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Web Sociology

• Adamic, Lada A. [1999] (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center)
  The Small World Web [pdf]
  The author shows that the WWW is a small world, in the sense that sites are highly clustered yet the path length between them is small: every site can be reached from every other site through only 4.2 hotlinks. Search engines might make use of the fact that pages corresponding to a particular search query can form small world networks.

• Adamic, Lada A. [2001]
  Network Dynamics: The World Wide Web [pdf]
  Can the regularities on the internet be understood by drawing on methods of statistical physics? Adamic shows that a stochastic theory can explain the power-law distributions in website sizes, traffic, and links. He also shows that the Web is a "small world": to reach one site from any other takes an average of only 4 hops, while most related sites cluster together.

• Adamic, Lada A. / Adar, Eytan [2001]
  Friends and Neighbors on the Web [pdf]
  The internet is a rich and large repository of information about individuals. The links and text on a user's homepage to the mailing lists the user subscribes to are reflections of social interactions a user has in the real world. It this article techniques are devised to mine this information in order to predict relationships between individuals. It demonstrates that some pieces of information are better indicators of social connections than others. The high quality information provides a glimpse into the social life of two communities and has potential applications in automatically inferring real-world connections and discovering and labeling communities.

• Alstyne, M.V. & Brynjolfsson, E. [1997]
  Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkans? [pdf]
  Information technology can help link geographically separated people and facilitate search for interesting or compatible resources. These attributes have the potential to bridge gaps. But they also have the potential to fragment communities by leading people to spend more time on special interests while screening out less preferred contact. This paper introduces precise measures of "balkanization" then develops a model of individual knowledge profiles and community affiliation to examine how improved access, search, and screening might fragment interaction. As IT capabilities continue to improve, policy choices we make could put us on more or less attractive paths. You can download the article in pdf format.

• alt.cyberspace - GoogleGroup
  Discussion group.

• Aoki, Kumiki [1994] (University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA)
  Virtual Communities in Japan
  Presented at the Pacific Telecommunications Council 1994 Conference.
  Virtual communities have proliferated thanks to the converging technologies of telecommunications and computing. In the USA, numerous virtual communities exist and have been expanding its scope beyond the national boundaries. But, those virtual communities originating in the USA carry heavy American-biased culture which members often take for granted because of the long history of domination in developing computer networks by American organizations. As examples of alternative virtual cultures, this paper presents major virtual communities in Japan which originated in Japan and mainly sustained by people in Japan. Aoki argues that, as virtual communities expand their scope, it becomes important to design communication systems which are sensitive to different cultural values and social principles.

• Baigorri, Artemio (University of Extremadura, Spain)
  Papers on Cybersociology

• Bangemann Report - Europe and the global information society [1995]
  Recommendations to the European Council.

• Beamish, Anne [1995] (Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT)
  Communities Online: Community-Based Computer Networks
  Beamish argues that community networks are primitive, rather crude, and barely begin to address the ambitious goals that they have set out for themselves. "They are underfunded good intentions that will lose. They will collapse from the exhaustion of their volunteers and staff struggling with a lack of revenue, donated equipment, escalating demands of their users, and ambition that can't be satisfied with their resources." But this crudeness can also be seen as indication of youth. "Community networks may now [1995] be at the stage of barely being able to walk but there is every expection that they will learn to run." The key to their future success will be the same as what it took to get them to the stage in the first place: their ability to spark and tap an extraordinary amount of energy and enthusiasm in their communities. The author suspects that community networks' role as providers of information and communication may be secondary to their role as animators for creating a stronger sense of place and community.

• Beckers, Dennis (Dept. of Social Science Informatics, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
  Research on virtual communities: an empirical approach
  Recent innovations in computers and telecommunication technologies are changing social interaction between people. However, we have only vague notions of the precise effects. This leaves space for both utopian as dystopian views, both seldom founded in empirical data. Research at community networks also serves a more direct practical goal: how can a virtual community try to support their town if they do not know who is using this system? In this paper, Beckers tries to formulate some guidelines for empirical research on virtual communities based on experience gained at research on two digital cities in Europe (Amsterdam and Parthenay).

