception is underlined by the fact that although internet access is high in
these couple-with-children households, it is not necessarily driven by the parents
usage: Te high access and lower usage rates for people aged 3554 years may be
related to the presence of children in the household. Parents may acquire internet
access for educational and entertainment purposes for their children, but may not
use it themselves (ABS 2008). Parents feel a sense of obligation to provide the
best possible start for their children. It is comparatively easy for both parents and
children to tap into this desire to be future-proof through profciency with new
and emerging technology (Kennedy et al. 2008).
Children and their parents are involved in social and work-based circles that
introduce them to the benefts of technological advances. For example, many
schools and workplaces introduced broadband technologies in advance of most
homes, introducing workers and students to the benefts of speedy access to online
materials. Such exposure outside the home has domestic implications. As 16-year-
old Evana, an interviewee in a qualitative study of Australian families internet use,
commented, regarding her fathers thoughts about upgrading to broadband, We
might be getting broadband cause hes in real estate so he needs it for his work to
catch up with other companies sales and everything (Green and Holloway 2004:
180).
A mother, whose children lived during the week with her ex-husband told re-
searchers that she was the only parent with access to the internet: a lot of times,
the kids will ring us during the week and say Ive got an assignment to do. Ive
got to use the internet, so I go, pick them up and they do their assignments here
(Jasmine) (Green and Holloway 2004: 180). Tis study indicated that the usual
priorities in the home for access to the internet were: paid work, followed by study
needs, followed by entertainment, chat and games. In practice, there was some
stratifcation in time bands since children could often get unfettered access to the
internet after school, before parents got in from work, and they tended to use the
computer for fun activities at that time, especially if they had friends over.
A desire to regain the family phone line proved a signifcant driver for families
to transfer from dial-up to broadband. Once broadband is connected in afuent
households, the irritations of slow internet speeds and competing requirements for
the domestic phone connection soon give way to frustrations with having to share a
single computer connected to the internet. Whereas during the 1990s most families
had only one computer in the home, this changed in the 2000s according to the age
of family members and the occupations of parents. Given increased laptop reliability,
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 171
and with students and some employees taking portable computers between home
and work, many households soon had more than one computer, and some had one
computer per person. In these circumstances, where there was only one broadband
connection point it became increasingly frustrating for family members to wait their
turn to go online.
Tis set the scene for replicating the dynamic of the 1970s TV access. Moving
from black and white reception in the 1960s, to colour in the 1970s, middle-class
families also began to buy more television sets to help settle arguments about who was
going to watch what when programme choices clashed. Te profusion of diferent
sets in diferent rooms helped solve this problem in the days before the widespread
take-up of videotape technology allowed time-shifting. Although the access point
has recently narrowed again with the adoption of cable TV services (Holloway and
Green 2008), there is a pressure within families to avoid situations in which people
have to queue for limited access to a service if there are alternative options available.
For a family home serviced by a broadband connection, that alternative solution was
either to install a local area network or a wireless modem. Te advantage of wireless
was that family members with laptops could work anywhere in the house they chose,
within signal range.
Tis always on for everyone wireless capability does not let children escape from
their parents priorities and regulation, however. One tech-savvy family, where the
children and parents each had their own laptops, still felt the need to restrict internet
access for the oldest son, Teo,
who is in his fnal year at high school, [and] consistently challenges the implicit
work/study/entertainment hierarchy within the home by participating in
long gaming sessions with online friends. His mother Jenny, who oversees
her childrens educational activities, spends time tutoring Teo in his weakest
subjects in preparation for his fnal school examinations. She considers his
computer use (gaming and 3D modelling) excessive in that it interferes with the
time Teo needs to study and get adequate sleep for the next days schooling.
(Green et al. 2004: 98)
In an interview setting, Teo was philosophical about the restrictions. I understand
it. I dont like it. I know its [the right thing], Id be happy just playing games
(Green et al. 2004: 98). Naturally, such parental control does not go unchallenged.
Leslie Haddon discusses how research has demonstrated childrens creativity in
overcoming parental controls (2005: 62) using some examples from mobile use.
Unwilling to be contacted by their parents, children claimed that the mobile signal
was lost, the mobile battery was dead, or else they sent parents calls directly to
voice mail. In internet usage, children soon learn to: minimise questionable screens;
argue that multiple screens are required for active research; that they are using
172 t h e i n t e r n e t
Internet Messenger to get tips for homework; and to delete search histories from
their web browsers. Citing Nicola Greens work (Green 2001), Haddon comments
that approaches such as these are all part of parent management strategies to avoid
surveillance and gain some privacy (Haddon 2005ibid.: 623).
Within this culture of technology adoption and innovatory use, people can be
identifed as lead users (Haddon 2005: 56); those who lead others by modelling
new and emerging uses. Tis term would equate to Rogers (2003, [1962]) terms of
innovators and early adopters from his Difusions of Innovations theory, discussed
in Chapter 4. According to this model, the difusion of an innovation occurs over
a period of time whereby the (approximately) 16 per cent of innovators and early
adopters infuence the 84 per cent of early majority, late majority and laggards/
contents. Within the moment, this infuence occurs between co-present parties
involved in networks of communication. In these networks people learn from
each other, and particularly from key informants and enthusiasts, what the new
technologies are and how they ofer benefts.
Opinion leadership and the fostering of technology aspirations is an activity that
happens in the present, in terms of prompting awareness, raising interest, developing
desire and resulting in action. Long before the majority move to broadband or
investigate wireless connections, they have been infuenced by someone whose views
and experience they respect. Key infuences upon the household can occur at the
level of either a parent or a child, but within the family home the person infuenced
has to argue the case for the adoption of the new technology or the new way of
organising something. Networks of infuence infuence both the appropriation and
the conversion phases of domestic technology acquisition.
Refection: opinion leaders
Are you an opinion leader in any feld? Why do people seek out your opinions in that area?
Are you an opinion seeker for some activities or purchases? What makes you choose one person to approach
for advice, rather than another?
Lets consider this material in terms of our domestication model of appropria tion, in-
corporation, objectifcation and conversion (Silverstone et al. 1992: 19). Te west ern
household is well integrated within local and national information and tech nology
fows, and a decision to appropriate technology involves seeking and evaluating
information from others and from a range of sources such as the internet and
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 173
consumer stores. Decision-makers become more involved in researching a decision
depending upon how expensive it is to carry through, and the perceived risks. High-
involvement decisions require a signifcant investment of time and energy as well
as money. Incorporation relates to the way the innovation is taken up in terms of
the temporal patterns of the home. Moving from a single internet access point to
allowing multiple computers to go online simultaneously, via a broadband router
for example combined with a cabled LAN network, means that family members no
longer have to negotiate who has access to the internet, when and for what purpose.
Objectifcation sees the physical environment of the home altered to accept the
new technology. For example, cables may be taken up and discarded as a family
moves from a cable LAN access pattern to a wireless one. Finally, conversion sees
the benefts of the new innovation translated into other forms: enhanced ICT
access might result in better school results, or more fexible work hours with some
tele com muting from the home, or the chance to send and receive family videos
and speak online to family members far away, as well as a greater capacity to ofer
opinions, advice and support to others leading to increased social standing. It may
also constitute an important element of the socialisation of the next generation of
online users, communicating the message that innovation is to be welcomed and
that change is excitingly dynamic. Families, both within the same household and
extended in geographical space, are consequently central to much innovation and
technology adoption.
REMITTANCES AND THE INTERNET
We have examined the role of the internet as a catalyst for helping to reveal the
prior ities and dynamics of people living in a shared space in family relationships. We
have concentrated upon the wealthy West although we have also considered how the
internet is used by the homeless; people who are essentially excluded from family
life (Chapter 4). Here we attend to the diferent issue of generally poorer, majority-
world people who have left their families behind in order to work overseas so that
they can generate an income stream to support those they care for at a distance. Te
payments sent home from one country to another by a family member working
in a richer economy to support their loved ones in a poorer country are called
remittances. It is estimated that ten per cent of the worlds population is subsidised
in these ways, by absent family workers who live abroad (IFAD 2009a). Remittance
fows have been called the human face of globalization (IFAD 2009b).
Even though these migrant workers are generally among the poorest commun-
ities in the countries in which they work, their contribution to some of the econ-
omies of majority nations is astonishing. Although most migrant workers would
174 t h e i n t e r n e t
have mobile-phone communications, rather than internet-based contact, with the
families they have left behind, the remittances trafc by which they send money
home has an internet dimension and may start its journey as an online transfer in
the workers host country. It is to a discussion of these issues of informal but critical
distance communication between dispersed family members that we now turn.
According to World Bank data, the poorest nations in the world rely dis pro-
portionately on remittance income. As a percentage of national Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), Tajikistan received an estimated 45 per cent of their total GDP
in remittances during 2008, Moldova 38 per cent and Tonga 35 per cent. In this
ranking of dependence, it is not until the tenth country is reached, Jamaica at 19.8
per cent, that the proportion of estimated GDP falls below 20 per cent. On average,
over a quarter of the national productivity of the top ten recipient countries was vol-
untarily supplied by citizens living and working abroad. Te total amount of money
estimated to have been transferred in remittances sent through formal channels in
2008 was US$283 billion according to the World Bank, which notes that Tese
fows do not include informal channels, which would signifcantly enlarge the
volume of remittances if they were recorded (WB Press Release 2008; Kumar 2008).
Remittances are among the most resilient forms of income for recipient countries:
While capital fows tend to rise during favourable economic cycles and decline in
bad times, remittances tend to be counter-cyclical (World Bank 2008: 12). Which
is to say that, as the world goes into a recession, migrant workers send more money
home since they know their families are among the most adversely afected people
globally.
Te costs of remitting money to the developing world can be very high (AusAID
2007: ix), and new delivery mechanisms are constantly being investigated by both
the senders and receivers of micro-fnance remittances. In many cases the options are
limited by poor technological infrastructure and security issues in terms of accessing
money from ATMs in urban locations. Te key features in desirable services are cost,
security, convenience and speed, as these impact upon both senders and receivers
(AusAID 2007: 24). Researchers note, however, that high rates of mobile phone
owner ship in [. . .poorer] countries ofer the potential for improving access and
reducing transfer costs through SMS-based transfer technologies (AusAID 2007:
21).
Although it will be some time before remittances can be sent internationally by
phone (ABC BB 2008), since all phone trafc of this kind has to happen within
national borders, the combination of e-banking transfers plus mobile phone access
ofers the potential to improve the lives and the incomes of the one-in-ten people
involved in the global remittances economy. International Food and Development
researcher Dilip Ratha enthused about seeing a prototype system in operation in
Africa:
i n t e r n e t i n f a m i l y l i f e 175
I have seen it operating in Kenya and I was so impressed. I saw people, including
the taxi drivers and the hotel people who worked there, and men on the street
and women on the street, actually use the cell phone transfers, and its very
convenient and it is almost instantaneous, and they were using this at a fee of
about 50-cents per transaction. (ABC BB 2008)
Tese possible uses of mobile phones constitute an innovation unanticipated
(Haddon 2005: 55) by those industry players who frst designed and developed the
mobile phone. At the same time, it makes the mobile phone even more likely to be
the pervasive inclusion-building technology in terms of its use among the worlds
poor (Parreas 2005). Te internet may be the powerful connector of the worlds
wealthy nations, but it may also be integral in supporting other technologies in
delivering benefts to the worlds poor. In many ways, and increasingly, it is a tool
for integrating and connecting individuals within the family, the family within the
community, and the family within its global networks.
Summary
n This chapter examined the role of the internet in everyday family life since it is through the examination
of the domestic that we discover peoples individual priorities and values. By looking at the internet in
family life we learn about families, as well as about the internet.
n Discussions about the domestication of the internet within the family home led to consideration of parents
strategies for regulating internet use and the question of internet addiction. People continually upgrade
their internet equipment and services, and the processes through which this takes place were examined.
n Although the internet has predominantly been constructed in terms of the lives of the worlds richer citizens,
in that it is available to a minority of the globes population, it plays an important role in the lives of
the poorest by facilitating the operation of the remittances economy.
n It is worth remembering that we are only at the end of the beginning when it comes to understanding
what the internet means to human society, and what it may yet mean. Even in the most technologically
advanced nations on earth, general access to the internet is less than a generation old: and what is accessed
keeps developing and changing. This is an exciting time to be using, and studying, new media.
The fnal chapter of the book sums up the issues we have explored, and brings the various threads together
as we cement our understanding of the internet as an introduction to new media.
10 CoNCLUSIoN
INTRODUCTION
Only recently established as an academic discipline, the study of new media is an
exciting area of research. Te term new media is applied to digitally based in-
formation and communication technologies, which are increasingly mobile. It is
constantly changing and evolving, has many facets, and applies to many technologies
and practices. Within the total range of new media, the internet and online com-
munication are a particular focus of investigation. Some people are paid to be
experts in one aspect of new media or other, but many of the most passionate users
of new media consume it and develop their skills in their spare time or at times
when they should be engaged in other activities (like homework). Such people have
been referred to in this book as prosumers (e.g. Hartley 2006), but they may also
be referred to as prod-users (producer-users, Bruns 2003) or pro-ams (professional-
amateurs; people who are amateurs, but who work to professional standards). As is
clear, internet-user enthusiasts have stimulated the coining of new words to describe
key user groups. New media prowess is also associated with being future-savvy: while
we may not know what the future will look like we can be confdent it is digital.
