Showing papers in "Information, Communication & Society in 2004"

Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens and Social Movements

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. New Media, Citizenship and Social Movements Part One: Changing the levels and the domains of political action 3. Gobal-protesters: Virtual or Real? The Role of the Internet in Shaping the Anti-globalisation Movement 4. Is the Market the New Battle Ground for Political Campaigning? Part two: Changing strategies and stratagems: action and activism in the information age 6. Meta-movements: New Technologies and New Forms of Coalition, Co-operation and Co-ordination in the Social Movement 'Industry' 7. "'Times are Changing': Media Strategies of Protest Groups since the 1960s" 8. The Internet, Global Mobilization, and Movement Message Frames: Organizational Similarities and Communicational Differences between Protest Events and Issue Campaigns The activists in between: New Media, Social Movements and Change 9. The Activists in Between: New Media, Social Movements and Change 10. Social Movements and the Media. September 1999, from Portugal to East-Timor 11. The Expert Always Knows Best? ATTAC's Use of the Internet as a Tool to Facilitate New Virtual Forms of Protest 12. Tales from Italy Part Three: Citizenship, Identity, and Virtual Movements 13. Citizenship, Democracy and New States of Welfare 14. The Woman's Movement Online: A Study into the Uses of Internet by Women's Organizations in the Netherlands 15. The Grey Panthers wants Political Influence - Democratic Effects of Utilising ICTs 16. Disembodied Citizenship? Re-@ccessing Disabled People's Voices in Portugal 17. Conclusion

Connecting Parliament to the Public via the Internet

Abstract: A number of scholars have argued that the Internet could strengthen representative democracy. This article presents two case studies of online consultations run on behalf of the UK Parliament and tests a series of hypotheses about online public deliberation. One consultation involved women survivors of domestic violence; the other was linked to the examination by a Parliamentary Committee of the draft Communications Bill. The article concludes by suggesting that the success of online parliamentary consultations is dependent upon two groups of actors, parliamentarians and citizens, each of which must acquire new types of communication skills and develop new practices of operating.

Researching the 'Informed Patient

Abstract: This paper raises the question of the significance of information practices for individuals' management of personal health. In particular, it focuses on the notion of an 'informed patient'. The question of expertise is examined first through an analysis of the nature of information sought, the trust placed in information sources and the challenge to professional authority, and then in the light of the everyday dimension of information seeking that pervades all living interactions. Taking the case of online health information seekers, the paper is based on interviews conducted with Internet users, using the electronic medium for health information. Study findings reveal the everyday dimension of the information sought and the importance of 'experiential knowledge' over medical expertise. Rather than dismissing experts' authority, findings show how the mediated environment of the Internet favours a process of displacing and regaining trust in professionals. The paper argues that the use of the Internet by a...

The Queer Sisters and its Electronic Bulletin Board

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of the Internet on offline social movement mobilization from the perspective of identity building. It is based on a case study of a women’s group in Hong Kong, the Queer Sisters, and the bulletin board it created on the World Wide Web. Content analysis, an online survey, interviews and observation conducted between September 1999 and December 2000 found that the bulletin board helped to foster a sense of belonging to the Queer Sisters among participants. Bulletin board participants also shared a culture of opposition to the dominant order. But a collective consciousness was absent, so the bulletin board fell short of building a collective identity among its participants. This paper, however, argues that the absence of a collective identity on the bulletin board is the result of the way the board was administered, constrained by the resources and the aims of the Queer Sisters. It suggests that the potential for the Internet to build collective identities for social movements ...

The Past, Present, and Future of Information Policy: Towards a normative theory of the information society

Abstract: The profile of information policy in academic and policy-making circles has been rising in recent decades, a function, presumably, of the expansion of an ‘information society’. Nevertheless, there is widespread confusion over its meaning and purpose. This paper seeks to produce a clearer picture, building on useful groundwork in information science and other disciplines. The history of information policy is traced, featuring exposition of the pioneering contribution of Marc Porat in the 1970s. The present state of information policy is then described, with particular reference to some salient themes of current literature: issue inventories (i.e. the scope of information policy); academic identity (including a critique of attempts to appropriate information policy for one discipline); and the ideal – or, it is argued, illusion – of a ‘national information policy’. In the final section of the paper, some suggestions are made for the future direction of information policy. First, information policy should en...