• Benschop, Albert (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
  • Peculiarities of Cyberspace
    Essays on the social, cultural and political peculiarities of the internet. English, and (extended) Dutch version.

  • Virtual Communities: Networks of the Future
    Essay on the peculiarities of virtual social relations, communities and networks.

  • Flash Mob: Happening of Internetter:
    An analysis of the conditions, forms and effects of flash mobbing, the process of swarming and the future of inexplicable and smart mobs.

  • Lineaire en Hypertekst
    An essay on the principles and effects of writing and reading hypertext. Dutch only.

  • Internet Begrippen
    A dictionary on internet terminology (in Dutch)

  • Le peculiarietà del cyberspazio. Le basi per costruire une sociologia di Internet

• Birdsall, William F. (Dalhousie University, Canada)[1996]
  The Internet and the Ideology of Information Technology
  He contents that the Internet will become enmeshed in the political and economic dynamics of the 'ideology of information technology'. This ideology promulgates a set of economic values that are permeating the political and cultural spheres of society. Paper presented at the INET96 conference in Montreal.

• Bonchek, Mark S. [1996] (Cambridge, M.A.)
  From Broadcast to NetCast: The Internet and the Flow of Political Information
  A thesis on the use of internet for political participation. It explores how interactive media can be used to facilitate political participation.

• Brönnimann, Christoph (Soziologisches Institut, Universität Zürich, Switzerland)
  • [1992] Computertechnologie und neue Formen mikrosozialer Interaction

  • [August 1996] Öffentlichkeit und politische Partizipation in kommunalen Netzwerken
    Research paper on political participation in local networks.

  • [Oktober 1997] Interaktion im Cyberspace - Eine neue Form des 鰂fentlich-privaten Austauschs
    The article concentrates on the relevance of Goffmanns internaction theory for the analysis of new, virtual forms of interaction.

• Bühl, Achim (Marburg, Germany)
  ComputerSoziologie
  • [1995] Cyberspace und Virtual Reality
    In: Forum Wissenschaft 1/95

  • [1995] Soziologie virtueller Welten
    In: Forum Wissenschaft 4/95
    Article on the sociology of virtual worlds.

  • Soziologie der Science Fiction
    A page on science fiction works from a sociological perspective.

• Canadian Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC) [1997]
  Preparing Canada for a Digital World
  Final report from the IHAC september 26, 1997.

• Chesher, Chris
  Colonizing Virtual Reality
  Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality, 1984-1992. From: Cultronix (volume 1, number 1). An analysis of the cultural processes by which computer-generated immersive technologies known as "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" came to mainstream attention and acceptance.

• Cicognani, Anna (University of Sydney, Australia)
  On the Linguistic Nature of Cyberspace and Virtual Communities
  The author presents an hypothesis for a linguistic explanation of the nature of Virtual Communities. Her paper presents a perspective of how electronic space (or cyberspace) can be considered language based. She argues that a definition of electronic space cannot be given beyond its linguistic characteristics, which underlie and sustain it. She beliefs is that the more we understand the relationship between language and cyberspace, the more we are able to use specific metaphors for dwelling and inhabiting it.

• Copyright and Intellectual Property Resources (SocioSite)

• Courses on WebSociology (SocioSite)

• CyberSex (SocioSite)
  Resources on computer mediated sex, romance and eroticism.

• Dando, Yasuharu
  Japan Research and Analysis through Internet Information
  Columns which discuss social phenomena in Japan. The original columns are written in Japanese, and include many links to news sources.

• Dhamee, Yousuf
  Conceptualizing the Internet
  A very short statement in which he rejects the solution of turning all of cyberspace to a private enterprise which would prevent overuse in order to maximize efficiency and thus profit. The main reason being that in cyberspace information is not scarce
  there's no danger of all of the cyberspace being used up.

