The Internet has transformed the manner in which information is exchanged and business is conducted, arguably more than any other communication development in the past century. Despite its wide reach ...and powerful global influence, it is a medium uncontrolled by any one centralized system, organization, or governing body, a reality that has given rise to all manner of free-speech issues and cybersecurity concerns. The conflicts surrounding Internet governance are the new spaces where political and economic power is unfolding in the twenty-first century.This all-important study by Laura DeNardis reveals the inner power structure already in place within the architectures and institutions of Internet governance. It provides a theoretical framework for Internet governance that takes into account the privatization of global power as well as the role of sovereign nations and international treaties. In addition, DeNardis explores what is at stake in open global controversies and stresses the responsibility of the public to actively engage in these debates, because Internet governance will ultimately determine Internet freedom.
How do right-wing extremist organizations throughout the world use the Internet as a tool for communication and recruitment? What is its role in identity-building within radical right-wing groups and ...how do they use the Internet to set their agenda, build contacts, spread their ideology and encourage mobilization? This important contribution to the field of Internet politics adopts a social movement perspective to address and examine these important questions. Conducting a comparative content analysis of more than 500 extreme right organizational web sites from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, it offers an overview of the Internet communication activities of these groups and systematically maps and analyses the links and structure of the virtual communities of the extreme right. Based on reports from the daily press the book presents a protest event analysis of right wing groups' mobilisation and action strategies, relating them to their online practices. In doing so it exposes the new challenges and opportunities the Internet presents to the groups themselves and the societies in which they exist.
Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In this ...book, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations "on the bottom half of the Internet," he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior. Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison) and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying and misogyny. He considers the way comment — a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking — affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling — short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, "WTF?!?"
Internet use-related addiction problems (e.g., Internet addiction, problem mobile phone use, problem gaming, and social networking) have been defined according to the same core element: the addictive ...symptomatology presented by individuals who excessively and problematically behave using the technology. Online activity is the most important factor in their lives, causing them the loss of control by stress and difficulties in managing at least one aspect of their daily life, affecting users’ wellbeing and health. In 2018, Gaming Disorder was included as a mental disease in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association requested additional research on Internet Gaming Disorder.
The papers contained in this e-Book provide unique and original perspectives on the concept, development, and early detection of the prevention of these health problems. They are diverse in the nature of the problems they deal with, methodologies, populations, cultures, and contain insights and a clear indication of the impact of individual, social, and environmental factors on Internet use-related addiction problems. The e-Book illustrates recent progress in the evolution of research, with great emphasis on gaming and smartphone problems, signaling areas in which research would be useful, even cross-culturally.
In December 2012, the exuberant video "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own ...variations of the video--"Mitt Romney Style," "NASA Johnson Style," "Egyptian Style," and many others. "Gangnam Style" (and its attendant parodies, imitations, and derivations) is one of the most famous examples of an Internet meme: a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience. In this book, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes -- including "Leave Britney Alone," the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's "We Are the 99 Percent." She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users. She differentiates memes from virals; analyzes what makes memes and virals successful; describes popular meme genres; discusses memes as new modes of political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes; and examines memes as agents of globalization. Memes, Shifman argues, encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in particular. Internet memes may be entertaining, but in this book Limor Shifman makes a compelling argument for taking them seriously.
In January 2012, millions participated in the now-infamous "Internet blackout" against theStop Online Piracy Act, protesting the power it would have given intellectual property holders over the ...Internet. However, while SOPA's withdrawal was heralded as a victory for an open Internet, a small group of corporations, tacitly backed by the US and other governments, have implemented much of SOPA via a series of secret, handshake agreements. Drawing on extensive interviews, Natasha Tusikov details the emergence of a global regime in which large Internet firms act as regulators for powerful intellectual property owners, challenging fundamental notions of democratic accountability.
The Internet was supposed to be an antidote to authoritarianism. It can enable citizens to express themselves freely and organize outside state control. Yet while online activity has helped challenge ...authoritarian rule in some cases, other regimes have endured: no movement comparable to the Arab Spring has arisen in China. InContesting Cyberspace in China, Rongbin Han offers a powerful counterintuitive explanation for the survival of the world's largest authoritarian regime in the digital age.Han reveals the complex internal dynamics of online expression in China, showing how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse. He finds that state censorship has conditioned online expression, yet has failed to bring it under control. However, Han also finds that freer expression may work to the advantage of the regime because its critics are not the only ones empowered: the Internet has proved less threatening than expected due to the multiplicity of beliefs, identities, and values online. State-sponsored and spontaneous pro-government commenters have turned out to be a major presence on the Chinese internet, denigrating dissenters and barraging oppositional voices. Han explores the recruitment, training, and behavior of hired commenters, the "fifty-cent army," as well as group identity formation among nationalistic Internet posters who see themselves as patriots defending China against online saboteurs. Drawing on a rich set of data collected through interviews, participant observation, and long-term online ethnography, as well as official reports and state directives,Contesting Cyberspace in Chinainterrogates our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the democratizing power of the Internet.
Addiction to technology is emerging as a serious medical condition, not just an exaggeration of everyday social and personal ailments of the 21st century. Technological Addictions provides guidance ...found nowhere else, guidance that both clinicians and laypeople will find useful and compelling.
What is online risk? How can we best protect children from it? Who should be responsible for this protection? Is all protection good? Can Internet users trust the industry? These and other ...fundamental questions are discussed in this book. Beginning with the premise that the political and democratic processes in a society are affected by the way in which that society defines and perceives risks, Children in the Online World offers insights into the contemporary regulation of online risk for children (including teens), examining the questions of whether such regulation is legitimate and whether it does in fact result in the sacrifice of certain fundamental human rights. The book draws on representative studies with European children concerning their actual online risk experiences as well as an extensive review of regulatory rationales in the European Union, to contend that the institutions of the western European welfare states charged with protecting children have changed fundamentally, at the cost of the level of security that they provide. In consequence, children at once have more rights with regard to their personal decision making as digital consumers, yet fewer democratic rights to participation and protection as ’digital citizens’. A theoretically informed, yet empirically grounded study of the relationship between core democratic values and the duty to protect young people in the media-sphere, Children in the Online World will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in new technologies, risk and the sociology of childhood and youth. Book: The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