Situating privacy online: complex perceptions and everyday practices

Abstract: Media and research reports point to the issue of privacy as the key to understanding online behaviour and experience. Yet it is well recognized within privacy-advocacy circles that ‘privacy’ is a loose concept encompassing a variety of meanings. In this article we view privacy as mediating between individuals and their online activities, not standing above them, and as being constantly redefined in actual practice. It is necessary to examine, therefore, what individuals are reacting to when asked about online privacy and how it affects their online experience. This article is based on data generated in the Everyday Internet study, a neighbourhood- based, ethnographic project being conducted in Toronto, Canada, that investigates how people integrate online services in their daily lives. We propose that there are three organizing ‘moments’ of online privacy: the moment of sitting in front of the computer, the moment of interaction with it, and the moment after the data has been released.

Health Information Seals of Approval: What do they Signify?

Abstract: Much of the health information available to consumers on the Internet is incomplete, out of date and even inaccurate. Seals of approval or trustmarks have been suggested as a strategy to assist consumers in identifying high-quality information. Little is known, however, about how consumers interpret such seals. This study addresses this issue by examining assumptions about the quality criteria that are reflected by a seal of approval. This question is of particular importance because a wide variety of quality criteria have been suggested for online health information, including: core aspects of quality such as accuracy, currency and completeness; proxy indicators of quality such as the disclosure of commercial interests; and indicators that reflect the quality of the site or the interaction it affords, such as the availability of a search mechanism. The results of this study suggest that seals of approval are assumed to certify information quality primarily with respect to core quality indicators, aspects...

Health E-types?

Abstract: This paper presents a simple typology of different forms of engagement with the Internet by families with children with various forms of chronic illness. The analysis is informed by ongoing debates about the nature, distribution and efficacy of reflexivity in contemporary social life, especially as it relates to the changing nature of information and knowledge. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with sixty-nine parents and sixteen children, the paper offers a nuanced account of the manner in which laypeople are engaging with e- health. It is an account that argues that any reading of the 'digital divide' that is based upon a simple homology between socio-structural location, reflexivity and differential ability to gain material purchase from information in the 'information age' is misjudged.

Sorting places out ? towards a social politics of neighbourhood informatization.

Abstract: This paper examines some of the possible consequences of the introduction of online Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for the social politics of neighbourhoods and the public sphere more generally. Summarizing a number of recent theorizations of neighbourhood informatization, the article provides examples of online GIS in the UK and considers some of the possible implications of the use of such technologies for contemporary debates about citizenship in the context of processes of ‘splintering urbanism’. Arguing that social citizenship is best understood in terms of varying forms of ‘proactive’ or ‘defensive’ engagement, the paper explores the relationship between virtual decision making about neighbourhood choice and the impact of aggregated virtual decisions ‘on the ground’, before going on to consider how differentiated forms of engagement are producing new forms of social exclusion in changing urban spaces.

Freedom or Folly? Canadians and the Consumption of Online Health Information

Abstract: The concept of e-health has come to assume a key place within a larger Canadian governmental discourse that lauds the benefits of supplying Internet-based services to as wide an audience as possible. In order to fulfil its vision of a connected public accessing services cheaply and easily through electronic media, the federal government has assumed that the potential exists for all Canadians to use the Internet and has done its best to achieve this result through programmes aimed at ameliorating accessibility issues. There is particular enthusiasm over the possibility of moving some health services online, thus reducing costs incurred through personal patient-practitioner meetings while ostensibly creating more informed, proactive and healthy Canadians. This paper discusses whether or not the enthusiasm of the government, and of individual users, regarding e-health practices is merited, focussing particularly on the consumption of online health information by patients. Numerous consequences and conflicts ...

Re-connecting the unemployed: information and communication technology and services for job seekers in rural areas

Abstract: This paper discusses the potential uses of the Internet and other forms of information and communication technology (ICT) as a tool for delivering information services for unemployed people, comparing the experiences and attitudes of jobseekers in peri-urban and remote rural labour markets. The analysis is based upon research carried out in two areas: the first combining a remote rural town with a much larger, more sparsely populated, rural ‘travel-to-work area’; the second, a centrally located peri-urban labour market. Survey research undertaken in the study areas gathered responses from 490 unemployed jobseekers. Emerging issues were then followed up during twelve focus groups. The study found that the use of ICT for job seeking remained a marginal activity for most unemployed people, but was much more important in remote rural communities. In these areas, jobseekers were more likely to use the Internet as a search tool and were particularly dependent on telephone helplines provided by the public employment service (PES). However, the study also found that a ‘digital divide’ was evident within the unemployed client group. Those with low educational attainment, the long-term unemployed, young people and those perceiving their ICT skills to be ‘poor’ were less likely to use the Internet. Although respondents in rural areas were more likely to use ICT to look for work, they also pointed to the overriding importance of informal, social networks as a means of sharing job information in remote communities. We conclude that ICT may have a future role in the delivery of services for jobseekers, especially in rural areas. However, policies are required to ensure that information provided through ICT-based services is locally relevant, and disadvantaged groups have access to the facilities and training they require.