• Donath, Judith Stefania (MIT Media Lab)
  Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community

• Dyson, Esther / Gilder, George / Keyworth, George / Toffler, Alvin
  Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age
  A statement that represents the cumulative wisdom and innovation of many dozens of people. It is based primarily on the thoughts of Dyson, Gilder, Keyworth, and Toffler. Presented by The Progress & Freedom Foundation.

• Ebbers, Wolfgang Erich
  Internet and the influences on internal communication [Moved to ...?]
  One of the central hypotheses of this thesis: Once the internet is imbedded into an organization, (informal) team boundaries start to change and therefore (informal) teams start to change because of the Internet being a communication infrastructure and thus providing internal communication as a phenomenon.

• Falk, Jim [1995] (Department of Science and Technology Studies, Wollongong, Australia)
  The Meaning of the Web

• Fernback, Jan & Thompson, Brad
  Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?
  A critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of virtual communities. One of the conclusions is that the likely result of the development of virtual communities through computer-mediated communication (CMC) will be that a hegemonic culture will maintain its dominance. The virtual public sphere brought about by CMC will serve a cathartic role, allowing the public to feel involved rather than to advance actual participation. Citizenship via cyberspace has not proven to be the panacea for the problems of democratic representation.

• Geser, Hans (Sociology Department, University of Zürich, Switzerland)
  • [1996] Soziologische Annäherungen an den Cyberspace
    A syllabus in German with a mostly English bibliography.

  • [1996] Auf dem Weg zur «Cyberdemocracy»?
    Auswirkungen der Computernetze auf die öffentliche politische Kommunikation. A Swiss contribution on the effects of computer networks on the public political communication. Will there be room for 'cyber democracy'? (in German)

  • [2001] On the Functions and Consequences of the Internet for Social Movements and Voluntary Associations
    Voluntary associations are particularly prone to embrace the new internet technologies. On the basis of these new tools, they are better able to be what they always aspired to be: democraticalley constituted collectivities relying on a complex interplay between internal and external, vertical and horizontal, upward and downward, informal and formal, bilateral and multilateral commumnications. The polyvalence of online communicatoin technologies will be used in more extensive ways by social movements and voluntary associations.

  • [2003] Metasoziologische Implikationen des "Cyberspace"
    Four general sociological thesis on cyberspace. Cyberspace is analysed as a 'soft' social world without exogene-physical restrictions that needs some stabilizing and complexity reducing mechanisms.

• Gilbert, John / Hepburn, Ken / Henter, Guido [1995]
  Affordable and Equitable Access to the Information Highway
  Final report from the Canadian Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), May 26, 1995.

• Gräf, Lorenz / Krajwski, Markus (eds.)
  Soziologie des Internet: Handeln im elektronische Web-Werk
  A German contribution to the sociology of cyberspace. You can read the abstracts of all the German articles.

• Gromov, Gregory R.
  History of the Internet and WWW: Road 1 -- USA to Europe
  A summary of key milestones in internet history.

• Hafner, Katie [1997]
  The Epic Saga of the Well
  in Wired (May 1997): 97-142.
  The rough and romantic history of "the world's most influential online community." The essay begins where Rheingold's The Virtual Community leaves off and provides a deep account of the Bay Area-based online community. She combines a concise institutional history, technical considerations with personal online histories to create a narrative of a virtual community.

• Hardy, Henry Edward (Univ. Michigan, USA)
  The Usenet System

• Hargittai, Eszter (Sociology Department, Princeton University, USA)
  WeacTies (World-wide Electronic Admixture of Cultures).
  Hargittai studies the international aspects of the Internet through a sociological lense. The site provides information on works in progress, related organizations and events, course syllabi, and links to sites, publications, statistical databases, etc. that can be helpful to researchers studying the topic.

• Heintz, Bettina / Müller, Christoph ( University of Bern, Switzerland)
  Die Sozialwelt des Internet
  A project on the social integrative function of virtual communities. The main question of this project is: Can telecommunication create new social networks that operate as counter force against processes of social fragmentation?