Researchers in this feld use approaches and research methodologies from a variety
of disciplinary felds, often informed by the aspect of internet use they wish to
study. Psychologists, marketers, sociologists, designers, anthropologists, educators,
managers, information scientists, technologists, linguists, and practitioners from
every other discipline have a legitimate interest in internet research and a valid toe-
hold and contribution to make to new media studies. Tis diversity is demonstrated
in the case studies included in this volume. In this concluding chapter we draw
together the diferent strands of the book by examining issues from across a range of
chapters and ask what we have learned about new media, and ourselves, as a result
of studying the internet. At the same time, we will review the tools of the trade for
critically examining our own new media use, seeing ourselves as the subjects of an
immersive, longitudinal engagement with new media.
178 t h e i n t e r n e t
Te internet is a medium that is constantly being reinvented as social and econ-
omic space, with its roots in computer networks, defence strategies, freedom of
information and frontier mythologies. Unsurprisingly, it also raises fundamental
questions around gender, family, community, and old media in relation to the new.
From a theoretical and conceptual perspective, this book has adopted a Social
Constructionism framework which argues that our understandings of the world and
the ways in which we relate to it are constructed through social and cultural forces.
Such an approach positions the socio-cultural as the predominant deter miner of
meaning. Within the Social Constructionism framework, the social shaping of tech-
nology perspective acknowledges the power of user agency in fash ion ing technology,
alongside those political and economic elites located in the armed serv ices,
bureaucracies and the corporate world, who fnance and hothouse many develop-
ments later taken up by innovative publics. Software and technology developments
provide examples of distributed collaboration, while everyday innovations include
the creativity inherent in social media practices (see mnemonic in Chapter 1).
Technological advance is consequently positioned as an outcome of social dynamics
and, at least theoretically, susceptible to scrutiny, regulation, accountability and
democratic change. Ultimately, a Social Constructionism framework complements a
user-driven development agenda and ofers an optimistic approach to technological
change.
Within the over-arching approach of the social shaping of technology perspect-
ive, a range of specifc micros-theories inform the methodological frameworks
evident in the case studies that are the backbone of this book. Te micro-theories of
greatest relevance are the Teory of Consumption, the Domestication framework,
the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) perspective and Actor-Network
Teory (ANT).
Tis theoretical canon presupposes an inclusive defnition for the notion of tech-
nology. Tat defnition includes not only the physical object of the technology but
also the uses for which it is designed and to which it is put, and the knowledge, skills
and practices through which it is used. Once we talk about the ways in which people
learn to use something and are given access to a limited resource, such as tech nology,
we are talking about the social and the political, and implicating the process within
broader issues of education, economics, power and gender (Wajcman 1994: 6). Tis
is another reason for using case studies to examine the internet.
In tying together some themes raised in the book, and introducing a new one on
the brain, which provides a specifc prompt for consideration and refection, this
chapter suggests ways in which to create a series of integrated research-based ex-
pecta tions concerning new media use. Te examples to be considered below are art-
iculated around aspects of gender, family and community, and some psychological
c o n c l u s i o n 179
implications of internet use. Such research-driven overviews might serve as a touch-
stone for readers investigations, and promote further research and study including
examination of individual practices using new media. Te book and the chapter
conclude with an over-arching consideration of the internet.
GENDER
Tis book does not address gender and new media as a stand-alone topic, but it is
difcult to discuss new media, and especially access to and uses of the newest media,
without recognising that gender constitutes a specifcally social dimension of new
media use. It is beyond the scope of this book to engage in debates about how much
gender is constructed in social interactions compared with the extent to which it is
biologically determined. Even so, it is clear that boys and girls, men and women,
use the internet diferently when they have the opportunity to choose their online
activities. Hasebrink et al. (2009: 51), discussing childrens internet use in research
projects reported from across Europe, note that while both boys and girls enjoy a
range of online opportunities, there is clear evidence of gender diferences in online
activities and preferences. Girls prefer activities that involve communication, content
creation and collaboration. Boys prefer competition, consumption and action.
Comments about gender diferences will vary with the age of the people con-
cerned and their cultural context, while in many instances such diferences may
be smaller than indicated above. Even so, the diferences noted for children have
their equivalents in older age groups with women, for example, having the major
responsibility for kinkeeping, using both old and new media to maintain links with
friends and family (Chapter 9). Noting gendered activities for groups of teenage
boys (game-players) and groups of teenage girls (fan-fction writers and readers), as
discussed in Chapter 8, does not preclude men from active careers as successful fan-
fction authors, or prevent women from being exceptionally skilled in frst-person
shooter games. Such against-the-grain activities are well outside the norm, however.
Te case studies addressed in the book have often recognised a gendered dimen-
sion in technology use, including an acknowledgement of the preponderance of men
in accounts of the development of the internet (Chapter 2). In cultures around the
world, prowess with high-technology is generally associated with young, wealthy,
well-educated males (Kidder 1982), who are also seen as proactively preparing for
and guiding the emergence of the future (Wajcman 1991: 144). In the early days of
new media adoption within a national context (Chapter 4), this masculine privilege
is expressed in diferential rates of take-up between males and females, with men
having far greater access to technology and greater confdence in its use.
180 t h e i n t e r n e t
In countries where pornography is legal it has been shown to be a major driver of
internet service investment and uptake, particularly among young male con sumers,
as well as prompting the development of innovative business models and inter net
pric ing strategies (Chapter 6). In some other countries, pornography is entirely
pro hib ited and heavily prosecuted, constituting a serious content risk. Given
multiple jurisdictions and a range of diferent legal frameworks, what is illegal and
prosecutable in one country might be legal and acceptable in another. Most liberal,
free-market economies permit adults to access pornography while restricting its use
by children and young people and strictly forbidding its creation except between
freely consenting adults.
Mens opportunities to use new media in early-adopter societies are associated
with the fact that men are more likely to have higher education and gain employment
in environments where internet use is expected and supported, and where they are
appropriately trained as part of their work role. Tis removes many of the barriers
to gaining skills and competence. In contrast, people outside the digital workforce,
including many women, have to overcome barriers of access, training and support,
as well as looking for opportunities to practice and develop their skills over time as
new programs and technologies come online. Once internet use is more pervasive
and found in most home, school and work environments, as is currently the case
with the majority of western nations, the diference between the proportions of
males and females accessing the internet tends to disappear (Hasebrink 2009: 20)
and gender is instead expressed through the purposes for which individuals use the
internet.
Partly because of diferences in gendered use, the content, contact and conduct
risk profles of boys and girls usually difer and change over time. One example of
this is that girls are more likely to be harassed through solicitation, for example,
and boys more likely to be the harassers, with the fgures from one study indicating
that 75 per cent of victims were girls and 99 per cent of perpetrators were boys
(Wolak et al. 2004, cited in SNS Safety 2008: 20). It is possible to fnd online
act ivities where the gender balance is comparatively equal and some MMORPGs
(massively multiplayer online role-playing games) would provide examples of this,
but again there are gendered dimensions to the preferred virtual game world: fantasy
as opposed to sci-f, for example.
Within gendered environments online, MMORPG players often gender swap
their game character, but give diferent reasons for doing so. In a recent online
survey involving 119 participants (83 males, 32 females, 4 undeclared), over half
the male respondents (54 per cent) had swapped gender in-world, while two-thirds
of females had done so (68 per cent). A male respondent reported that playing
a female character meant that male gamers treated him far better (Hussain and
c o n c l u s i o n 181
Grifths 2008: 52), while a female commented that she played as a man to prevent
unsolicited male approaches on her female characters (ibid.: 52).
Hasebrink et al. (2009: 20) comment, regarding the multi-country EU Kids
Online research network fndings, that in almost every country, boys are more likely
than girls to spend greater amounts of time online, have more places to access the
internet from, have their own computer and internet access and have access to a PC
and internet in their bedrooms. Tis material also reinforces other research which
demonstrates some (slight) diferences in family regulations about internet use
afecting boys and girls, which changes with the age of the child and with cultural
factors. Even where families agree that there are rules in place, however, research has
repeatedly indicated that children and their parents disagree on what the rules are
(Chapter 9). Te consideration of regulation moves the focus from one of gender to
one of the family, and it is to a consideration of family to which we now turn.
FAMILY
Even with internet-connected computers available in schools and community-based
resources such as libraries, or afordably accessible in cyber cafs, families remain a
key infuence in terms of younger members developing computer skills and using
their internet competencies. Tis may be clear for families with school-aged children
living at home, but is also the case in other contexts where the family infuence may
be more tenuous. Within the lives of the Scottish homeless, for example (Chapter
4), some younger homeless people used their irregular access to the internet as a
fxed place for family contact. Similarly, the internet is one means of communicat ing
with distant family members, keeping in touch with each others lives and perform-
ing kinkeeping at a distance (Chapter 9), exchanging photos, videos, chat and
email. Maintaining a deep sense of commitment and connectivity means that family
members are more likely to make themselves available in times of crises, including
travelling to be of physical help to distant family members (Baldassar 2007).
Te Scottish homeless was one case study supporting our consideration of the
digital divide, and highlighted the particular circumstances of a loss of internet
access due to a change in circumstances such as retirement, redundancy, separation
and divorce, or even in terms of young adult children moving away from home
(Green 2002: 1067). Another family-related case study centred on the experiences
of people who were (in the main) registered carers of seriously ill or disabled family
members (Chapter 4). Younger carers, and male carers, were more likely to have
had access to the internet, as were the adult care-givers of younger people, whose
charges were more likely to be involved in education, leaving their carers with
greater opportunities to develop new skills themselves. In this context, however,
182 t h e i n t e r n e t
the household as a whole was generally poorer and more stretched fnancially, and
signifcant poverty is a serious inhibitor of much new media access and use.
Family was also implicated in discussion of the customisation of the internet
to support languages other than English (Chapter 5). For example, according to
Fleming and Debskis study (2007), much of the motivation for using Irish in
internet-based communication is centred on maintaining contact with other family
members, and using the same language online as would be used in face-to-face
discussion. Elsewhere, as discussed in Chapter 6, the internet was constructed as a
place to which people retreat as an escape from the drudgery of maintaining self
and family, even an aphrodisiac for everyday life (Rival et al. 1998: 304).
Te family home and the internet caf are the primary sites of volunteer online
activity, and since the home is generally where people do what they choose with
their leisure, rather than what they are required to do, it becomes a locale within
which preferred internet activity takes place. Te activities of LAN clans and fan-
fction communities are unlikely to be carried out at work or school. Indeed, many
schools and employers ban game-play and other entertainment uses of the internet.
A study of internet use in domestic spaces thus becomes, particularly, a study of how
people negotiate the internet when they have a choice. It also becomes a study of the
family since the internet is one of the catalysts which reveal the dynamics of family
life in terms of Livingstones (1992: 113) who lets who use what (Chapter 9).
Te family is connected into the wider society through social, emotional, econ-
omic and political processes and is directly impacted by the moral panics that
circulate in the mass media about such fears as internet addiction, and rising rates of
obesity. For these and other reasons, parents feel obliged to regulate their childrens
use of the internet, particularly emphasising ways that maximise the educational and
skills-based opportunities provided by online interaction while minimising perceived
content, contact and conduct risks. For younger children especially, these dynamics
result in a series of family rules and regulations around internet use, although such
rules become less enforceable once children get wireless or networked access in
private domestic spaces, and with the growing accessibility of the internet via use of
mobile media. Chapter 9 includes discussion of a case study where regulation failed
and a young adult within the family circle was investigated for internet addiction.
Where internet activity is seen as a positive within family life, and where families
or individuals within them have sufcient fnancial resources, the purchase and
upgrading of online equipment can become a major priority. With older children
within their parents home, but especially young men who are not themselves
responsible for the households daily expenses, the family becomes a site for sign-
ifcant innovation and creativity. In turn, as new technologies and practices are
adopted in one family so they are modelled to others within a community, spurring
c o n c l u s i o n 183
demand for similar innovations in other households and establishing an opinion
leader dynamic.
Te capacity to innovate depends upon family wealth, education and cultural
con texts. Some of the dynamics through which decisions are made about invest-
ments in new media were addressed in the domestication framework of appro-
priation, objectifcation, incorporation and conversion (Chapter 9). It is through
the domestication of a technology that a family integrates their new media usage
within the temporal and spatial confguration of their home, and harnesses the
benefts of consumption for activities within the wider social realm. Although the
domestication framework operates at the level of the household, and is thus broader
than applying solely to families, many households are built around family groups.
Te internet is also critical to families at the other end of the global wealth scale,
where ICTs including the internet are critically implicated in the international
remittance fows that are sent by family members working in distant, richer countries
to relatives in their home communities. Although comparatively under-discussed,
these remittance fows afect about 10 per cent of the worlds population, some 700
million people. Te recipients are generally among the three in four people globally
who remain cut of from the internet due to a combination of poverty, and lack of
education, opportunity and infrastructure.
COMMUNITY
Community is important to internet activity in a number of ways, two of which
are considered here, the frst of which also involves the family, the second of which
focuses on shared interests. Family is implicated within notions of the wider physical
community, partly as a conduit through which individual members relate to com-
munity, and also in terms of the conversion phase of technology domestication.
Community-based narratives may reveal specifc aspects of internet use and some-
times these are at odds with, or disruptive of, the generally accepted stories of how
the internet works or why it has developed in the ways it has. A personal history of
a new media technology can demonstrate a richness of engagement specifc to the
individual and their community. Such a history may involve the social minutiae
of the wider community of opinion leaders and supporters who infuenced the
technologys purchase and helped set it up and get it working. It would include
details of who was frst communicated with and why, integrating the technology and
its use within the family, community and society.
