Category: The Internet and Society

Social relationships and the Internet: a new paper

Our new paper: “Reconfiguring Friendships: Social Relationships and the Internet”, co-authored with Professor Bill Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford, is now available in the new special issue of Information, Communication and Society (Vol. 10, Issue 5) on e-Relationships.

In this paper we investigate whether and how social relationships are formed online and what are the socio-demographic and other determinants of social relationship formation. We also explore whether and under what circumstances friends that are met online become offline friends. The paper uses data from the 2005 Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) and the World Internet Project. We found that while socio-demographic factors are in general poor predictors of both making friends online and of meeting online friends in offline settings, the channels of communication used online (for example chatting vs. blogging) and what Internet users do online (for example whether they use the Internet for entertainment vs. communication) have an effect on the development of online friendships.

Italy and the end of the Internet?

The Italian Government has recently proposed a draft law aimed at reorganising the legislation of the publishing sector, which requires every citizen engaging in publishing and editorial activities to register them with a central registry. This law covers different media, including the Internet, in practice requiring every Internet user who posts information online (thus carrying out “publishing and editorial activity”) to register their blogs and websites with such a registry. This law would in fact identify bloggers as professional publishers/journalists – thus, bloggers who fail to register would in theory be liable to incur into heavy penalties such as for example defamation.

As news of the draft law have started to circulate, thousands of angry reactions have been flooding into two of the most popular Italian blogs: Beppe Grillo’s blog and Minister Antonio Di Pietro’s blog (one of the first and most active politician bloggers) protesting that the passing of such a law, far from being a mere bureaucratic formality, would in fact mean the end of the free Internet in Italy. Government officials have clarified that such a law would not apply to personal blogs and amateur sites, but no clear guidelines have been stated so far to qualify what counts as a personal vs. professional blog.

The original text of the draft law can be found here [Italian only].

Update: Minister of Communications Paolo Gentiloni on his blog has just commented on the draft law stating that the law should not apply to blogs and personal websites, but only to online professional publishers, such as big online newspapers. This draft law will have to be discussed in Parliament and several parties, from the Greens to Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori party, have promised to oppose such a law.

Towards civic media? Teaching digital natives how to use web 2.0 tools

[youtube width=”315″ height=”235″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXaT1Ty6JTY[/youtube]

As discussions about the digital divide have been slowly fading into the background (in spite of the persistent inequalities in Internet adoption both between and within countries), the new focus has been shifting on the inequalities in the way the Internet is used by drawing attention to the media skills (or media literacy) which are necessary for citizens to become meaningfully involved online (and thus offline).

As web 2.0 technologies are developing and maturing it is not sufficient anymore to merely observe digital natives (those who are born with the new digital technology and have most successfully integrated it into their everyday lives) and how they are creating online content but it becomes necessary to engage them in meaningful ways so that the incredible potential of Web 2.0 does not remain confined to uploading funny pictures of your cat.

Initiatives such as the one by Prof. Alexandra Juhasz of Pitzer College, CA, “Learning from YouTube” show how teaching digital natives how to use tools such as YouTube will help the development of media skills which should contribute not only to better quality content online but also to more meaningful uses of these online tools so that new media can move from just being entertainment to being also truly civic media.

Oxford Internet Survey 2007

OxIS 2007 reportThe Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford has just released its 2007 Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) report – covering findings and trends comparing the 2003, 2005 and 2007 surveys.

You can download the report here and you can read the BBC press coverage the report has received here. The OxIS surveys are national representative surveys of Internet adoption and use in Britain – they are part of the World Internet Project (WIP), which compares Internet adoption and use across 25 countries.

e-democracy second life style

Itching for statistics, insights and data on the use of second life for political and educational purposes – who are the people who tune in? probably the usual suspects – but what do they think about the whole process? is the technology living up to their expectations? are these online forums a valuable form of consultation for both users and politicians? is this just a fad, or is this a trend which is here to stay? what is its real impact on the political process?
[youtube width=”315″ height=”235″]http://youtube.com/watch?v=UhA9xJvinvk[/youtube]

(This is a video from Internet-savvy Italian politician Antonio di Pietro which provides the highlights of the first second life meeting of his party Italia dei Valori with journalists and the public – in his opening speech he equates the event to the “agorà of ancient Greece” – the video is in Italian only, but it is an interesting look behind the scenes – for a commentary in english check out his blog)

A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has just released a new report: “A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users” where they provide a profile of users of ICTs according to their technology assets, their actions, and their attitudes about ICTs. The report identifies three main typologies of users: ‘Elite Tech Users’ (31% of American adults), ‘Middle-of-the-road tech users’ (20%) and ‘Few Tech Assets’ users (49%), which are further divided into sub-typologies.

Half of the population is still made up by those with ‘Few Tech Assets’: the ‘Inexperienced Experimenters’ (8%), the ‘Light but Satisfied’ (15%), the ‘Indifferents’ (11%) and finally the ‘Off The Networks’ (15%). Interestingly, these have had some taste of new technologies (with the exception of the Off the Networks) but they’d rather continue doing without them. The “Omnivores”, the real Web 2.0 enthusiasts and users, make up only 8% of the American adult population.

Participatory culture or digital narcissism?

A forthcoming book ‘The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy’ by Andrew Keen is questioning the euphoria which is surrounding Web 2.0 and user-generated content online from blogs to social networking sites to Wikipedia and citizen journalism. Keen questions current online contents and practices highlighting how these are more a form of digital narcissism and self-representation than a participatory culture. He raises critical questions with important social implications for democratic politics and notions of citizenship. More of this on his blog.

Government crisis ignites the Web

The news of Italian PM Romano Prodi’s resignation and the government crisis in Italy following yesterday’s Senate’s vote on foreign policy has had great resonance on the Web both among citizens and party officials. Thousands of angry citizens have turned to the Web to express their discontent with the two dissidents from the extreme Left whose vote has caused the resignation of Prodi’s coalition, flooding online newspapers’ discussion forums and blogs with their comments. What is perhaps more striking is that political parties have also turned to the Web to make statements to reach the wider public: Rifondazione Comunista has published on its Website a press release where the party condemns the vote of its party member who has voted against his own coalition; furthermore, it announces the opening of an online forum in the next few days as a public space for discussion and for providing party supporters with reassurances on the party’s mission and policy. Participatory democracy in action?