• Helmers, Sabine / Hoffmann, Ute / Hofmann, Jeanette [1998]
  (Social Science Research Center Berlin/Technical University Berlin)
  Internet... The Final Frontier [pdf]
  The final report of German resarch project "Interaktionsraum Internet". It's a study of the constitutive features of network culture and network organization. Special emphasis is givin to the dynamic interplay of technical and social conventions regarding both the net's organization as well as its change. The Internet is analysed from a ethnographic perspective. The research concentrated upon three fields of study: the hegemonial operating technology of thet nodes (UNIX), the network's basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP), and a popular communicaiton service (Usenet). It is shown that changes that come about on the Internet are neither anarchic nor arbitrary. Instead, the decentrally organized Internet is based upop technically and organizationally distributed forms of coordination within which individual preferences collectivily attain the power of developing into definitive standards.

• Hughes, Ian (School of Behavioural & Community Health, University of Sydney, Australia)
  Community Study Knowledge Base
  Resources to inform students who want to undertake a community directory, a community profile, or a community study.

• Information Society Project Office (ISPO)
  Information Society Trends

• Internet, Cyberspace & Social Theory
  A contribution to cybersociology from Korea.

• Internet 2 Homepage
  Information about the cooperative effort of 170 member universities working together with private member companies and non-profit organizations. Through high bandwidth and bandwidth reservation it wants to provide tools for scientific research and higher education in the 21st century.

• Internet Society (ISOC)
  A non-profit, non-governmental, international membership organization that brings diverse interests and factions together to hammer out reasonable solutions that generate progress and growth for the Internet.

• IRISS
  Internet Research and Information for Social Scientists
  (Bristol, March 25-27th, 1998)
  Includes abstracts of the 55 papers presented at the conference.

• Jacobson, David [2002] (Brandies University, USA)
  On Theorizing Presence
  In: Journal of Virtual Environments 6(1), 2002.
  Presence is the experience of being engaged by the representations of a virtual world. Most studies on presence has focused on technologies that use a variety of sensory inputs to create a simulacrum of a real environment. A virtual reality that mimics perceptions in the physical world. The author analyses presence in the context of text-based virtual worlds. He reviews the theories that identify factors that promote or undermine a sense of presence in text-based virtual worlds.

• Kling, Rob (Indiana University School of Library and Information Science)
  The Internet for Sociologists
  An article with the unmodest ambition of explaining to sociologists why they should take the Internet seriously as a medium of professional communication, and why some sociologists should be specially interested in the Internet (or other computer networks) as social spaces in which to study shifting social relationships in our society. The first part of the article may be specially useful to sociologists who have relatively limited experience with Internet services. The second part discusses sociological uses of the Internet to support research, teaching, and professional communication that could interest readers with significant Internet experiences.

• Kollock, Peter (Univ. of California, Los Angeles, USA)
  • [1996] Design Principles for Online Communities
    Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society, 1996. Also published in PC Update 15(5): 58-60. June 1998.
    Kollock argues that the key challenges the Internet community will face in the future are not technological, but rather sociological: the challenges of social interaction and social organization. In: The Internet and Society: Harvard Conference Proceedings. Cambridge, MA: O'Reilly & Associates.

  • [1997] The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace
    To be published in: Marc Smith and Peter Kollock (eds.) [1997] Communities in Cyberspace, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

• Kollock, Peter / Smith, Marc
  Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities
  In: Susan Herring(ed.) [1996] Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 109-128.

• Labrosse, Denis (University of Quebec, Montreal)
  CyberCulture: La nouvelle sociologie du cyberspace
  A Canadian site for the sociological study of cyberspace culture. It contains some original papers on different aspects of cyber culture (freedom on the Internet; the prospects of virtual communities). And you will find links to hypertextual creations which demonstrate the creative possibilities on the Internet.