An example from the early days of consumption studies may indicate this. Igor
Kopytof is an American academic who has carried out anthropological research in
Africa. He suggested that things have a social biography relating to the ways in
184 t h e i n t e r n e t
which they are integrated and consumed in peoples lives and gave this example to
illustrate his argument:
Te biography of a car in Africa would reveal a wealth of cultural data: the way
it was acquired, how and from whom the money was assembled to pay for it,
the relationship of the seller to the buyer, the uses to which the car is regularly
put, the identity of its most frequent passengers and of those who borrow it, the
frequency of borrowing, the garages to which it is taken and the owners relation
to the mechanics, the movement of the car from hand to hand over the years,
and in the end, when the car collapses, the fnal disposition of its remains. All of
these details would reveal an entirely diferent biography from that of a middle-
class American, or Navajo, or French peasant car. (Kopytof 1986: 67)
In this vignette, Kopytof has taken the social history of a specifc car as a text that
can be used to illustrate ways in which some people in Africa might live their lives
diferently from people in other contexts, and in other parts of the world. Internet
use and the acquisition of new media skills can similarly construct a relevant text
for comparison with others and for analysis. Such a text would include the reasons
given for the acquisition of the ICT concerned, the people consulted, the shops and
sites through which the purchase was researched, the insurance taken out, the set up
and installation arrangements, the funding sources, the frst people communicated
with and how, the uses to which it is actually put rather than those anticipated. In all
these ways the community contributes to the individual construction of a particular
technology.
Physical community is therefore an important part of the domestication and
consumption of ICTs. Online community can also be critically important to these
processes in terms of providing a context within which technology is acquired. It
may be that the technology has been purchased in order to keep in touch with
a distant other, such as when middle-aged children buy their elderly parents a
computer. As well as helping elderly people keep in touch by using new media, such
a purchase might be a strategy to fll empty hours created by family moving away or
by other signifcant life events. Online communities can ofer a range of supports
in diverse circumstances to supplement, replace and compensate for interaction, or
lack of interaction, with people living locally. Tis may be particularly relevant at
times when people nearby may be at work or asleep, or otherwise inaccessible, since
an online community may have a round-the-clock availability.
Communities can take shape ofine and then become active online, or can
form online around shared passions and practices. As a consequence, the range of
possible communities that can be considered as having an internet dimension is in-
numerable. Te communities considered in Chapter 8 were primarily articulated
c o n c l u s i o n 185
with gender and youth, and particularly harnessed online practices. LANing culture
implicates teenage and young adult males, such as those who responded to the viral
video memes of All your chocolate rain are belong to us (discussed in Chapter 7).
In contrast to the LANers, and underlining the gendered nature of some online
interaction, fan-fction communities generally involve teenage and young adult
women who create and share stories within a particular fan realm, such as Harry
Potter or Twilight. Some commentators, such as Tosenberger (2008), see the erotic
aspects of many of these stories as expressing a gendered counterpoint to the visual
pornography consumed by many young males (Chapter 6).
Reciprocal commitment to community members is developed when enough
people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufcient human feeling,
to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace (Rheingold 2000: xx). Such
comments can be taken as a reference to the development of social capital, which
is central to the uses of social media as well as to the development of specifc online
communities. A discussion of social capital (Chapter 5) helps explain the dynamics
through which people construct the internet as a supportive environment, building
linkages of mutual obligation using social structures beyond the family.
BRAIN-CHANGING
Tere have been some suggestions, for example in research studies cited by Steven
Jones (2005), that new media is making us more intelligent. It is, in efect, good
for the brain, and that might be sufcient reason for a middle-aged child to buy
their elderly parent a computer. Neurologists believe they have demonstrated that
even adult brains grow according to how they are used. Te brains of London taxi
drivers, for example, change in response to the experience of navigating the inner
city (Maguire et al. 2006). It now seems probable that everything we do, including
using the internet, has subtle efects upon our brain. Te more we do something, the
greater the impact it will have on our brains physiology. At the same time we rewrite
our neuronal wiring, we help rewrite our consumer culture. Te choices we make
online mean that some consumer products are developed in certain ways, practices
evolve to suit our priorities, and companies providing services come into existence
and thrive, or decline and are closed. As our usage patterns drive changes in the
information and experiences available on the internet, so the activities of engaging
with the internet and its various aspects are changing us.
Well over a decade ago, when the internet was still a minority experience even
in the wealthy West, David Porush, an MIT-trained cyber-theorist, suggested that
cyberspace is brain changing. Writing in the late 1990s, Porush suggested that society
186 t h e i n t e r n e t
was embarking upon a momentous journey. He sought an analogous moment in
history when culture found itself in possession of an equally new and revolutionary
cybernetic technology . . . for getting thoughts from one mind to another (1998:
46) and argued that the invention of the internet is of equivalent importance to the
invention of language and writing. Given the impact upon human culture of these
communications tools, it is unsurprising that there is a perception that we have
fallen behind in our capacity to understand the impact of ICTs on society.
Such a perspective, of the internet having an incredible social impact, gives
credence to the attempts by minority language speakers and members of numerically
smaller cultures to use online resources to support cultural maintenance. Tis might
be done by creating culturally specifc web-based content (Chapter 5) to strengthen
a culture that feels under threat from social and linguistic communities that have
particular traction on the internet (Chapter 2). Some policy makers are concerned
that the power of the cultures dominating the internet may distort minority cultural
infuences, particularly through the impact of the English language. Also implicated
are the large transnational corporate cultures, some of which are themselves ICT
companies (Bryan 1994: 146), such as IBM, Microsoft and Google (Chapter 2).
Indeed, commentators have suggested that technology operates a little like a genetic
code, transferring the DNA of the originator community into the cultural heritage
of the societies that adopt the technology (Bissio 1990, in Chapter 4).
By following certain choices and web-pathways that refect their perceptions of the
internet, users create patterns of access and consumption that efectively construct
their online experience as a model of their own preferences and priorities, rather
like synaptic pathways are laid down in the brain (Maguire et al. 2006). Internet
access and use is a choice that both expresses and moulds individual and community
identity and this prompts a critical examination of what an individuals internet
usage says about them as social and cultural actors; and what would constitute the
major highways, routes and byways of each persons internet use.
Alongside these varied analogies, the model of the brain has another relevance
to the development of the internet. It was not self-evident that a computer
network would be developed along the lines of a distributed grid (Chapter 2). On
the contrary, both the telephone and the earlier telegraph system had used hubs,
nodes and spokes (or trunks, branches and twigs) as their organising principles. Te
hub, as with the centre of a wheel, provided services, support and control for all
the spokes radiating from it. Some of those spokes ended in mini-hubs, or nodes,
allowing a number of additional spokes to radiate from that point. However, given
the importance of keeping communications open after a critical incident, such as
an attack on a national communications system, engineers were looking for ways to
develop self-mending frameworks.
c o n c l u s i o n 187
Te structure of the brain was ofered as a possible model for the internet, partly
because it is remarkably resilient in accommodating and compensating for partial
damage. Te networks through which neurones are connected became the pattern
for proposed computer inter-connectivity. If one link between computers was down,
or congested, other links ofered a way forward. Such a model included built-in
redundancy, the term used for when there is more capacity than can be reasonably
needed. Tis model also meant that cheaper, less robust connections could be utilised
since the chance of all of these being broken at the same time was reduced with the
large number of possible connections available. Te use of the brain metaphor as
a way of envisaging the internet, and the indication that the internet is itself brain
changing, ties into Rheingolds statement (Chapter 6) about online community
allowing a member to tap into this multibrained organism of collective expertise
(Rheingold 2000: 109).
OLD MEDIA AND NEW MEDIA
Whereas the public sphere (Chapter 7) of old media, such as broadcasting and
news papers, was characterised by professional access and rigorous gatekeeping
that restricted the kinds and numbers of voices heard, the internet allows a space
for multiple voices of varied credibility. In particular, blogging has been identifed
as a collaborative activity which is particularly related to Web 2.0 (Bruns 2008a),
examined here through the case study of the Iraqi citizen-journalist Salam Pax
(Chapter 7). One perceived strength of new media as opposed to old media is that
there are no space constraints, and generally no cost implications, in reading and
writing multiple blogger-stories. With a limited resource such as newsprint, access
to good information is ensured when everything accepted for printing is of a specifc
quality. With an efectively unlimited resource such as the online environment, a
single form of quality control is replaced by access to large amounts of information
and the exercise of careful judgement on the part of the reader.
Te example of cyber-stalking addressed in Chapter 6 focuses upon the deliberate
use of the public sphere to harm a persons reputation and employment prospects.
Whereas most print and broadcast media are published and consumed in specifc
jurisdictions, and court action is comparatively straightforward, new media engages
readers, writers and recipients across national and jurisdictional boundaries. Tis
leads to potential clashes of national information cultures and illustrates the
difculty of developing relevant regulations (Chapter 6). Even given a court order in
one country which declared a range of statements to be defamatory lies, the victim
in the study was unable to prevent continued cyber-harassment emanating from
188 t h e i n t e r n e t
another country. Instead, his attempt to stop someone from saying something on
the internet could be seen as an attempt to chill debate and thus constructed as a
restriction upon free speech. Te difcult balancing act relating to the celebration of
free speech, while allowing for the legitimate protection of peoples reputations, is a
long way from being resolved.
In the context of the expanded public sphere, Wikipedia is an example of a quality-
controlled collaborative project that aims to establish self-correcting processes to
support a continuously-updatable resource which functions as a fawed repository of
human knowledge (Chapter 7). Te acknowledgement of faws recognises that the
project cannot aford to aim for perfection. Peer-reviewed perfection was established
to be problematic in the pre-wiki days and now Wikipedia aims to get better with
each iteration, rather than achieving perfection. Tis approach difers from the
vision which inspired YouTube, which was to create a showcase for short digital
videos which attracted audiences on the basis of viewers quality recommendations
and the numbers of times a video has been viewed.
National policy makers (Chapter 3), infuential opinion leaders (Chapter 8) and
individuals within their domestic contexts (Chapter 9) all have difering construc-
tions of the internet, and diferent ways of relating to and using it. Tere is no single,
stand-alone, agreed way of understanding new media. Instead, the internet can
generally be constructed as the result of a series of choices, and a dialogue, between
the user, the regulator, the technology manufacturer and supplier, the access portal,
the search engine and the website designers often with a host of advertisers, as well.
Tis is very diferent from the situation with the press and broadcasting where the
readership or audience has limited capacity to engage with the medium itself and has
little opportunity to use the media to share ideas except through newspapers letters
pages and radio talk-back.
It is notable that many of the moral panics about the internet (Cohen 1980)
are circulated by the old media. Panics can start using a range of emotive triggers,
such as paedophiles preying on young girls they befriend on social networking sites.
Old media would almost never undermine a good panic-promoting story by citing
Finkelhors (2008) work (Chapter 9) to the efect that there has been a 53 per cent
reduction in sexual ofences against children between 1992 and 2006 (Schrock and
boyd 2008: 10). Old media are far more likely to talk about the risks of internet use
than they are about its opportunities and benefts (Chapter 6). Some people might
argue that it is old media that is panicking at present since they have yet to fnd an
economic model that makes newspaper publishing viable in the post-internet world,
and advertising revenues are increasingly used to support internet sites, rather than
newspapers.
c o n c l u s i o n 189
LOOKING FORWARD
It is impossible to confdently predict the future development of the internet. Whilst
it is clear that, in internet terms, the frst decade of the twenty-frst millen nium
marked the conjunction of Web 2.0 and social media, this would not have been
predictable in the late 1990s. It will only be clear in retrospect what elements of the
internet will spawn the defning path for new media in the coming decade (Chapter
3). Even so, some predictions centre around the development of a Semantic Web,
and this has been discussed as one possibility among many others (Chapter 5).
Constructed as an immensely versatile technological system, the internet has
energised creativity, collaboration and commercialisation on a global scale in
unexpected and unpredictable ways and impacted all areas of human life. Over the
course of the previous chapters, as well as this one, Te Internet: An Introduction to
New Media has analysed and explained research into peoples uses of the network of
networks at the global, national, community, family and individual levels. In taking
this big-picture perspective, the volume has raised and addressed issues of policy,
regulation and legislation, and also considered the digital divide and the internets
contribution to the public sphere. Trough these considerations we have developed
a complex understanding of the internet, its development, and possible trajectories.
Tere is intense social interest and concern focused upon the internet, as was
also true of other information and communication technologies in the critical
stages of early adoption and take-up. Such concern implicates politicians, lawyers,
corporations, opinion leaders, educators, parents and consumers in a debate about
issues of control, access, regulation, (dis)advantage, cultural imperialism and the
economic implications of internet use. Whilst it is evident that the internet supports
new ways of seeking information and relating to others socially, there is little
evidence that this technology rewrites human society and sociability any more than
did television, radio or the invention of printing. Instead, the internet ofers new
ways through which diferent social entities (both nation-based and interest-based)
can connect and express themselves.
Building upon major and current research, such as that in the US and the EU
examining the opportunities and risks presented by the internet to children and
young people (SNS Safety 2008; Livingstone and Haddon 2009), this book has
ofered an account of the internet as it currently stands whilst acknowledging that it
represents the epitome of a fast-developing medium. In developing an awareness of
the complex content, contact and conduct risks which characterise this technology,
the volume has also sought to showcase the immense benefts ofered by a medium
which engages its users creativity and allows access to communities untrammelled
by issues of time and space, even though users in individual communities may be
190 t h e i n t e r n e t
limited by access. During the time that this book was being written, however, global
take-up of the internet rose from one in fve to one in four people (Internet World
Statistics 2009), and this statistic demonstrates that while many people are still
unable to access the internet, it has a growing relevance around the world.
