Information Society Watch

September 12, 2007, BBC News Service

News has traditionally been in the domain of professional journalists. Recently there has been attempts to democratize this further in the form of news that is reported by ordinary citizens. The article looks at the results of a study which analyses the differences between the news reported by professionals in the field as opposed to citizen journalists.

July 2007, Mark E. Kann, Jeff Berry, Connor Gant, and Phil Zager, First Monday

This article examines how American youths’ contributions to three online worlds — participatory culture, political consumerism, and civic engagement — function as possible gateways to their increased political participation. Youth engagement with these three online worlds suggests that the Internet creates opportunities for youth involvement in politics and provides a measure of motivation, facilitation, and invitation for that involvement.

May 2007, The Sydney Morning Herald

This article points to increasing Internet pornography that is wrecking relationships across Australia. A two month study conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald, which interviewed women whose partners were obsessed with pornography showed that the constant access of online pornography by these men had severely affected the lives of women and in many cases affecting their sex-life, self-esteem and leaving them insecure.

March 15, 2007, Bernardo A. Huberman & Dennis M. Wilkinson, First Monday

Since its inception six years ago, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has accumulated 6.40 million articles and 250 million edits, contributed in a predominantly undirected and haphazard fashion by 5.77 million unvetted volunteers. It also demonstrates a crucial correlation between article quality and number of edits, which validates Wikipedia as a successful collaborative effort.

March 14, 2007, Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post

The Internet has become a centre of religious worship for millions of people around the world of all faiths. Many use websites for prayer and meditation, or to gather in "virtual" religious settings. The Internet is thus providing a new arena for religious seekers.

March 13, 2007, Andrew Leonard

Many of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are restricting campus Internet use during night hours, because of recent suicides being linked to the presumed anti-social behaviour that Internet use promotes. Administrators claim that participation in sports and cultural activities is waning, that an atmosphere of camaraderie is no longer felt, and that students' studies are being negatively impacted.

2006, Daniel Hughes, James Walkerdine and Geoff Coulson, IEEE Distributed Systems Online

This study addresses patterns of illegal pornography sharing on the Gnutella Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing network and classifies the nature of the relationship between anonymous Internet use and deviant behaviours. Findings report that a small yet particularly active sub-community of users search for and distribute illegal pornography, but it isn’t a behavioural norm.

Jennifer R. Ferris, Virginia Tech University

This paper highlights the growing body of research in the area of addiction, which suggests that Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), a psycho-physiological disorder involving tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, affective disturbances, and interruption of social relationships, is becoming common in society as online usage increases by the day.

1997, Sherry Turkle, Social Research

This paper explores the history of artificial intelligence and other technological advances in light of their impact on human psychology and self-image. Computational theories of intelligence now support decentred and emergent views of the mind, while experience with today's computational objects encourages rethinking identity in terms of multiplicity and flexibility.

2001, Joshua Berman and Amy S. Bruckman, Convergence

This paper presents an in-depth discussion of a single evening in the online game environment, The Turing Game, which helps internet users to explore and negotiate issues of identity. The authors studied online participant interactions with the aim of showing how internet users learn about identity in this environment.