• Larson, R.R. [1996] Bibliometrics of the World Wide Web: An Explorarory Analysis of the Intellectual Structure of Cyberspace

• Lombard, Matthew / Ditton, Theresa
  • [1997] At the Heart of it All: The Concept of Presence
    In: JCMC 3(2), September 1997.
    New technologies such as virtual reality and videoconferencing are designed to privide media users with an illusion that a mediated experience is non mediated, a perception of presence. This article examines the key concept of presence. It discusses research and speculatoin about the factors that encourage or discourage a sense of presence in media users as well as the physiological and psychological effectes of presence.
  • [2000] Measuring Presence
    A literature-bases approach to the development of a standardized paper-and-pencil instrument.
    

• March, Scott [1995]
  Community Organizing on the Internet: Implications for Social Work Practictioners

• Martens, Rolf
  Die spontane Matrix - Thesen zu einer Ordnungstheorie von Cyberspace und Internet
  In this thesis Cyberspace and Internet are seen as a spontaneous (emergent) socio-technical order and as the result of a socio-technical evolution of rules (in German with an English abstract).

• McFadden, Tim
  Cyberspace - the New Jerusalem
  Definitions and Origin of Cyberspace.

• Mizrach, Steve
  • CyberAnthropology

  • Lost in Cyberspace: A Cultural Geography of Cyberspace
    People working in the anthropology of space and cultural geography have "fertile territory" to survey in cyberspace. Unlike so many other landscapes, this is one which is being built right before their eyes. Observing how people perceive, locate themselves, find meaning, and identify themselves in cyberspace, may help us understand the analogous processes of how this occurs in 'realspace.' However, cyberspace provides more than a testing ground for existing hypotheses about how social-cultural relations emerge in space. It is a new kind of space that is emerging, and will force the rethinking of old assumptions about place and space.

• Morris, Merrill (Christine Ogan Indiana University)
  The Internet as Mass Medium
  Why have communications researchers, historically concerned with exploring the effects of mass media, nearly ignored the Internet? With 25 million people estimated to be communicating on the Internet, should communication researchers now consider this network of networks a mass medium? Until recently, mass communications researchers have overlooked not only the Internet but the entire field of computer-mediated communication, staying instead with the traditional forms of broadcast and print media that fit much more conveniently into models for appropriate research topics and theories of mass communication.

• Next Generation Internet Initiative Concept Paper
  Produced by the National Coordinating Office for Computing, Information, and Communications. It outlines the NGI high performance network initiative, and discusses the goals, deliverables, benefits, management, and action plan for NGI. Readers can comment on any section of the draft, and comments will be used in the preparation of a final version of the report.

• North, Tim [1994]
  The Internet and Usenet Global Computer Networks
  A Masters thesis.
  A cultural-anthropological investigation of their culture and its effects on new users. In the eyes of a cultural-anthropologist, the Internet looks like a kind of tribal society without a state.

• Renaud, Isabelle [1997] (Department of Anthropology of the University of Laval, Canada)
  Cogitation virtuelle: débats et enjeux sociaux sur Internet
  Article about the social influence of the net, and especially about the cultural changes the Internet has on the society of Quebeque.

• Rheingold, Howard
  • The Virtual Community

  • Virtual Worlds: Communities and Realities

• Rice Design Alliance
  The Virtual City
  A lecture series.

• Rilling, Rainer [1997] (Marburg, Germany)
  Politische Netzkommunikation und Entscheidung [doc]
  (Political communication and decision on the Internet)

• Roggen, Ingar (Norway)
  Web Sociology and Social Informatics

• Rosen, Nick
  Net-Head Handbook
  A site that expands on the comic book with the same title. Hundreds of issues you can meet on your travel on the Internet. It defines eight types of Internet users, and ten ways to make them unhappy.

• Rospach, Chuq von
  Netiquette FAQ
  A Primer on How to Work With the USENET Community.