Researchers and students should feel confdent and conversant with the use of key
technical and policy terms germane to debates about the internet as it was, as it is,
and as it will be (Chapter 3). Such an ambition requires a more explicit engagement
with technological policy than is usually addressed in social and cultural explorations
of the internet. A glossary is supplied as an aid to help the reader understand both
the physical and the policy infrastructures of the internet, better to engage with
public debates about further ICT policy in local, regional and national contexts.
Demystifying this language allows students and researchers to make informed
choices as to the debates they engage with, and the terminologies they use.
Citizens are an early focus of Chapter 4, which starts by considering the situation
of some sections of the population that are not sufciently settled and prosperous
to make good consumers. Citizens have rights, while consumers access products and
services according to their capacity to pay. As the internet continues to develop in
its scope and relevance, the right to access and use information has never been more
important. Tis book has positioned the internet in relation to readers daily lives,
so that researchers and students who use this volume will be better able to analyse
the implications of new media for themselves, for their societies, and for the future.
ANNOTATED GUIDE TO
FURTHER READING
Readers are encouraged to use the web to investigate these issues further. Although
most recommendations are for old media printed books and journals many of
these are available through the web and often link through to further resources.
Chapter 1: Introduction
A general introduction to the social shaping of technology is provided by MacKenzie
and Wajcman (1999), which is foundational in this feld. Te domestication
framework, which looks at ways in which technologies become integrated within
peoples homes and lives, has been linked to the social-shaping approach in
Silverstone and Haddon (1996). Haddon (2004) ofers a range of studies of ICT
use in daily life.
Wajmans books (1991, 2004) are a good starting point for discussions about
technology as a masculine culture, while Gray (1992) provides a classic account of
the gendering of the video recorder.
Te nature and characteristics of the information society have been theorised over
the past thirty years with Bells (1973) Te Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, a
foundational text. Masuda (1981) ofers a futurist view of the information society,
while Jones (1995) examines some implications for the future of work as seen in
the early years of the WWW.
Chapter 2: History
Te book and the flm October Sky (Johnston 1999), based on a true story, give some
indication of the Sputnik launch in the US from the perspective of a teenage boy,
Homer Hickham Jnr, who was inspired to become an American rocket scientist as
a result of seeing Sputnik 1 in orbit. Similarly, Tirteen Days (Donaldson 2000),
recreates the drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
192 f u r t h e r r e a d i n g
Maney (2003) and Gerstner (2002) between them cover much of the history of
IBM, while Whol (2006) provides a brief and accessible overview of the im plica tions
in computer and software development for those who used the tech nology. Paul
Ceruzzis A History of Modern Computing (2003, 2nd edn) is an engaging chrono-
logical narrative dealing with critical events from WWII to the dot.com crash.
Some of the excitement of directing the future through involvement with the
development of computers and the internet is communicated in the work of Hafner
and Lyon (2003), who interviewed many of the key inventors and pioneers and
also engaged in extensive archival research. Teir work contributes signifcantly to
the chapter. Berners-Lee with Fiscetti (1999) and Battelle (2006) carry this exciting
history forward.
Raymond (2001) outlines the diferences between the processes of open-source
software production and the large proprietary software houses, while Bruns (2008a)
examines the implications of participatory culture for everyday internet practices
such as blogging and wikis.
Chapter 3: Policy
Tere is a growing literature on innovation and creativity including Florida (2002),
Kuhn (1996) and Howkins (2001). In terms of national responses to the challenge
of fostering creativity throughout the innovation system, the UKs National Endow-
ment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA n.d.) probably sets the agenda.
Although this chapter relies upon a range of sources to compare and contrast the
working of regulatory regimes in China and Australia, the purpose of this discussion
is to indicate the value in being aware of equivalent debates in the context of these
and other countries. It may be useful to choose a country other than China or
Australia and use the internet to research the major agencies and regulatory bodies
charged with overseeing the operation of regulation in the felds of broadcasting,
telecommunications and the internet. Tis strategy will result in a range of relevant
reports and recommendations. Some regions also have over-arching bodies, such
as the EUs COST 298 action: Participation in the Broadband Society (COST 298
n.d.), and the part-UN funded Digital Review of Asia-Pacifc (DirAP n.d.). Such
sources can provide useful starting points to individual countrys regimes and to the
issues afecting a region.
Green (2002) contains a detailed discussion on the active process of regulating,
building on Palmer (1994).
f u r t h e r r e a d i n g 193
Chapter 4: Te Digital Divide
Bell (1973) is often considered as the frst person to systematically demonstrate
that the economies of western countries had shifted inexorably from an agricultural
and manufacturing base to the development and delivery of information goods and
services. Beniger (1986) added value to this concept by tracing a detailed history
of the shift. Van Dijk (2005) ofers a conceptual framework and policies to address
the digital divide, while Rooksby and Weckert (2007) are editors of a volume that
examines the implications of the digital divide for social justice issues.
Te Pew Internet and American Life project has been documenting the impact
of the internet upon segments of the US population, and upon aspects of American
life since 2000 (Pew 2009). Te range of reports, from online dating to teleworking,
is fascinating. Rogers (2003) Difusion of Innovations Teory is one way to explain
the take-up of internet goods and services charted by the Pew Internet and American
Life project.
Chapter 5: Customising the Internet
Herb Schillers seminal theory of cultural imperialism (1991) makes a useful starting
point for discussions of the potential of new media for the strengthening of Irish
Gaelic (Fleming and Debski 2007), and La Francophonie (Jeanneney 2006).
Tapscott and Williamss (2006) popular volume on Wikinomics is a useful intro-
duc tion to the implications of Web 2.0 collaborative engagement, while Hendler
and Golbeck (2006) and Berners-Lee et al. (2001) ofer an accessible and brief intro-
duction to visions of Web 3.0 and the workings of the Semantic Web. Crawfords
(2009) account of the emerging practice of Twitter is a fun and readable study of the
incorporation of a new digital application into everyday domestic life.
Chapter 6: Regulation and Legislation: Pornography and Cyber Stalking
Cullers (2001) introduction to discourse analysis is a classic of the feld, while
Morgans Images of Organization (2006) demonstrate the additional power and vers-
atility of metaphor.
Some risks faced by children and teenagers in their internet activities have
prompted much government research and many landmark reports including the
EU Kids Online outputs (EU Kids Online n.d.); the US report Enhancing Child
Safety and Online Technologies (SNS Safety 2008) and Media and Communications in
Australian Families (ACMA 2007). As part of the EU Kids Online project, Staksrud
et al. (2009: 1819) summarise perceived risks in their report on available data
about childrens activities online. Specialist centres such as the US National Center
194 f u r t h e r r e a d i n g
for Missing and Exploited Children (e.g. Finkelhor et al. 2000; Wolak et al. 2006)
and the Pew Internet and American Life project also publish reports that address risk
(e.g. Lenhart 2005; Lenhart et al. 2007). Perceived risk is often raised and handled
in family contexts, thus Chapter 9 also comments on this theme.
Chapter 7: Te Public Sphere
Te radical diferences in conceptions of the public sphere put forward by Habermas
(1989b) and McKee (2004) repay detailed consideration, especially when considered
in the context of changes in ICTs and social organisation over the past few decades.
Te Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF 2009) has branches in many countries
and campaigns actively for internet freedoms (but see Chapter 6). While caution is
in order when using information found on the internet, Clegg (2006) ofers a how-
to guide to using the web for study purposes.
Bruns (2008a) addresses citizen-journalism, blogging and wikis in his wide-
ranging book on prod-usage, while Tapscott and Williams (2006) examine the im-
plica tions of voluntary collaborative organisation for business practices. Burgess
and Greens (2009) analysis of YouTube is usefully positioned in the context of
participatory culture.
Chapter 8: Community
Rheingolds Virtual Community (2000) remains one of the key discussions of online
social connection, while Andersons Imagined Community (1991) examines the
impact of mediated connections in building a sense of belonging to a community.
Nichols et al. (2006) consider the potential value of gaming communities to
brands and to business, while Jenkinss book Convergence Culture (2006) examines
a range of case studies indicating the growing infuence of digital media upon
individuals, society and politics. Hillss Fan Culture (2002) ofers an in-depth look at
the working of fandom. Like Jenkins, Johnson (2005) sees signifcant value in many
aspects of digital culture that are minimised or decried by the formal education
establishment.
In terms of participant-based research and writing, Green and Guinery (2004)
address fan fction while Green and Guinery (2006) investigate a FPS LAN clan. A
range of complex issues is raised when we think about the ethics and practicalities of
online research. Hine (2005) provides an invaluable guide to this minefeld.
Chapter 9: Internet in Family Life
Morleys Family Television (1986) is a landmark study in accounts of the dom-
estication of technology, even though it precedes the development of the classic
f u r t h e r r e a d i n g 195
domestica tion framework (Silverstone et al. 1992, Silverstone and Haddon 1996).
Bakardjievas (2005) examination of the internet in everyday life adds to these
accounts. ACMA (2007) ofers a detailed, recent account of family-based uses of
ICTs, including the internet, while the Pew Internet and American Life (Pew 2009)
Project provides a wealth of specifc research fndings across gender and generational
axes.
Although some parents have strong fears that the internet is addictive, discussions
still continue. Allison et al. (2006) indicate that the subject of their case study, Mr
A, had a range of problems underlying his condition. Bocij (2006) includes a section
on addiction; Johnson (2005) ofers an alternative viewpoint.
Te International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD 2009a) and the
World Bank (2008) provide information on families and remittances and this is
often backed up by country-specifc reports, such as AusAID (2007).
Chapter 10: Conclusion
EU Kids Online (n.d.) reports investigate gender and family infuences upon child-
rens internet usage. Moyals (1995) work on the gendered use of the telephone is
relevant for older age groups when considering the ways in which womens uses of
ICTs typically difer from those of men.
Porushs (1998) article about the brain-changing nature of internet activity is an
intriguing one, especially alongside the recent fndings of neurobiology (Maguire et
al. 2006).
McKee (2004) and Bruns (2008a) ofer detail that helps identify a range of
difer ences between old and new media, while Castells book on Te Rise of the
Network Society (2009), a revised and updated edition and the frst volume of the
Information Age series, provides a philosophical perspective on the social, cultural
and economical implications of these changes.
Between them, the thirty-one chapters in Te Handbook of New Media, edited by
Leah Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone (2002), engage with many of the issues raised
here and can ofer supplementary and contrasting perspectives.
EXERCISES AND QUESTIoNS
Chapter 1: Introduction
Exercises
1. Is it possible to develop a truly inclusive digital technology, accessible to people
all over the world? What issues and problems would need to be addressed? What
would the benefts and costs of such a project be?
2. Using a global perspective, give examples of social, political and cultural factors
that infuence whether any particular individual is more or less likely to have the
opportunity to use the internet.
3. List some of the ways in which new media difer from old media. Is the internet
an archetypal new medium? Why?
Questions
1. In 1994, Teodore Roszak suggested that the information age involves a range of
unacceptable risks:
the price we pay for its benefts will never outweigh the costs. Te violation
of privacy is the loss of freedom. Te degradation of electoral politics is the
loss of democracy. Te creation of the computerized war machine is a direct
threat to the survival of our species. (Roszak 1994: 233)
Would you agree with Roszak? Please give your reasons.
2. Why has the digitisation of information triggered a huge explosion of goods,
services and convergent technologies? What issues are raised by the speed with
which technology changes?
Chapter 2: History
Exercises
1. What do you see as the key components of the technological system that we call
the internet? How would the components of that technological system change if
198 e x e r c i s e s a n d q u e s t i o n s
we took time lines of 1975, 1995 and 2010? What are the implications of adding
human inputs in terms of the roles played by key infuencers?
2. Do you think of the internet as being a US-controlled entity? What evidence
would you ofer in favour or against such a proposition? What would be the
implications of a split internet that was fractured along nationalistic or political
lines? (Might the internet refect an economic divide?)
3. What factors build the wealth and the infuence of successful internet start-up
entrepreneurs? What aspects of the digital economy mean that their labour is
rewarded so extravagantly?
Questions
1. Compare the development process of a proprietary brand of software with that
of an open source application. What are the implications for producers and for
users?
2. Tousands of computer scientists had been staring for two decades at the same
two things hypertext and computer networks. But only Tim conceived of
how to put those two elements together (Dertouzos 1999: x). How would you
explain the implications for the internet of the development of the World Wide
Web? What else might explain the exponential growth in popular internet use
since the mid-1990s?
3. In 2004 Judy Wajcman argued that women who wish to participate in felds that
are traditionally masculine preserves, such as computer science and electronic
engineering, are asked to exchange major aspects of their gender identity for a
masculine version without prescribing a similar degendering process for men.
Do you agree? Why do you think that women are under-represented in the
history of the development of computing and the internet?
Chapter 3: Policy
Exercises
1. Do you believe we can identify features that lead to a society being especially
creative? What social infuences would you see as helping to build innovation?
2. What kinds of debates about the internet are currently circulating in your
society? How are they likely to afect policy development and your governments
approach to regulating the internet? How might a person in your position,
individually or as part of a group, make a contribution to a policy debate?
