Internet studies
Encyclopedia
Internet Studies is an interdisciplinary field studying the social, psychological, pedagogical, political, technical, cultural, artistic, and other dimensions of the internet
and associated information and communication technologies
. While studies of the internet are now widespread across academic disciplines, there is a growing collaboration among these investigations. In recent years, "internet studies" have become institutionalized as courses of study at several institutions of higher learning
, including the University of Oxford
, Curtin University of Technology
, Brandeis University
, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
, Appalachian State University
and the University of Minnesota
. Cognates are found in departments of a number of other names, including departments of "digital culture", "new media" or "convergent media", various "iSchools
", or programs like "Media in Transition" at MIT. On the research side, Internet Studies intersects with studies of Cyberculture
, Human-Computer Interaction, and Science and Technology Studies
. A number of academic journals are central to communicating research in the field, including Bad Subjects, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New media Technologies, Ctheory, Cyber Psychology + Behaviour, First Monday, Information, Communication, and Society, The Information Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, M/C, New media & Society, tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, and TeknoKultura, but research relating to internet studies appears in a diverse range of venues and disciplines.
argues, internet studies may find its beginnings with the 1978 publication of The Network Nation, and was largely dominated by computer scientists, presenting at venues like the annual CSCW conference. These were quickly joined by researchers in business fields and library and information science. By the late 1990s, more attention was being paid to systematic investigation of users and how they made use of the new technologies. During the 1990s, the rapid diffusion of internet access began to attract more attention from a number of social science and humanities disciplines, including the field of communication. Some of these investigations, like the Pew Internet & American Life project (http://pewinternet.org/) and the World Internet Project (http://www.worldinternetproject.net/) framed the research in terms of traditional social science approaches, with a focus less on the technology than on those who use them. But the focus remained at the aggregate level.
In 1996, this interest was expressed in other ways as well. Georgetown University
began offering a related master's program in that year, and at the University of Maryland
, David Silver created the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies on the web. By 2001, The Chronicle of Higher Education
noted that "internet studies" was emerging as a discipline in its own right, as suggested by the first undergraduate program in the area, offered at Brandeis University
, and noted that "perhaps the most telling sign of the field's momentum" was the popularity of the annual conference created by the then nascent Association of Internet Researchers
.
More recent approaches to studying the internet have focused on situating technology use within particular social contexts, and understanding just how it is related to social and institutional change.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and associated information and communication technologies
Information and communication technologies
Information and communications technology or information and communication technology, usually abbreviated as ICT, is often used as an extended synonym for information technology , but is usually a more general term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of...
. While studies of the internet are now widespread across academic disciplines, there is a growing collaboration among these investigations. In recent years, "internet studies" have become institutionalized as courses of study at several institutions of higher learning
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
, including the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, Curtin University of Technology
Curtin University of Technology
Curtin University is an Australian university based in Perth, Western Australia, with additional campuses in regional Western Australia and at Miri , Sydney and Singapore...
, Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
, Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University is a comprehensive , public, coeducational university located in Boone, North Carolina, United States. Appalachian State, also referred to as Appalachian, App State, or simply App, is the sixth largest institution in the University of North Carolina system...
and the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
. Cognates are found in departments of a number of other names, including departments of "digital culture", "new media" or "convergent media", various "iSchools
ISchool
An information school, I-School or iSchool is an emergent label of university departments or independent institutions committed to understanding the role of information in nature and human endeavors...
", or programs like "Media in Transition" at MIT. On the research side, Internet Studies intersects with studies of Cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
, Human-Computer Interaction, and Science and Technology Studies
Science and technology studies
Science, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
. A number of academic journals are central to communicating research in the field, including Bad Subjects, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New media Technologies, Ctheory, Cyber Psychology + Behaviour, First Monday, Information, Communication, and Society, The Information Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, M/C, New media & Society, tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, and TeknoKultura, but research relating to internet studies appears in a diverse range of venues and disciplines.
Topics of study
Topics within Internet studies include:- Internet architecture: including the fundamental programming and architecture of the Internet, such as TCP/IP, HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
, CSSCascading Style SheetsCascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
, CGI, CFMLColdFusionIn computing, ColdFusion is the name of a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995. ColdFusion was originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by version 2 it had...
, DOMDocument Object ModelThe Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...
, JSJavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
, PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
.
- Internet securityInternet securityInternet security is a branch of computer security specifically related to the Internet. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet. The Internet represents an insecure channel for exchanging information leading to a high risk of intrusion or fraud,...
: such as the structure and propagation of viruses, malwareMalwareMalware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
, and software exploits, as well as methods of protection, including antivirus programs and firewalls.
- Online communities: including Internet forumsInternet forumAn Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
, blogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, and MMORGs.