Structure and forms of use: A contribution to understanding the role of the Internet in deliberative democracy

Abstract: This paper was delivered in different form to the conference 'The Politics of Code: Shaping the Future of the Next Internet Programme' in the Comparative Media Law and Policy/Oxford Internet Institute seminar series, University of Oxford (Feb 2003), and the UK-Netherlands Partnership Programme in Science sponsored workshop 'The Internet and International Affairs', International Institute of Infonomics, University of Maastricht, Holland (June 2003). In American Behavioral Scientist (49(4), (2005) MacDougall states: Salter's analysis is valuable because it raises the possibility that the way the medium is used and the way it is talked about might have more to say about its current and future structure than the way it is formally designed and implemented. This is a key observation that gains additional credence in the present study (578). It has also been cited in a number of journals, books and reports, Dahlberg, L. (2007) in International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3(1) pp. 47-64, and in The Information Society (22(5), 2006), where Petri points to the paper as an exemplary communitarian argument (202).

Explaining the Commercialization of the Internet

Abstract: This paper argues that a neo-Gramscian perspective can provide useful explanatory insights into the recent commercialization of the Internet. Governments, notably in the USA and Europe, have taken action to shape and smooth this transition in response to the desire of business to exploit a new commercial opportunity. A series of measures has been enacted in relatively new international fora whose general aim is to promote the development of international production and trade. There is evidence of concerted efforts aimed at designing an interconnected regulatory framework within which global electronic commerce might evolve. Governmental interests have attempted to promote the ethos of a new liberalized, self-regulatory system that prioritizes commercial and trademark interests of business.

Empowering Patients Through Access to Information

Abstract: The United States federal government is in the midst of an e- government revolution characterized by a shift from paper-based citizen-government interactions to electronic-based interactions. Driven by the demands of citizens and supported by the President and Congress, federal departments are redesigning the look and feel of their Internet presences, moving away from traditional bureaucracy- centred presentation of information to more usable citizen-centred presentations. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the USA's principal federal agency tasked with protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, has undertaken a massive reorganization of its e-health enterprise. The most publicly visible component of this reorganization is the hhs.gov portal website. This desperately needed portal - usability testing indicated that more than 60 per cent of visitors to the Department's original website failed to find the information they sought - provides easy access to t...

Shulamith Firestone: Radical feminism and visions of the information society

Abstract: Shulamith Firestone was a foundational second-wave feminist thinker. Firestone’s radical feminism argued for a future where technology was used to eliminate sexism by freeing women from childbirth and liberating both men and women from the patriarchal nuclear family. In many important ways, Firestone’s work is the precursor for contemporary cyberfeminist writing, especially the work of Donna Haraway. This paper examines Shulamith Firestone and her contribution to the information age.

Politics and Identity in Cyberspace

Abstract: This paper reports on an exploratory study of the use of new technologies by the rural women's group Australian Women in Agriculture (AWiA). Data from interviews with twenty members of AWiA and an analysis of organizational documents, including a number of messages posted on the group's discussion list, are used to examine the extent to which cyberspace offers a new space for political engagement for women's activism. The experiences of AWiA members offer some cause for optimism. Geographically dispersed and excluded from male-dominated public agricultural arenas, the women of AWiA have constructed a technosocial landscape that facilitates the active dissemination of information, which has been used to advance a political agenda for farming women. However, there is evidence that less powerful actors within the network whose preference was for more social discussion on the list have been marginalized in the process. For these women, space for political engagement online has been limited on the AWiA discuss...