3. Is it possible to censor the internet? What would be the positives and the neg-
atives of trying to do so? What kind of social, economic, political and personal
price would be paid by those trying to enforce such censorship and those trying
to resist it?
e x e r c i s e s a n d q u e s t i o n s 199
Questions
1. Tink about Tomas Kuhns (1996 [1962]) notion of the paradigm shift. Do you
consider that the notion of the internet as we understand it today has shifted
sign ifcantly from that of its frst developers? If so, where do you think that para-
digm shifts can be identifed? If not, explain how the internet today is implied in
the internet as it took shape in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
2. What kinds of policy approaches characteristic of western democracies have
fostered the rapid take-up and fast adoption of the internet? How did the policy
environment drive consumer response?
Chapter 4: Te Digital Divide
Exercises
1. What are the implications of being in the 25 per cent of people without internet
access in a rich, western-style country? What are the implications of being in
a poor country, where few people have internet access, and being part of the
75 per cent of the worlds population without internet access? How do these
two circumstances difer from the point of view of an individual unconnected
citizen?
2. Statistics can go out of date very quickly. (Indeed, most are already out of date
at the time that they are frst published.) Taking your country as your case study,
research the statistics for broadband use, dial-up use, and for the proportion
of people who have no internet connection at all. What factors explain relative
advantage? How quickly is the situation changing?
3. Tis chapter uses a number of technical terms which might be seen by some
people as jargon. Make a list of the terms that are unfamiliar to you and con-
struct your own glossary of defnitions. (Tis is often done best with a group of
people sharing the tasks, and comparing their results.)
Questions
1. If you were a legislator responsible for communications policy and infrastruc-
ture, what factors would you take into account when determining which groups
of people most need your help to connect to the internet? Why?
2. Tere are more computers around, but the digital divide is getting wider because
of broadband. Discuss the implications of this statement in terms of (i) those
with no access to a computer, and (ii) those with access to a computer and a dial-
up service.
200 e x e r c i s e s a n d q u e s t i o n s
Chapter 5: Customising the Internet
Exercises
1. How important is it that minority languages are supported in their home ter-
ritories? In what ways are new media a help in preserving minority languages? In
what ways a hindrance?
2. Do you agree that Google has a perceived Anglo-centric bias? Is this a problem?
Why? What might be done to reassure someone who thinks it is a problem? Can
you recommend steps that would address their concerns?
3. Compare the workings of a heterarchical folksonomy with those of a hier arch-
ical taxonomy. Why is it so difcult to think in terms of a taxonomy of internet
information?
Questions
1. If the web is a library, why do we need a building full of books? Why do we need
librarians? What would you say in response to this post from Blake, a blogger
librarian?
2. Discuss the characteristics of social media. What is it about the way that some
people use certain technologies that makes some media social?
Chapter 6: Regulation and Legislation: Pornography and Cyber Stalking
Exercises
1. Where do you see the intersections and cross-overs between your online and
ofine life? Do other people make judgements about your online activities?
What impacts do such judgements have on you?
2. Te decision to change an ISP contract, or to buy a new piece of software or
technology, often centres around the need for more or better or faster service.
In your experience, what kinds of reasons and rationales have been given for
domestic technology upgrades? Did these upgrades deliver as expected?
3. Drawing upon your own experience, or using the Cullen case study, what advice
would you give to someone who was being bullied online? Do you think that
Cullen could or should have responded diferently?
Questions
1. [T]here can be no single theory or metaphor that gives an all-purpose point of
view. Tere can be no correct theory for structuring everything we do (Morgan
2006: 338). Relate this quotation to your experience of using the internet. What
metaphor(s) do you fnd helpful, and why?
e x e r c i s e s a n d q u e s t i o n s 201
2. Do you see a diference between real life and life online? Give reasons for your
answer. How do you see the relationship between your online and your ofine
life?
Chapter 7: Te Public Sphere
Exercises
1. McKee paints a chaotic image of the contemporary public sphere but seems to
suggest that there is greater strength in its inclusivity and diversity than is the
case with the unitary public sphere championed by Habermas. What are the
advantages and disadvantages of these competing visions?
2. What are the key diferences between a professionally produced encyclopedia
and Wikipedia? When would those diferences be advantageous, and when
would they be drawbacks?
3. After buying YouTube, Google has become increasingly likely to ofer video
segments in response to a search enquiry. What strategies would you use to
integrate a database of images with a database of words?
Questions
1. Refecting upon the statement that authenticity has since been validated by an
American newsperson (Hamilton and Jenner 2003: 131), discuss the diferences
that characterise professional journalists and citizen-journalists. How would you
justify the contribution of citizen-journalists?
2. Is all information equal? What aspects of information need to be considered
when judging its value?
Chapter 8: Community
Exercises
1. Ideologically based internet communities are a new force in politics, alongside
big business and employers, and workers and trades unions. How might these
online organisations impact upon the political system?
2. What rules would you put in place so that members of an online community
would be accountable and take appropriate responsibility for their actions?
3. Is it acceptable to join an online community for the purpose of researching and
writing about it? What ethical issues are raised?
4. How difcult would it be to hide your identity online over a protracted period,
like Julie did? What would make it easy? What would make it hard?
202 e x e r c i s e s a n d q u e s t i o n s
Questions
1. Do you agree with Jenkinss proposition that some people learn more from their
voluntary internet activities than they do from school-based classwork? What
might the implications be for the organisation of education?
2. In richer countries, internet participation is no longer gendered, both sexes
participate equally. It seems, however, that certain activities are gendered: fan
fction writing and FPS gaming are two such activities. What issues are raised by
the identifcation of gender as an important aspect of some internet activity?
Chapter 9: Internet in Family Life
Exercises
1. Why might some children see their family as being without internet rules, while
the parents in that family see themselves as having internet rules? Is it surprising
that most parents seem to trust their children in terms of their internet use?
2. One consistent piece of advice for parents is to have the internet-accessible
computer in a public space so that usage can be monitored. What are the
implications of the growing prevalence of mobile phone-based internet access
for this strategy? How can children be protected from risk if they have anytime,
anywhere connectivity?
3. How would you see a familys media use, and its conversion into social currency,
infuencing the relationship between the household and the outside world
the boundary across which artefacts and meanings, texts and technologies
pass as the household defnes and claims for itself and its members a status in
neighbourhood, work and peer groups in the wider society? Give examples
from one or more of the case studies in this book.
Questions
1. Accepting that internet use follows phone use, comment on Moyals claim that
intrinsic communication is both gendered work and gender work, in that it
is work that women do to hold together the fabric of the community, build and
maintain relationships, and accomplish both care-giving and receiving functions.
What do these kinds of communication look like in an internet context? Is it
gendered work?
2. Do you believe that people can get addicted to the internet? How would that be
recognised? What treatment would you see as useful?
e x e r c i s e s a n d q u e s t i o n s 203
Chapter 10: Conclusion
Exercises
1. A generation ago, parents and care-givers might have worried that children spent
too much time in front of the television. Now the concern is that they spend
too much time on the computer. Is this essentially the same kind of concern or
are there important diferences?
2. Some commentators have used the idea of the brain to explain the workings
of the internet. What other ways can you think of to explain how the internet
works?
3. Teres a popular saying attributed to the open source movement to the efect
that Information just wants to be free. Do you agree with this sentiment? What
are the implications of such freedom for old media? Are the implications for new
media diferent?
Questions
1. Our technology computerized weapons systems, medical scanners, the Internet
sets the standard to which developing countries aspire (Schiller 2000: 149).
Critique Schillers argument that we have moved into an era of soft colonialism
where poorer countries are unnecessarily driven by the desire to adopt elements
of richer culture, including the internet.
2. Is the internet particularly brain changing? Justify your answer.
3. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context
do not apply to us [in cyberspace]. Tey are all based on matter, and there is no
matter here (Barlow 1996). Do you agree?
ABBREVIATIoNS AND
GLoSSARY
Tis glossary should be read in conjunction with the index, where readers are
pointed to uses of critical terms in the text. Further understanding will be gained
from the web and by following concepts of interest through the indexes of other
books, cross-referencing diferent authors usages. High profle brand name products
such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are not included here, but are indexed. I have
written two previous Abbreviations and Glossaries (Green and Guinery 1994, Green
2002), and this work draws on those earlier versions.
1G/2G/3G . . . XG used to refer to frst, second, third, etc., generation technology,
often used as a way of referring to mobile phone advances
24/7 around the clock; twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; all the time
3D 3-dimension
a/synchronous synchronous activity (a phone call) occurs with two or more people
interacting at the same time while asynchronous activity is interaction separated by
lapsed time (for example, leaving a message and waiting for a reply)
ACE Automatic Computing Engine (early UK computer)
ACMA Australian Communications and Media Authority
ADS asymmetrical digital subscriber line
algorithm step-by-step logical sequence which embodies the rules for interpreting
the information it contains. Diferent algorithms serve diferent purposes. When
a communication is digitised, it is encoded algorithmically. Digital data travels in
algorithmic form, and algorithmic rules dictate decoding back to the original form
at the destination, for example, to computer data, sound waves, etc.
analogue something analogous to, or representative of, the original; continuously
changing, like hands on a watch face, or a sound wave. Digital representation is on/
of (or high/low), i.e. two states only
206 a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y
ANT Actor-Network Teory; a theoretical approach to understanding how people
interact with each other and with networks
AOL America Online
ARPANET/DARPANET the computer network created by ARPA, the Advanced
Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense, renamed DARPANET
(Defense ARPA Network) in 1972. Designed to overcome the lack of interactivity
between diferent types, kinds, and models of early computers
ATM automatic teller machine
Avatar a digital persona that can take a 3D form, as in a computer game; a 2D
form, as an icon; or a 1D form as a nickname or pseudonym
AVS adult verifcation system, identifes the age of an internet user for access to
restricted websites, typically adults only
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BBN Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.; consultancy which helped develop
ARPANET
BDP Big Dikk Pimpz, a LAN clan
BitTorrent P2P fle-sharing network that makes it possible to source large multi-
media fles by using a protocol to near-equalise the time taken by trafc in both
directions, uploading and downloading, and also makes it increasingly necessary
with use that the hard drive collections of members that are downloading content be
accessible to other community members for uploading
Broadband ISDN an example of an intelligent communications system. Te
broadband prefx indicates that the system is designed to include many channels
(bands). See ISDN
BT British Telecom
CASS Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
CD compact disk; compact storage of digital information on a disk
CDA Communications Decency Act (US)
CEO chief executive ofcer
CERN European particle physics research centre, near Geneva, Switzerland
communications system/intelligent communications system an intelligent
com mun ications system has artifcial intelligence built in, monitoring the fow
and quality of the information communicated and making sure that it reaches the
destination in the correct form. Broadband ISDN is an example of such a system.
See ISDN
communications technology technology used for communicating but also
storing, retrieving and packaging (manipulating) information. Te com mun ica-
tions revolution, the progressive separation of communication from transport is an
integral part of the information revolution
a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y 207
construction of meaning a perspective which argues that meaning is a construct
or product of social processes shared by individuals and groups. Tus the meaning
of computer includes elements of the technological, unlike the meaning of pen
(even though, during the decline of the quill, the pen would have been seen as
technological)
CPU central processor unit, the guts of a computer
cross-subsidy the use of profts from one sector to subsidise an unproftable sector,
usually to permit the possibility of universal service at an afordable price
CSO community service obligation
CTSS compatible time-sharing system
customer service presumes that the consumer is rich enough to be a customer.
