Social Impact Of The Internet Research Articles

The New Zealand Model for Prevention of Cyberviolence

In 1998, New Zealand's Internet Safety Group established a national initiative to prevent cyberviolence through education. This organization developed a comprehensive program that included sending an Internet Safety Kit to every school in the country, stimulating research on Internet use in New Zealand, and co-hosting a national symposium on the social impact of the Internet. This article looks at who is participating in the Group, what strategies they have used, what they have been able to achieve and their plans for future development.

E-Topia as Cosmopolis or Citadel

We present a critical appraisal of the impact of the Internet (and related information technologies) upon processes of democratization and de-democratization in contemporary society. We review accounts of `the information revolution' as these have become polarized into mutually exclusive rhetorics of future cosmopolitan or citadellian e-topias. We question the Manichean assumptions common to both rhetorics: particularly the fetishism of information technology as an intrinsically democratizing or de-democratizing force on societies. In opposition to this new technological fetishism we focus upon (1) Internet historicity; (2) the human/machine nexus; (3) Internet policing and appropriation presenting a different story of the Net, emphasizing contingent, indeterminate and negotiable characteristics of sociotechnical systems, preparing for a more radical critique of existing theories of `global technological citizenship'. Refiguring `culture' as technopoiesis, we argue that an alternative approach to global civil society minimally presupposes a cultural sociology of the Internet: approaching information technologies as the product of specific sociocultural practices and as historical sites of ethico-political transformation and reflexive self-figuration.

Religion on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises

Introduction. The promised land or electronic chaos? Toward understanding religion on the internet (J.K. Hadden, D.E. Cowan). Internet Research: Studying Religion on the Web. Researching religion in cyberspace: issues and strategies from the sociology of the internet (L.L. Dawson). Religious ethnography on the world wide web (W.S. Bainbridge). Doing research and teaching with the American religion data archive: initial efforts to democratize access to data (R. Finke et al.). Religion, rhetoric and scholarship: managing vested interest in e-space (D.E. Cowan). Internet Faith: Religions in Cyberspace. Surfing Islam: ayatollahs, shayks and hajjs on the superhighway (G.R. Bunt). Toward understanding how religious organizations use the internet (S. Horsfall). Dispatches from the electronic frontier: explorations of mainline Protestant use of the internet (K. Bedell). Online-religion/religion-online: virtual communities (C. Helland). On-line ethnography of dipensationalist discourse: revealed versus negotiated truth (R.G. Howard). Webs of Deceit: Religious Propaganda on the Net. New religious movements and the internet: the new frontier of cult controversies (J.-F. Mayer). So many evil things: anticult terrorism via the internet (M. Introvigne). Internet Teaching: Pedagogy and the World Wide Web. Evolution of a religious web site devoted to tolerance (B.A. Robinson). Mapping a cyberlimen: a test case for the use of electronic discussion boards in religious studies classes (J.M. Robinson). A history of the religious movements homepage project at the University of Virginia (J.K. Hadden). List of contributors and contact information. Biographical information on the authors.

Social impact of the Internet

Social impact of the Internet

A review of wide-area aspects of high performance networking

This paper provides a broad overview of many aspects of wide-area networking, with an emphasis on the evolution of the Internet in Europe. The reality of today's Internet is contrasted with the vision of a future Global Information Infrastructure. The pivotal integrating role played by the World Wide Web in the explosive growth of the internet is highlighted. Potential GII infrastructures are analysed; various factors influencing Internet evolution are discussed; the likely economic and social impact of the Internet is briefly reviewed. The present status and planned evolution of high-performance academic and research networking in both Europe and the USA is presented, and brief comments are made on the situation elsewhere. A report is made on the present status of the liberalisation of the regulatory regimes of European telecoms, and the overall political background in which European networking finds itself is discussed. Suggestions for further reading are provided.