The City Park as a Public Good Reference for Internet Policy Making

Abstract: Extensive literature has provided evidence of the organic nature of the Internet as a domain for different sorts of activities Most policy making regarding the Internet, however, has focused on its economic dimensions (eg e-commerce, copyrights, privacy) while taking timid steps when it comes to its cultural and social dimensions We propose a more comprehensive approach for global policy making on the Internet by looking retrospectively at processes that led to the creation of urban parks, and examining those processes in light of public goods theory We conducted historical and theoretical analyses to show that, in the same way urban parks define spaces that mediate between different functions of the city, it is possible to define buffer spaces within the Internet that mediate between competing spheres of activity As a complex phenomenon involving infrastructure, applications, and content, the Internet possesses features that can be located at different points between purely private and purely publi

Turning to the Internet for Help on Sensitive Medical Problems

Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to examine how members of an online bulletin board group concerned with sleep paralysis (SP) use the Internet to establish what it means to experience the symptoms associated with a mysterious sleep disorder. Data from 646 posts to the bulletin board, and from ten in- depth interviews with select bulletin board users, revealed that board participants constructed their disorder in three different ways: while some considered it a purely physiological problem, others believed it to be a demonic attack or a paranormal phenomenon. Results indicated that people suffering from SP are driven to the Internet by their desire to make sense of their terrifying nocturnal experiences. Rather than dispelling the myths surrounding this sleep disorder, the Internet in this study was, however, found to reinforce them by offering a forum for the discussion of alternative explanatory frameworks.

Avatar: From Deity to Corporate Property A philosophical inquiry into digital property in online games

Abstract: The focal point in this paper is our virtual selves, the avatars with which we interact with others in online virtual environments. The dispute is growing as to whom these digital manifestations belong to. The dispute is in part due to the ability of the technology to transfer the avatars and also in part on the desire of the software manufacturers to enforce the end user licence agreements. These licences do not follow contract theory but have been enforced by the courts. Despite the actions of the court their validity as a whole is still questionable. This paper contains descriptions of the disputed objects and presents the arguments of both sides. There is also a presentation of the law regulating the area and its rationale, strengths and weaknesses. Then there follows a critique of the law as it is and a presentation of what the law could, and indeed in some cases, should be. In the conclusion this work both describes the importance of this issue and what is at stake if an equitable and reasonably bal...

The sickness of an information society: R.H.Tawney and the post-industrial condition.

Abstract: R. H. Tawney is frequently cited as one of the most distinguished social theorists of the twentieth century, and his position in the British school of ethical, democratic socialism is assured. This paper revisits that contribution for the so-called post- industrial age. It emphasizes Tawney's roots in philosophical idealism and Christian socialism, demonstrating how these systems underpinned his famous critiques of inequality and the acquisitive society. His deontological morality anticipates key ideas of John Rawls, leading similarly to a robust social egalitarianism. The moral basis of Tawney's left-liberal politics explains its durability and thus its relevance for the Great Information Society Debate. Tawney would have rejected many of the propositions associated with the information society thesis, including the allegedly axial role of information itself. While recognizing the importance of information and knowledge in democracy, he would not have supported transformationist rhetoric on behalf of an electronic information polity. Tawney's essentialist socialism may be vulnerable to some of the better documented post-industrial trends, notably the move from goods to services. However, his work supplies useful resources for critical perspectives on the technocratic social structure and on the exaggerated economic role of teleworkers, inter alia. As regards the last in Daniel Bell's triad of polity, social structure and culture, some might lament the anchorage of Tawney's progressive politics in a particularist metaphysics, specifically Christianity. Yet the return of religious modes seems now as certain as the rise of new modes of information and communication. The Christian socialist values that inspired Tawney's ideal of social democracy, especially an expansive vision of brotherhood or 'fellowship', could therefore be appropriated for a modern normative theory of the information society

Closed Circuits of Interaction

Abstract: Are CCTV images of such evidential strength that they speak for themselves? If not, then for whom do they speak? CCTV cameras form a growing presence in Britain's high streets. There are estimated to be 2.5 million cameras in operation in Britain, there is an increase in legislation relating to cameras and there is increasing concern amongst civil liberties groups about cameras' effects. Claims are frequently made such as 'if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about' and 'CCTV evidence is clear to see.' These claims depend upon acceptance of the proposal that CCTV images are simply left to speak for themselves and that CCTV staff do little interpretative work. However, to investigate these claims, we need to ask: How do CCTV systems actually operate in practice. How are identities for CCTV images made 'clear', accounted for and mobilized? What work is done to promote the notion that we have nothing to worry about with CCTV? How do issues such as 'surveillance', 'privacy' and 'public' b...

Privacy, Surveillance, Trust and Regulation

Abstract: (2002). Privacy, Surveillance, Trust and Regulation. Information, Communication & Society: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 237-241.