Cit iz enship is not sufcient, and wealth is also required. See public interest for more
cyber- (for example, cyberspace) something constructed from digital components
thus cyberspace, a digital construction of space
cyberspace term coined by William Gibson to refer to the cyberworld created by
the convergence of IT/computers, digital media and telecommunications
Cyclades early French computer network
DDD direct distance dialling (US)
determinism the notion that something is so powerful that it is beyond human
control, for example, in technological determinism
digital divide the gap between the haves and have-nots of the information society
following the advent of ICTs and digitisation
digitisation the rendering of information in digital form. For example, in analogue
phone services the sound is modulated at the mouthpiece, retaining the pattern
of sound waves as digital information until it is converted back into waves at the
earpiece of the listener. Digital sound is encoded algorithmically, using on/of states,
which compacts the signal and means that more data can travel at the same time,
with consequent benefts in terms of carriage capacity and cost
discourse given that understanding depends upon the construction of meaning,
a discourse frames the parameters within which meaning is shared with other/s
it involves the concept of communication. Feminism, for example, assumes that
gender is a political as well as social construction and that to be feminine is to
struggle with dominant masculine and patriarchal discourses
DNA dioxyribonucleic acid (a nucleic acid) plus protein molecules make up
chromosomes
DoCoMo DO COmmunications over the MObile Network (Japan)
DSL digital subscriber line
DVD digital video disk
EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation
208 a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y
efects research a branch of audience/readership research which attempts to de-
scribe and quantify media efects, such as the efect of violent television images upon
children, or of pornography upon sex-ofenders. Tere is a tendency to assume that
there is an efect (see construction of meaning), although most efects described are
subtle and highly conditional
electronic and microelectronic applied to microchip technologies where the
electrical circuits have been progressively miniaturised to allow quantum leaps in
available processing capacity while minimising physical size; often used to indicate
some element of in-built computer control as in robotics
ENIAC the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator (an early computer) (US)
ethnography the study of patterns of living of a series of individuals, or of a group
of people. Tends to provide large amounts of data, which are afected by the presence
of the observer/researcher, and which refect their priorities. Often associated with
postmodern discourses, and also the foundation for early structuralist analysis
EU European Union
EU Kids Online a multi-country EU research network led by Professor Sonia
Livingstone and Dr Leslie Haddon at the LSE and co-sponsored by the LSE and the
European Community Safer Internet Plus Programme
F2F face to face
F2S face to screen
fan fction fction produced by fans for fans as a voluntary response to their im-
mersion in a specifc fctional world. It commonly adds unexpected and potentially
subversive themes to established story lines
fanzine fan-produced magazine for consumption by other fans
FF See fan fction
fbre optic/optical fbre pulses of laser light travel along superfne glass strands to
communicate information. Laser energy travels at the speed of light and its power is
concentrated as a result of the photons all having the same wavelength. Digitisation
allows optic fbres to carry immense amounts of information
FPS frst person shooter, a digital game in which the gamers main aim is to shoot
opponent avatars. See RTS
frequency the frequency of, for example, a radio signal is related to its wavelength;
the point on the broadcasting spectrum at which that signal is transmitted and can
be received. Longer wavelengths travel at lower frequencies. Te frequency (the
number of waves per second) is measured in hertz (Hz). A range of neighbouring
frequencies make a spectrum, such as that of visible light (each colour has its own
frequency)
FTP fle transfer protocol
a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y 209
FTTH/FTTP/FTTN fbre to the home, fbre to the premises, fbre to the node
gatekeeping the process through which experts, such as news editors, restrict
access to the mass media newspapers, radio, television, etc. usually on grounds of
ensuring professionalism, quality and relevance
GDP gross domestic product, a measure of a countrys productivity
gender a social construction with political implications, justifed by biological
diference. Conceptualisations of biological diference are also social constructions
(see discourse)
global/isation the notion that a networked world is interconnected rather than
divided by satellites, by fbre optics, by digital information and that the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts. Usually associated with such terms as information
fows and information power within the global context
GNU free software platform with the acronym meaning Gnus Not Unix
gTLD generic top-level domain
heterarchy a fat organisational structure in which position does not determine
relative status
hierarchy a trunk, branch, twig, type of classifcation system with diferent levels
of power
HIV/AIDS human immunodefciency virus/auto-immune defciency syndrome
host, network host a computer connected into the network as a network node
(or internet node). Each host has a unique IP address while data is sent and received
according to TCP parameters
HP Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings schoolboy wizard character
HTML hypertext mark-up language
http:// hypertext transfer protocol protocol that allows pages of text held on
servers accessible via the WWW to be accessed by remote computers
IBM International Business Machines
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICTs information and communication technologies, digital by nature, including
computers and mobile phones
IGF Internet Governance Forum
IM internet messaging, such as MSN messenger
IMP interface message processor (see Diagram 2.3). IMPs connected hosts into
the early ARPANET network
imperialism associated with the domination by one culture or country the
colonial power of other countries or cultures, the colonies. Involves the enrichment
of the imperial power by the impoverishment of the oppressed
information a surprisingly ambiguous term in that, according to the semantic
defnition, information is organised data with the capacity to inform people. Classic
210 a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y
information theory sees information as data; it needs to be measurable, but doesnt
need to be understood to be processed, for example, by machines
information revolution the process by which the material base of industrialised
nations became based upon an information economy. Conceived broadly this can
include libraries, education, law, administration, media. etc. Information societies
were originally defned as over 50 per cent dependent upon information, and were
sometimes referred to as post-industrial societies, because the industrial base was no
longer judged to be the prime constituent
information rich/poor as the knowledge explosion accelerates, those with access
to the information produced the information rich become richer. At the same
time the information gap widens between the information rich and poor (see
global/isation, digital divide)
information technologies especially computers, databases and telecommunications
(see communications technologies) means that information societies are character-
ised by a knowledge explosion, with the amount of information in the (developed)
world estimated to be doubling every fve years
intelligent communications system See broadband ISDN
interactive the capacity of a communication medium to be altered by, or to have
its products altered by, a user or audience
interface the coupling of hardware and software which is negotiated by network/
computer users before they use the technology to communicate, store, retrieve or
manipulate information
internet an interconnecting, global-wide series of inter/national networks based
on the frst ARPANET into which all computers can be connected at a cost. Stand-
alone PCs can access the internet via modems (modulator-demodulators) or routers,
and an appropriate software gateway/interface, to get information onto and of from
the telecommunications channels. IMPs and TIPs used to serve the purposes now
served by routers (see Diagram 2.3)
IP internet protocol, the protocol that manages the transfer of information from
one network to another via a gateway (see Diagram 2.4)
IP intellectual property
IPO Initial Public (stock) Ofering, a process and a document required to trans form,
or foat, a privately owned company into one that is listed on the stock exchange
IRC internet relay chat. Synchronous (= same time) chat over the internet using
text and/or images and sound. Sometimes called simply chat
IRI internationalised resource identifers, unique identifers for information which
will help to structure the (anticipated) semantic web
ISDN integrated switched digital network (an intelligent system). ISDN pathways
utilise a variety of communications media for example, satellite and/or fbre optics
a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y 211
ISP internet service provider an organisation that sells access to the internet
ISTTF Internet Safety Technical Task Force (US)
IT information technology
Kbps kilobits per second
kinkeeping the process by which regular calls concerning everyday domestic
activities and subjects bind together people who are distant from each other within
reciprocal ties of caring and involvement
LAN local area network (see network), but more usually applied to a clan of game-
players who regularly get together and set up a LAN to play games and ex change fles
LANfest a gathering of LAN clans for immersive engagement in a gaming
tournament, typically over a weekend. Similarly, LAN party
LANing engaged in the process of LAN playing
liberalisation used to indicate the commercial marketplace will play a bigger part
in regulating goods and services for example, in telecommunications
Linux currently the leading open-source software platform
MAD mutually assured destruction, a strategy promoted as a means for avoiding
nuclear war
MAKO movement against kindred ofenders, Australian organisation publicising
the crimes and whereabouts of sex ofenders
Mbps megabits per second
meaning meanings formed by an individual or group are often revealed through
analysing the myths and narratives which that group shares
media diversity used both to mean a diversity of media, for example, internet,
print, television, radio and diversity within a given medium, for example, a variety
of diferent newspapers, and viewpoints, including minority opinions and ideas. Te
internet showcases greater diversity of opinion than any other medium in history
meme the smallest possible element of culture, analogous to the gene in biology
microchip See electronic and microelectronic
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
MMORPGs massively multiplayer online role-playing games
modem modulator-demodulators, used to transfer digital data between computers
using analogue phone lines. See internet
moral panic when a society or mainstream group reacts to a change in the environ-
ment, as of it threatens life as we know it
MS-DOS Microsoft disk operating system
MSN Microsoft network
MSP minimum service provision; a service so central to society that regulators
work to make it universally available (sometimes USP, universal service provision),
for example, telephone, television, mail
212 a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y
multimedia the use of interactive multiple media components which respond
to inputs, for example, a computer program through which a user can trigger text,
graphics, pictures and sound
multiplexing interweaving of diferent digital elements during data transfer to
achieve efciencies of communication
mythology myths involve shared social understandings which help inform mem-
bers of a cultural group as to the nature of that group, and to unite the group, for
example, in the creation of a national identity. Sometimes associated with the suspen-
sion of disbelief of something which would usefully be true, for example, equality
between the sexes might be seen as mythic. Myths often work below the level of
consciousness. Stories, fctions, narratives and legends frequently serve mythic ends
narrative theory readers bring to an event or experience a sense of before and
after required to understand the story. If an event is un-narratable. it is beyond the
context of the rules and understandings which society uses to construct meaning
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration agency (US)
NASDAQ US (mainly) technology-based stock exchange
NCP network control protocol, precursor of TCP/IP
NES Nintendo Entertainment System (Japan)
net the totality of networks, email, proprietary (for example, AOL), WWW. etc.,
a contraction of internet
network networks come in a range of typologies and specifcations and the passage
of data through diferent networks is controlled by the internet protocol (IP)
newbie newcomer to the net, or to a chat room, or to a discussion area
nouveau information poor people who lose access to ICTs as a result of sudden
poverty or change in life circumstances; for example, unemployment, divorce
NPL National Physical Laboratory (UK)
NSFNET Te National Science Foundation Network (US)
NTT Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (Japan)
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
ONI Open Net Initiative, an international index of freedom on the internet
sponsored by Harvard, Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford Universities
open source where the source code is available for any skilled person to work with
a program to improve or adapt it
P2P peer-to-peer
paradigm a framework of understandings within which discourses are constructed
and communicated. Analysing a paradigm can be the frst step to resisting or sub-
verting the power of the elite whose interests that paradigm serves. A paradigm is
analysable through its discourses
PC IBM-compatible personal computer
a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y 213
PC bangs Korean internet caf
post-industrial See information revolution
POTS plain old telephone system (paired copper wires)
privatisation the passing into private ownership, usually by share foat, of publicly
(government) owned industries
protocol a series of program commands by which sender and recipient hosts com-
municate regarding the status and destination of a specifc data set to be transferred
between the two machines
PTT postal, telegraph and telephone service
public interest when an aspect of a debate requires consideration of wider social
costs and benefts than company proftability or government efciency. Citizen
implies that people have certain civic rights regardless of their fnancial status and
these are often honoured through public services. Customer service considers the
needs of people rich enough to be customers. Te introduction of user-pays changes
a public service into customer service
RAND Corporation Research ANd Development Corporation, based in Santa
Monica, California (US)
reader one who reads, but also a term making visible the active power of the
person constructing meaning and interpreting a text
RFC Request for Comments, started in the development phase of ARPANET
RFLAN Red Flag LAN, a specifc LANfest (Australia)
RIM Research in Motion (Blackberry software, Canada)
RL real life
RTS Real Time Strategy, a more strategic game genre than some online gaming;
for example, FPS tests fast refexes as much as strategy
sci-f science fction: often used to explore social and moral issues related to
technology
SCOT Social Construction of Technology: a theoretical approach to the under-
standing of technology and society
semantic this refers to the communication of meaning. Te semantic web implies
a belief that machine-understandable meaning can be built into the web and its
components, such as web pages. See Web 3.0
slash erotic fan fction usually with homosexual themes
SMS short message service
SNS social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo
social determinism sees technology as expressing the priorities of the social elites
which create or utilise the technology. See determinism
SRI Stanford Research Institute (US)
STD subscriber trunk dialling system (UK)
214 a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y
switched-packet system each message is broken into smaller packets of data with
a standardised header containing information about destination and sequence for
reassembly. Te header switches the packet along lines in a network which allocates
bandwidth on the connecting communications cables according to the requirements
of the message/data to be sent (known as dynamic allocation)
TCP transmission control protocol, the protocol that manages the communica-
tion of data at the sending host and the receiving host, standardising packet size,
sequencing, and confrmation
technological determinism constructs technology as outside social control, deter-
mining future social development and direction. Media determinism is a specialist
application of technological determinism to communication media
telecommunications communications at a distance, usually implying cable,
satellite, broadcasting spectrum, fbre optics, etc.