• Rost, Martin [1997]
  Anmerkungen zu einer Soziologie des Internet
  In:Lorenz Gräf & Markus Krajewski (Hrsg.) [1997] Soziologie des Internet. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. pp. 14-38.
  From the perspective of sociology of technology we have to study the new forms of communication and the consequences for people, organizations and for the society as a whole. But we also have to analyze computer networks as a "social fact" [Durkheim 1895]. In his first attempt to build a sociology of the Internet, Rost uses concepts of the sociology of technology ('labor', 'algoritm', 'system') and the stratification model of the net-technology. The central concept he uses is "protocol" (how computers talk to one another).

• Scientific American
  Internet: Bringing order from Chaos
  Special report, march 1997.
  Noted technologists tackle questions about how to organize knowledge on the internet with the aim of making it more genuinely useful. They consider how to simplify finding the information we desire and discuss the best ways to format and display data, so that everyone (including the blind) has maximum access to them. The authors sketch a technological pathway that might take the internet a step toward realizing the utopian vision of an all-encompassing repository of human knowledge.

• Scime, Roger
  Cyberville and the Sprit of Community
  A paper on the nature of virtual communities.

• The Small World Research Project
  A team of sociologists at Columbia University (USA) analyses the "Small World Phenomenon". The idea is that everyone in the world can be reached through a short chain of social acquaintances. Thirty years ago the Harvard Social Psychologist Stanley Milgram launched the famous phrase " Six Degrees of Separation". The sociologists at Columbia try to find out if this is true. You are invited to participate in the research by sending a message chain to one of the targets.

• Smith, Marc A. (UCLA, Los Angeles, USA)
  • Voices from the Well
    Recent development of virtual communities, sites of social interaction predominantly mediated by computers and telecommunications networks, provides a unique opportunity to study the mechanisms by which collectivities generate and maintain the commitment of their participants in a new social terrain. Using the analytical framework developed in studies of intentional communities and collective action dilemmas, this paper examines the unique obstacles to collective action and the commitment mechanisms used to overcome them in a particular virtual community, the WELL.

  • Bibliography on the Sociology of Cyberspace

• Smith, Marc / Kollock, Peter (eds.) [1999]
  Communities in Cyberspace - New Forms of Social Interaction and Organization
  Explores new forms of social organization and the changing concepts of community as social groups develop within computer networks, and examines changes in the nature of personal identity, social organization and the connections between real-world communities and their extensions in cyberspace. See also the Communities in Cyberspace Home.

• Steere, Elizabeth Reid (University of Melbourne, Australia)
  • [1991] Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat
    A paper on interaction in 'Internet Relay Chat' (IRC). The structure of IRC forces users to deconstruct many of the cultural tools that form the basis of more conventional systems of interaction. Within this environment new methods of creating shared systems of significance, and methods of enforcing that new hegemony, have developed. IRC's internal system of cultural deconstruction and regeneration is mirrored in its implications for the external system of academic discourse. It is proposed that the forms of interaction seen on IRC problematize and necessitate the reconstruction of some of the methods of analysis that have been applied to computer-mediated communication. IRC - and computer-mediated communication in general - offer challenges to disciplines such as linguistics, sociology and history that demand a reconstruction of those discourses.

  • [1994] Cultural Transformations in Text-Based Virtual Realities
    Virtual reality is an imaginative experience and thus a cultural construct. This thesis discusses the cultural and social issues raised by interaction on MUDs (text-based virtual reality systems). MUD usage forces users to deconstruct many of the cultural tools and understandigs that form the basis of more conventional systems of interaction. Unable to rely on physical cues as a channel of meaning, users of MUDs have developed ways of substituting for or by-passing them, resulting in novel methods of textualising the non-verbal. The nature of the body and sexuality are problematised in these virtual environments, since the physical is never fixed and gender is a self-selected attribute. In coming to terms with these aspects of virtual interaction, new systems of significance have been developed by users, along with methods of enforcing that cultural hegemony through power structures dependent upon manipulation of the virtual environment.

• Stivale, Charles J. (Dept. of Romance Languages & Literatures, Wayne State University, USA)
  'help manners': Cyber-Democracy and its Vicissitudes
  An examination of "frontier" legislation and self-governance in chat sites. These are the pertinent questions: What are the laws of comportment and respect in cyberspace? Assuming such "laws" (or at least, guidelines) were developed, how might they be enforced in online environments, especially those in which user anonymity is frequently the rule?