- Internet culture: including the emergence of Internet slangInternet slangInternet slang is a type of slang that Internet users have popularized, and in many cases, have coined. Such terms often originate with the purpose of saving keystrokes. Many people use the same abbreviations in texting and instant messaging, and social networking websites...
and CybercultureCybercultureCyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
.
- Sociology of the InternetSociology of the InternetThe sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication...
: including the social implications of the InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, new social networkSocial networkA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
s, online societiesVirtual communityA virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...
(virtual communities) and social interaction on the Internet.
- Computer-mediated communicationComputer-mediated communicationComputer-mediated communication is defined as any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of two or more networked computers...
: such as the role of e-mailE-mailElectronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, online chatOnline chatOnline chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...
, blogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
, and text messagingText messagingText messaging, or texting, refers to the exchange of brief written text messages between fixed-line phone or mobile phone and fixed or portable devices over a network...
in modern communications.
- Digital rightsDigital rightsThe term digital rights describes the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network...
: including privacyInternet privacyInternet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, providing to third-parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Privacy can entail both Personally Identifying Information or non-PII information such as a...
, free speechInternet censorshipInternet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
, intellectual propertyIntellectual propertyIntellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
, and digital rights managementDigital rights managementDigital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
.
- Open source software: focusing on the ability of Internet users to collaborate to modify, develop, and improve pieces of software which are freely available to the public without charge.
History
As Barry WellmanBarry Wellman
Barry Wellman, FRSC directs NetLab as the S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities and organizations...
argues, internet studies may find its beginnings with the 1978 publication of The Network Nation, and was largely dominated by computer scientists, presenting at venues like the annual CSCW conference. These were quickly joined by researchers in business fields and library and information science. By the late 1990s, more attention was being paid to systematic investigation of users and how they made use of the new technologies. During the 1990s, the rapid diffusion of internet access began to attract more attention from a number of social science and humanities disciplines, including the field of communication. Some of these investigations, like the Pew Internet & American Life project (http://pewinternet.org/) and the World Internet Project (http://www.worldinternetproject.net/) framed the research in terms of traditional social science approaches, with a focus less on the technology than on those who use them. But the focus remained at the aggregate level.
In 1996, this interest was expressed in other ways as well. Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
began offering a related master's program in that year, and at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
, David Silver created the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies on the web. By 2001, The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
noted that "internet studies" was emerging as a discipline in its own right, as suggested by the first undergraduate program in the area, offered at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, and noted that "perhaps the most telling sign of the field's momentum" was the popularity of the annual conference created by the then nascent Association of Internet Researchers
Association of Internet Researchers
Founded in 1999, the Association of Internet Researchers is an learned society dedicated to the advancement of the transdisciplinary field of Internet studies...
.
More recent approaches to studying the internet have focused on situating technology use within particular social contexts, and understanding just how it is related to social and institutional change.
Scholarly Organizations
- American Society for Information Science and TechnologyAmerican Society for Information Science and TechnologyThe American Society for Information Science and Technology, sometimes abbreviated ASIS&T or ASIST, is a non-profit membership organization for information professionals...
(ASIST) - American Sociological AssociationAmerican Sociological AssociationThe American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
Section on Communication and Information Technologies (CITASA) - Association for Education in Journalism and Mass CommunicationAssociation for Education in Journalism and Mass CommunicationThe Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, or AEJMC, is a major international membership organization for academics in the field, offering regional and national conferences and refereed publications. It has numerous membership divisions, interest groups, publications and...
Communication & Technology Division (CTEC) - Association of Internet ResearchersAssociation of Internet ResearchersFounded in 1999, the Association of Internet Researchers is an learned society dedicated to the advancement of the transdisciplinary field of Internet studies...
(AoIR) - Association for Computing MachineryAssociation for Computing MachineryThe Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
(ACM) - International Communication AssociationInternational Communication AssociationThe International Communication Association is a non-profit academic association founded in 1950 as the National Society for the Study of Communication , whose members are interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human communication." The Association maintains an...
Communication & Technology (CAT) division - National Communication AssociationNational Communication AssociationThe National Communication Association is the largest national organization to promote communication scholarship and education. A non-profit organization that has over 8,000 educators, practitioners, and students who work and reside in every state and more than 20 countries...
(NCA) Human Communication and Technology Division (HCTD)
Cognate Fields
- Electronic Commerce
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Library ScienceLibrary scienceLibrary science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
- Science and Technology StudiesScience and technology studiesScience, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
- Web ScienceWeb Science"Web Science" is a term that refers to processing the information available on the web in similar terms to those applyed to natural environment. - External links :* * * by W3C...
Further reading
- Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
: The Society of the SpectacleThe Society of the SpectacleThe Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...
- description and explanation of the context in which the internet emerged and evolves