text this need not be written, or be a media product; it can be any human/social
construct, Alan Turings life say, or a car. To view such entities as texts, a reader would
normally subscribe to a constructionist approach and use appropriate discursive
practices to analyse meaning
TIP terminal interface message processor. TIPs allowed dumb terminals to access
a host built into the TIP and allowed multiple access to the ARPANET network (see
Diagram 2.3)
TV Television
UCLA University of California, Los Angeles (US)
UK United Kingdom
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural Organisation
UNIVAC early, room-sized computer made by Remington Rand (US)
UNIX multi-user, multi-tasking operating system used by many powerful com-
puters and the basis for much open-source programming. Unix contains many sub-
programs that perform network operations transparently between several machines
URL uniform resource locator
US United States
USO universal service obligation
USSR Union of Socialist Soviet Republics
viral (video) viral communication is when groups of internet users are infected
with an enthusiasm for some digital product to the extent that they cannot help but
pass that infection on
VL virtual life
WAN wide area network. See network and LAN
wavelength electromagnetic waves travel out in every direction from the point
where they are generated. Te distance between the peaks of the waves (where the
a b b r e v i a t i o n s a n d g l o s s a r y 215
electrical energy is strongest) determines the wavelength. Wavelength is related
to frequency: the longer the wavelength the lower the frequency; the higher the
frequency the shorter the wavelength
Web 1.0 the name which has been retrospectively given to the early versions of
the web
Web 2.0 the development of the internet beyond the straightforward accessing of
websites and fles to fostering interactivity through the use of collaborative and social
media including wikis and blogs
Web 3.0 more speculated than delivered, but seen as a combination of the soci-
ality of Web 2.0 plus a layer of coded information carried in each element of the
web which makes it meaningful to computers and other ICTs. A web which has
embedding meaning accessible to computers is termed the semantic web
WELL early online community: Whole Earth Lectronic Link
WSIS World Summit on the Information Society
WWII Second World War
WWW World Wide Web; an accessible, connected, searchable, updatable web
of information with elements of the whole widely dispersed among the networked
computers
XXX triple X-rated: Adults only
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3G technologies, 612, 94, 205
Academic writing, 122, 125
Access, 2, 5, 7, 14, 167, 19, 21, 22, 29, 339, 41,
43, 45, 47, 48, 50, 52, 55, 60, 6572, 76, 78, 85,
91, 94, 1047, 111, 119, 132, 1345, 145, 148,
166, 175, 1802, 18690
Access for carers, 77
Access rate predictors, 170
Access, see also Childrens access
ACMA, see Australian Communications and Media
Authority
Actor-Network Teory, 2, 1012, 18, 178, 206
Administrator rights, 153
Adolescent sexuality, 152
Adopters, 10, 74
Adopters, see also Early adopters
ADSL, see Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line
Adult entertainment, 1045, 1079
Adult sites, 35, 36, 109, 215
Adult Verifcation System, 109, 149, 206
Advanced Research Projects Agency (United States),
9, 2021, 31, 46, 206
Advertising, 878, 104, 109, 143, 188
in new media, 188
in old media, 188
Algorithms, 37, 867, 205
All your chocolate rain are belong to us, 1356, 185
Amateur pornography, 108, 110
Amazon, 88, 89, 161
Amnesty International, 24, 37, 53
Analogue technologies, 5, 42, 567, 205, 207,
211
AOL (America Online), 3, 13, 106, 109, 206, 212
Appropriation of technology, 11, 108, 159, 172
Armed Forces, see Elites
ARPANET, 202, 2832, 467, 206, 20910,
2134
see also DARPANET
Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line, 58, 205
AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph), 734,
206
AtanasofBerry Computer, 23, 45
ATMs, see Automatic teller machines
Audience participation, 160
Australian Communications and Media Authority,
49, 1656, 205
Australian Research Council, 153, 206
Automatic Computing Engine, 457, 205
Automatic teller machines, 7, 58, 94, 174, 206
Autonomy, see National autonomy; Personal
autonomy
Baidu, 80
BBN, see Bolt, Beranek and Newman
BDP, see Big Dikk Pimpz,
Bebo, 94, 213
Berners-Lee, Tim, 17, 23, 325, 90, 92
Beta reading, 1489, 153
Big Brother (television program), 109, 121, 160,
226
Big Dikk Pimpz, 145, 206
Big Dikk Pimpz Represent!!1, 135137
BitTorrent, 58, 89, 93, 107, 206
Blackberry, 93, 213
Blogs and blogging, 3, 5, 72, 74, 801, 86, 8990,
945, 1214, 131, 133, 137, 139, 1456, 157,
162, 164, 215
Bolt, Beranek and Newman, 212, 29, 31, 206
Bondage, dominance and sadomasochism, 149, 206
Bourgeoisie, 1201
Brain analogy for internet, 102, 178, 1857
INDEX
Tis index has avoided, where possible, terms beginning with internet, virtual, cyber and online. For
example: Internet access is listed as Access; Online games and gaming as Games and gaming; Virtual
community as Community; and Cyber stalking as Stalking.
i n d e x 239
Brain-changing, 1856
Brin, Sergey, 36, 126
Broadband access, 57, 80, 170
Broadband IDSN, 206, 210
Broadband services, 578, 678
Korean, 142
Broadband take-up, 57, 67, 723
Broadcast culture, 45
BT (British Telecom), 59, 206
Bureaucracy, see Elites
Business computing, 223, 34
Cable television, 5, 58, 62, 81, 171, 214
Capacity to pay, 105
Capitalism as control, 80
Card games, 143
Carers internet use, 15, 748, 181
Case study research, 3, 124, 178
CDA, see Communications Decency Act (United
States)
Censorship
in China, 512, 80
of pornography, 105
CERN, 324, 206
Chat, 3, 48, 512, 80, 823, 102, 106, 110, 139,
1601, 1634, 1667, 170, 181, 210, 212
Child pornography, 48
Childrens access, 166, 16871
Childrens online experiences, 100, 163, 165
Chinas economy, 55
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 53, 206
Chocolate rain (Music video), 1356, 185
Citizen journalism, 945, 1214, 131
Civil liberties, 43, 105, 121, 129
Cold War, 18, 20, 41
Collaboration, 1, 10, 12, 29, 34, 40, 467, 72,
8990, 93, 100, 103, 131, 144, 147, 151, 158,
1789, 1879, 215
Collaborative learning, 151
Collaborative spaces, 1538
Collective expertise, 102, 187
Commercial imperialism, 802
Commercial risk, 101
Communications Decency Act (United States), 130,
206
Communications technologies, see Information and
communication technologies
Communities, 3, 8, 14, 16, 40, 60, 72, 1078, 110,
129, 135, 137, 13942, 153, 160, 169, 173,
1825, 189
Community, 10, 156, 55, 72, 967, 100, 1346,
13958, 160, 178, 1824, 187, 215
accessibility, 158
availability, 184
formation, 96, 148, 169, 185
research, 140, 153
service obligation, 60, 207
Compatible Time Sharing System, 30, 207
Computer gaming, see Games and gaming
Computing, see Business computing; Domestic
computing
Conduct risks, 162, 167, 180, 182, 189
Connectivity, 212, 61, 72, 92, 148, 154, 175, 181,
187
Connectivity rates in Japan, 94
Connectivity, see also Wireless connectivity
Construction of meaning, 2, 6, 38, 92, 99100,
1023, 137, 160, 188, 2078, 2115
Consumers, see Consumption
Consumption, 2, 13, 183, 185, 190, 207
privacy, 104
theory, 1011, 96, 178
Consumption of technology, see Consumption
Contact risk, see Harassment
Content risk, 100, 117, 180, 182
Convergence of digital technologies, 3, 4, 15, 18,
56, 147, 207
Conversion of new technology, 11, 15960, 1723,
183
see also Domestication of technology framework
Copyright law, 856
Corporate Power, see Elites
CPU (Central processor unit), 144, 207
Credit cards, 7, 109, 149
Cross-selling, 109, 161
Cross-subsidisation, 60, 207
of telecommunications services, 60
Cuban missile crisis, 20, 24, 41
Cullen, Trevor, 1126, 118
Cultural diversity, 121
Cultural imperialism, 67, 80, 86, 189, 206, 209
see also Soft imperialism
Cultural maintenance, 186
Cultural products, 121
Cultural self-defence, 81
Culturally specifc content, 186
Culture change, 121
Culture maintenance, 186
Customising the internet, 7998
Cyber harassment, see Harassment
Cyber predators, see Predators
Cyber stalking, see Stalking
Cybercafs, 106
Cyberporn addiction, 111
240 i n d e x
Cyberspace defnition, 207
Cyclades (France), 301, 207
Daily Prophet, 14951
Data transfer, 56, 212
Databases, 67, 40, 1267, 134, 210
Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 15,
130
Defamation, 15, 97, 1127, 130, 187
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (United
States), 31
Determinism, 8, 207, 2134
Dial up access, 20, 578, 67, 80, 170
Dial up users, 734
Difusion of Innovations Teory, 74, 172
Digital divide, 45, 62, 6578, 181, 207, 210
in India, 62
in the United Kingdom, 75
Digital freedom rating, 49
Digital freedom, see Freedom
Digital inclusion, see Inclusion
Digital inequality, see Inequality
Digital information, see Information
Digital literacy, 52, 101
Digital natives, 65
Digital Object Identifers, 923
Digital subscriber lines, 57, 207
see also Asymmetric digital subscriber lines
Digital workforces, 52, 180
Digitisation, 207
Discourse analysis, 99103, 1178, 2079, 212
Distributed Collaborators, see Elites
Distributed networks, 10, 21, 246, 135
DoCoMo (Japan), 94, 207
Domestic computing, 23, 37, 61, 170
Domestic games and gaming, 145, 182
Domestication of technology framework, 1011,
18, 159, 178, 183
Dot.com crash (2000), 38
Dumbing down of media content, 121
Dynamic allocation techniques, 21, 214
Early adopters, 61, 105, 169, 172
Early majority innovators, 74, 172
Education and internet use, 12, 159, 180
Educational status and internet use, 169
EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), 121, 12930,
137, 207
Efects research, 51, 96, 104, 167, 185, 208
Electronic technology, see Technology
Elites, 912, 43, 178, 2123
Email, 3, 7, 29, 56, 701, 74, 80, 823, 8990,
945, 135, 139, 161, 164, 166, 181, 212
Emotional engagement in community, 141
English language primacy, 81, 834, 86, 186
ENIAC, 23, 208
Enjoyment, 90, 150, 168
Entertainment, 1001, 159, 1701, 182
Environments, 35
Erotica, 152
EU Kids Online, 100, 164, 181, 208
European Community Safer Internet Plus
Programme, 100, 208
European Digital Library, 889
Everyday Innovators, see Elites
Everyday life, see Real life
Eyewitness accounts, 123, 128
Facebook, 3, 79, 81, 89, 945, 97, 99, 137, 164,
213
Falun Gong, 523
Families, 140, 178
as communities, 183
as creators, 182
as innovators, 168, 173, 182
Family life, 15976
Family regulation of internet use, see Regulation of
childrens internet use
Family relationship maintenance, see Kinkeeping
Family research, 140
Fan communities, see Fandom
Fan fction communities, 1479, 151, 153, 182,
185, 208
Fan fction moderators, 153
Fan fction writers, 141, 1512, 179
Fandom, 41, 136
Fanon dissent, 1512
Fanzines, 147, 208
Fibre optics, 31, 578, 20910, 214
Fibre to the home, 57, 209
Fibre to the node, 57, 209
Fibre to the premises, 57, 209
File sharing protocol, 89, 106, 134, 145, 206
File Transfer Protocol, 34, 208
Filters and fltering, 49, 52, 55, 94, 106, 111, 123,
145, 164
Firefox, 3, 40, 80
First person shooter (FPS) games and gaming, 143,
147, 158, 179, 2089, 213
Flickr, 72
Folksonomies, 912
Francophone resistance to English, 15
Francophonie, 856
Free market economies, 43, 55, 179
Freedom of choice, 49
Freedom of information, 178
i n d e x 241
Freedom of speech, 1156, 199, 121, 12930,
188
Friendster, 93, 96
Frontier mythologies, 129, 178
see also Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF)
FTP, see File Transfer Protocol
Gaelic League, 812
see also Irish Gaelic
Gambling online, 50, 61
Games and gaming, 3, 1011, 23, 401, 51, 57, 61,
80, 99, 1012, 107, 137, 1407, 152, 158,
1658, 1701, 17980, 182, 206, 2113
addiction, 1678
clan members, 1467
communities, 1447, 164
Korean, 1425, 147
see also Domestic games and gaming
Gatekeepers and gatekeeping, 123, 187, 209
Gates, Bill, 19, 267
Gender swapping in games and gaming, 180
Gendered diferences, 12, 16, 389, 67, 71, 73, 77,
103, 113, 121, 152, 15861, 166, 17881, 185,
209
Gift economies, 41, 157
Globalisation, 173, 20910
GNU, 40, 209
Google, 3, 9, 19, 27, 368, 523, 80, 84, 868,
115, 125, 128, 1334, 186
AdWords, 87
Books, 81, 856, 88, 97, 125, 128
in China, 53
company foat, 37
Maps, 38
PageRank algorithm, 37, 87, 126
Scholar, 1258
Gross domestic product, 209
Korea, 142
Moldova, 174
Tajikistan, 174
Hackers, 401, 146
Harassment, 1001, 1124, 1179, 130, 165, 180,
182, 187
Harassment of children, 165
Hardware, 1920, 22, 267, 35, 41, 71, 79, 108,
146, 210
Harry Potter, 136, 185, 209
fan community, 1478
fan fction, 149
see also Potter universe; Potter War
Header, see Packet header
HeartNet, 142, 152
administrative structure, 153
community, 154
competitor site, 156
confict, 1547, 159
moderation, 154
negative reciprocity, 157
terms and conditions, 153
Heavy regulation, 50, 68
Heterarchy, 40, 923, 209
Hierarchy, 51, 91, 93, 107, 166, 171, 209
HIV/AIDS, 113, 209
Homelessness, 15, 6971
in Scotland, 6971, 78, 181
Host computer, 289, 312, 1089, 115, 209,
2134
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), 34, 209
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), 33, 209
Hub and spoke systems, 245
Human rights, 43, 52, 130
Hybrid technologies, 45, 94
IBM, 19, 213, 27, 35, 133, 186, 209, 212
ICANN, see Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers
ICTs, see Information and communication
technologies
Identity theft, 113
IGF, see Internet Governance Forum
iMode (Japan), 89, 94
Imperialism, see Cultural imperialism; Soft
imperialism
Inclusion, see Social inclusion
Incorporation, 11, 15960, 172, 183