• Stough, Roger R. (Center for Regional Analysis Institute of Public Policy George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA)
  Effect of Information Technology Innovations on Outer Metropolitan Regions
  Some people think that information technology will increasingly become a substitute for trip taking, while others see it as a compliment to transportation. This paper examines these arguments through a literature review with model development and numerical experimentation. The conclusion is that substitution effects will be sufficient to induce concentration of new growth in U.S. metropolitan regions far beyond the current "edge city" periphery.

• Taprogge, Ralf (University of Münster, Germany) [Moved to ...?]
  Internet-Nutzung durch Studierende geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Studiengänge in Deutschland
  A German site on the ways social scientists use the internet for their work. From a communication perspective it analyses how students of the social sciences use the internet for their study.

• Unsworth, John
  Constructing the Virtual Campus
  Paper presented at the 1994 Modern Language Association meeting in Toronto.

• Vesna, Victoria (Department of Art Studio University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
  The Wild West and the Frontier of Cyberspace
  A paper that looks into the basic chemistry of silicon, the matter, its states, its applications affecting our material world and the discovery of its hidden qualities in the exploratory construction of cyberspace. She analyses three locations which are particularly intriguing as examples are: Hollywood, the established Dream Factory whose machine is well oiled, whose stories and images are sold around the globe, Orange County, the leader in building new large generic developments first generated on the computer screen and Silicon Valley - the cradle of the semiconductor and software industry that propels this imagery both on in the concrete and etheric worlds. These are three dimensions of California life, three realities in which human bodies and plants are modified with silicone.

• Virtual Society?
  A research programme of the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), Brunel University, UK. The central question is: are fundamental shifts taking place in how people behave, organize themselves and interact as a result of electronic technologies? The main themes are the impact of new electronic and communications technologies on human and organizational potential, performance and learning; the rol of new electronic techniques in relations between people and in modifying processes and degrees of social inclusion and exclusion ('social cohesion'); and the changing social contexts and factors influencing the transformation and adoption of electronic technologies.

• Watts, Duncan (Santa Fe Institute, USA)
  The Internet, The Small World, and The Nature of Distance
  We are use to think of "distance" as determined by separation in space. But there might be other sensible definitions of distance that may turn out to be just as important in the modern world. For instance, when sociologists talk about "social distance". The Internet has made physical distance increasingly irrelevant to all manner of information-based interactions and transactions: retrieval of information, access to services, performance of work, formation of organizations, and purchase of material products. Watts is an optimist and suggests that not only physical distance but social distance as well is becomming irrelevant. There are stronger arguments for his suggestion to define distance in terms of a network: the distance between two people in a society can be measured by the number "degrees of separation", where the links or degrees join the two through a series of intermediaries. It appears that the typical distance between any pair of people is remakably small. This "small world phenomenon" was confirmed by a study, conducted in the 1960's by Stanley Milgram. It indicated that most people are separated by only about six degrees.

• Wilkinson, David
  Sociology of the Internet
  Wilkinson, who's working on his Master's Thesis in Sociology at Wichita State University (USA), publishes his writings on the Net and solicits commentary. Visitors can inspect his progress.
  • [1997] The Web and Conflict Theory
  • [1998] Internet Usage Among Women And The Race Variable
  • [1998] Thinking about Web Search Engines and Other Things
  • [1999] Technologies of Globalization: Using the Masters Tools

• Wilson, D.R. / Carlson, David L.
  Researching Sociology on the Internet
  The Wadsworth Sociology Research Center presents a guide for students who are generally familiar with the internet, but do not have much experience using the web to study sociology. The guide not only provides you with the answers to some simple questions, but also stipulates how you can use the internet to place the study of sociology into a broader context. It focusses on different fields of sociological study: research methods, socialization, culturel, social groups, social control, social inequality, institutions, social dynamics and social change. Students are introduced to specific web sites as starting points for internet research.