Inequality, 69, 712, 77
Information, 57, 15, 31, 52, 567, 77, 87, 2067,
209
Information and communication technologies, 57,
56, 62, 6971, 78, 140, 159, 1612, 177,
1834, 186, 207, 20911
in Scotland, 70, 78
Information delivery, 57
Information diversity, 121
Information overload, 100
Information packets, 22, 24, 26, 31, 214
see also Packet switching
Information poor, 69, 75, 78, 212
Information revolution, 206, 210
Information rich, 210
Information society, 207
see also World Summit on the Information Society
Information sources, 56, 94, 126, 1289
242 i n d e x
Information technologies, see Information and
communication technologies
Information validity, 1224
Informed consent in research, 101, 153
Innovation and innovators, 9, 19, 27, 37, 434, 46,
48, 74, 106, 108, 110, 162, 1689, 1723, 175,
180, 1823
Instant messaging, 3, 74, 95, 107, 110, 139, 166
Instrumental use of technology, 1601
Intellectual property, 108, 150, 152
Interface message processor, 28, 30, 209, 214
International Network Working Group, 31
Internationalised Resource Identifers, 92, 210
Internet, 3, 99, 177, 210, 212
access, see Access
addiction, 16, 50, 111, 1623, 1678, 175, 182
adoption by families, 169
communities, see Communities
community, see Community
constantly reinvented, 1, 178
as educational environment, 101
as entertainment, 101
as escape, 182
as fast developing medium, 189
future of the, 4, 189
as heroic story, 19
history, 1942
as multi-brained organism, 187
as organism, 186
policy
in Australia, 4950
in China, 501
in Singapore, 50
pornography, see Pornography
as pornography delivery mechanism, 104
protocol, 324, 210, 212
regulation, see Regulation
as repressive militaristic plan, 103
safety, see Safety
as supportive environment, 185
take-up, 2, 66, 80, 101, 148, 168, 190
use by children, 16970
use by family members, 159, 181
use for education, 181
Internet cafes, 142
in Korea, see PC bangs
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, 356, 209
Internet Explorer, 3, 27, 37, 80
Internet Governance Forum, 36, 209
Internet Industry Association (Australia), 49
Internet Relay Chat, see Chat
Internet Safety Task Force, 211
Internet Safety Technical Task Force, 113, 164, 211
Internet Service Provider (ISP), 49, 52, 57, 80, 115,
117, 211
Internet World Statistics, 657
Interviews, 13
Intrinsic use of technology, 1601
iPhone, 94
Iraq War reporting, 1223
IRC, see Chat
Irish bilingualism, 82
Irish Gaelic language, 81, 84
Irish language internet
communication, 182
content, 84
ISDN (Integrated switched digital network), see
Broadband ISDN
Jeanneney, Jean-Nel, opinions, 878
JenniCam, 109
Julie (Online persona), 124, 154
Jurisdiction
over new media, 187
over old media, 187
Kinkeeping, 1612, 179, 181, 211
Kinship networks, 140
Kopytof, Igor, 1834
Laggard innovators, 74, 172
LAN clans, 182
LAN culture, 142, 144
LANers, 144
Australia, 145
Malaysia, 144, 146
LANfests, 107, 146, 211
Language communities, 186
Languages, 812, 857, 89, 91, 140, 182
Languages threatened, 84, 186
LANing, 211
LANing communities, 107, 146, 160, 185,
Korean, 141
LANs, 171, 211
Laptop use, 1701
Late majority innovators, 74, 172
Lawver, Heather, 1501
Lead users, 172
Legislation, 100
Light touch regulation, 489
Linux, 401, 211
Local area networks, see LANs
Location services, 94
Long tail of internet participation, 65
i n d e x 243
Male gamers, 143
Marginalisation, 69, 151
Mash-ups, 136
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games,
1423, 180, 211
McGraw-Hill v. Google, 85
Media efects research, see Efects research
Media literacy, 1623
Medical information sharing, 153
Memes, 1356, 185, 211
Metadata, 91
Metaphors for organisations, 102
Micro-fnance remittances, see Remittances
Micro-moments, see Twitter
Microelectronic technologies, 208
Microsoft, 19, 268, 35, 41, 53, 186, 211
Migrant workers, 173
Military origins of the internet, 201
Military strategies, 178
Mind mapping, 17
Minimum service provision, 211
Minority languages, see Languages threatened
Mobile access, 61, 71, 935, 166, 174, 182
Mobile phone adoption
in China, 62
in India, 62
Mobile phone banking, 1745
Mobile phones, 69
as indicators of social status, 701
Mobile technologies, 61
Mobile technologies for underdeveloped countries,
62
Mobility of access, 934
Modems, 57
Moderation, 153
see also Administrator rights
Monitoring the internet, 48
Monopolies, 19
Moral panics, 2, 165, 182, 188, 210
Movement Against Kindred Ofenders (Australia),
112, 211
MoveOn.org, 13940
MSN, 27, 211
Mumbai attacks, Wikipedia coverage, 133
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), 20, 211
MySpace, 72, 79, 946, 134, 213
Napster, 106, 134
Narrative construction of the internet, 99
Narrative theory, 212
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration) (United States), 20, 212
NASDAQ, 80, 212
National autonomy, 52, 130
National Center for Supercomputing Applications,
34
National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom),
30, 456, 212
National policy and the internet, 188
National Science Foundation Network, 32, 212
Netscape demise, 88
Network Control Protocol, 29, 212
Network redundancy, 24
Network stability, 1112
Networked computers, 24
Networks, 1112, 178, 212
Networks of infuence, 172
Networks, see also Distributed networks
Neutrality of technologies, 12
New media, 1, 1778, 1878
see also Old media
Newbies, 146, 212
News media, 123
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), 1434, 212
Nuclear families, see Families
Obama presidential campaign, 139
Objectifcation of technology, 15960, 1723
Ofensive material, 52, 115, 149
Old media, 1879
Online communities, see Communities
Online defamation, see Defamation
Online games and gaming, see Games and gaming
Online risks, 162, 164
Open Net Initiative, 50, 212
Open source code, 3, 401, 58, 80, 1312, 146,
212, 214
Opinion leaders, 89, 160, 169, 172, 1823, 1889
Opportunities, 100
Packet header, 24, 26, 28, 214
Packet switching, 26, 31, 46, 214
Page, Larry, 367, 126
PageRank algorithm, see Google PageRank
algorithm
Paradoxes, 92, 105
Parental regulation of childrens internet use, see
Regulation of childrens internet use
Participatory culture, 135
Pax, Salam (Pseudonym) literature search, 1228,
131
PC, 22, 267, 34, 94, 210, 212
PC bangs, 142, 1445, 147, 213
Peer groups, 160, 165, 169
244 i n d e x
Peer-reviewed articles, 1256, 188
Peer-to-peer fle sharing, 58, 89, 1067, 134, 212
Personal autonomy, 70, 130, 145, 164, 168
Personal computing, 23
Pervasiveness of internet, 2
Pew Internet and American Life Project, 724, 77,
165
Physical community, 184
Pimping machines, 146
Ping rates, 146
Plain Old Telephone System, 568, 213
Policy, 4364
formation processes, 523
terms, 190
Political aspects of technology adoption, 178
Political dissent in China, 54
Political movements, 140
Political systems as metaphor, 102
Porn as driver for adoption of new technologies,
1056
Porn industry, 1078
business links, 107
intellectual property, 108
trade shows, 107
Pornography, 50, 99118, 120, 130, 180, 208
24/7 access, 104
accessed through work computers, 105
consumer attitudes, 104
consumers as desirable advertising demographic,
104
as content risk, 101, 117, 180
creation, 180
as degradation of women, 104
delivery mechanisms, 103, 106
as driver of internet service investment, 180
and internet uptake, 1056, 180
as killer app, 103
as private activity, 105
searches, 1067
stigma associated with, 105
without consent, 111
and YouTube, 137
see also Amateur pornography
Potter universe, 148
Potter, Harry, see Harry Potter
Potter War (potterwar.org.uk), 150
Power and powerlessness, 7, 12
in the family, 165, 167
Predators, 50
Print culture, 45
Privatisation, 213
Privilege, 12, 43, 67, 130
Pro-ams, 40, 177
Produsers, 132, 177
Prosumer videos, 136
Prosumers, 13, 41, 72, 131, 1334, 1513, 162,
177
Psychiatric evaluation of gamers, 1678
Public culture, 121
Public interest, 213
Public opinion, 11920
Public sphere, 11938, 159, 187
Public sphere fragmentation, 121
Punch card processors, 223
Queer communities, 121, 152
Queuing theory, 22, 24
RAND Corporation, 24, 213
Reactive policies, 44
Reader judgment of internet content, 187
Reading techniques, 167, 34
see also Beta reading
Real life, 1, 13, 41, 104, 111, 141, 158, 162, 213
Real time strategy, 147, 213
Reasoning public, 119
Red Flag LAN, 146, 213
Regulation, 434, 4750, 601, 68, 100, 130, 178,
189
in Australia, 55
of childrens internet use, 162, 164, 1667,
1712, 1812
in China, 50, 68, 130
in the home, 51, 162, 171, 182
in Singapore, 51
in United States, 130
see also Heavy regulation; Light touch regulation
Relationship contexting, 96
Relevant social groups, see Elites
Reliable information, 122
Remittances, 16, 71, 162, 1735, 183
Reputations, 41, 101, 112, 1157, 125, 1878
Request for comments, 29, 47, 213
Rheingold, Howard, 102, 141, 154, 165, 185, 187
Right of reply, 115, 117
Risks
for children, 163
of childrens use of the internet, 163
of internet use, 188
RL, see Real life
Safety, 100, 113
Salam Pax, see Pax, Salam
Same-sex relationships, 151
i n d e x 245
Satellite communications, 58
Sci-f games and gaming, 180
SCOT, see Social construction of technology
Search engines, 36
Search software, 36
Searches for information, 67, 1229
Second Life, 3, 72
Sega, 143
Self-exploration, 96
Self-mending frameworks, 186
Self-regulation in free market economies, 48
Semantic Web, 15, 78, 89, 923, 97, 189, 210, 213
Sexual content, 101
Skills recognition, 168
Slash fction, 1512, 213
communities, 152
Smart phone games and gaming, 143
SMS, see Texting
Social actors and internet use, 186
Social benefts of ICT use, 159
Social capital, 967, 142, 157, 185
Social construction of technologies, 2, 1011, 38,
178, 184, 213
Social constructionism, 9
Social constructionist framework, 178
Social determinism, 9, 213
Social elites, 11
Social history of objects, 1834
Social identity, 10
Social identity formation, 11, 39, 148, 186
Social impact of the internet, 186
Social inclusion, 701
Social interaction enhanced by mobile phone access,
94
Social justice, 140
Social media, 139
Social networking, 3, 80, 89, 93, 95, 97, 134
Social overlay, 90
Social shaping of technologies, 2, 7, 10
Socialisation of online users, 173
Socio-economic aspects of internet use, 169, 1823
Soft imperialism, 801, 209
Software, 22, 267
Solicitation, 165, 180
Speccing, 146
Spiders, 36
Sputnik launch, 20
Stalking, 99118, 187
Standing Committee of Attorneys-General
Defamation Working Group, 117
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 34
Stanford Research Institute, 21, 213
Stranger danger, 163
Study techniques, 17
Subscriber trunk dialling, 56, 213
Sugar Quill, 1489, 151
Surveys, 13
Switched packet systems, 21, 214
Synchronous activity, 110, 205, 210
Tagging, 901
Taste cultures, 90, 121
Taxonomies, 91
Technical terminology, 190
Technological challenges faced by women, 39
Technological competence as a male construct, 39
Technological determinism, 8, 214
Technological infrastructure, 3
Technological innovations, 168
see also Innovations
Technologies, 39
and disempowerment, 7
as drivers of social change, 7
and elites, 9
emerging, 38
inherently bad?, 8
and the speed of change, 7
as results of social processes, 9
Technology, 178, 208
aspirations, 172
as masculine culture, 3, 19, 389
skill development, 147
take-up, 43, 74, 171
use within communities, 183
use within families, 183
use within society, 183
Technonationalism in China, 512
Telecommunications, 56, 214
deregulation, 57, 59, 61
liberalisation, 5961
monopolies, 5961
policy, 45, 55
privatisation, 55, 5961
Telecommuting, 173
Television, 1, 2, 4, 56, 135, 171, 20810
see also Cable television
Terminal Interface Message Processor, 2930, 214
Texting, 10, 82, 95, 213
Texting in Irish, 834
Time spent on the internet, 162, 167, 171
Time spent using media, 162
Transition as metaphor, 102
Transmission Control Protocol, 323, 214
Triangulation of research, 13
246 i n d e x
Turing, Alan, 457, 63
Twilight, 185
Twitter, 72, 81, 95
UNESCO, 81, 214
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 20, 214
United States Department of Defence, 21
UNIVAC, 21, 214
Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, 81
Universal service obligation, 60, 214
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 21,
29, 214
Upselling, 109
URL, 334, 923, 214
User agency, 178
User interface, 36
User-driven development agenda, 178
Validity of internet communication, 1234
Victim support, 114
Video games and gaming, see Games and gaming
Videotape technologies, 171
Violent pornography, 50, 111, 147, 149, 208
Viral marketing, 89, 135, 214
Viral videos, 1356, 185, 214
Virtual domestic environments, 161
Voice data, 56
Wales, Jimmy, 1312
Warner Brothers, 1501
Web
1.0, 4, 90, 215
2.0, 45, 72, 79, 81, 8990, 924, 967, 131,
187, 189, 215
3.0, 4, 78, 89, 923, 213, 215
browsers, 27, 334, 37, 401, 80, 90, 172
content, 92, 131
domains, 150
libraries, 86
Web-based community, 97
Webcams, 109
WELL, 102, 129, 215
Western politics, Chinese views, 54
White, Bill, 1126
Wikipedia, 3, 15, 72, 89, 93, 121, 124,126, 1289,
1314, 137, 146, 188
Wikis, 5, 10, 80, 131, 133, 137
Windows, 27, 37, 40
Wireless access, 20, 61, 68, 171, 182
Wireless connectivity, 166
Wireless take-up, 143
Women, as consumers of pornography, 104
Word of mouth marketing, see Viral marketing
World Cyber Games, 143
World of Warcraft, 3, 142, 167
World Summit on the Information Society, 36, 215
World Wide Web, 3, 323, 215
see also Web
Worst-case scenarios, 158
XXX websites, see Adult websites
Yahoo, 36, 38, 523, 80, 91
in China, 53
Young peoples use of the internet, 100
Youth culture, 121
YouTube, 15, 37, 40, 72, 8990, 96, 121,
1337, 146, 188