• Winkler, Roy (Indiana, USA)
  The Web Gate - Dynamics of the Internet
  Concentrates on group dynamics as they manifest themselves in the online medium of the internet. What is the impact of tools such as hypertext, instant E-mail, search engines, multi-media, and other mechanisms we use daily on the Internet? What are the implications of communicating primarily through ASCII text in Email and newsgroup forums? What are the consequences on society of widespread use of the Internet? How does it feel to be an ongoing member of an E-mail discussion list?

Research Centers

• Association of Internet Researchers
  The a(o)ir is an academic association dedicated to the advancement of the cross-disciplinary field of internet studies.

• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) - UK
  Virtual Society? - The Social Science of Electronic Technology
  An exciting ESRC research programme, comprising 22 projects, on the social context of the development and use of new technologies. Its website offers a wide range of news, research findings, articles, reports, bibliographic and other resources, as well as event announcements. Director: Steve Woolgar.

• Internet Studies Center (ICS) - University of Minnesota, USA
  An interdisciplinary effort to encourage research on social, ethical, legal, and rethorical aspects of the internet.

• Projektgruppe Kulturraum Internet
  Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. A German group studying the cultural dimensions of the Internet. German & English versions.

• NetSociology
  Department of social sciences and commmunication, University of Lecce, Italy.

• Microsoft Research
  Collaborative & Muldimedia Systems
  A group that explores new technologies and novel applications in the areas of online communication, collaboration, and communities.

• Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (RCCS)
  A not-for-profit organization directed by David Silver of the American Studies Program at the University of Maryland. RCCS hopes to foster a web community where students, researchers, and web builders alike can collaborate and share experiences and projects in the area of cyberculture. It includes syllabi for education courses in the US and Canada devoted to cyberculture dating from 1993 to the present. It also includes an annotated bibliography of print articles and monographs on "Cyberculture in Context", "Virtual Communities", "Virtual Cities", and Virtual Identities", as well as a list of recent and upcoming events and conferences addressing cyberculture. Recently they added "Conversations/Collaborations" where visitors are invited to browse through the research interests and undergoing projects of a number of scholars, researchers, and instructors affiliated directly and indirectly with the field of cyberculture. The second new feature is called "Internet Interviews", which includes a list of links to online interviews with a number of digerati. The list includes Nicholas Negroponte, Allucquere Rosanne (aka Sandy) Stone, Sherry Turkle, and Gregory Ulmer.

Journals

• Cybersoc
  Sociological and ethnographic study of Cyberspace. An online resource for members of the online community as well as to academics in the social sciences. Includes papers by Robin Hamman and other cyberspace researchers, resources for social scientists researching (bibliographies and categorised links). Editor: Robin Hamman.

• Cybersociology Magazine
  Magazine for social-scientific researchers of cyberspace. Editor: Robin Hamman.

• Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (JCMC)
  A joint project of the Annenberg School for Communication (University of Southern California) and the Information Systems Division of the School of Business Administration (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). Editors: Margaret McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli.

• Journal of Virtual Environments (JOVE) [full text]
  A refereed electronic journal which publishes research that relates to or makes use of virtual environments. Editor: David Jacobson.

• The Information Society (TIS)
  A critical forum for leading edge analysis of the impacts, policies, system concepts, methodologies related to information technologies and changes in society and culture. Includes computers and telecommunications; the sites of social change include homelife, workplaces, schools, communities and diverse organizations, as well as new social forms in cyberspace. It publishes scholarly articles, position papers, debates, short communications and book reviews. Editor-in-Chief: Rob Kling.

Magazines

• Communications of the ACM (Association for Cumputing Machinery)
  A monthly magazine and claims a readership of 83,000 computing professionals. Includes general interest articles, case studies, and special sections. There are also several channels for expressions of opinion and technical commentary.

• CMC Magazine
  Reports about people, events, technology, public policy, culture, practices, study, and applications of the phenomenon of human communication and interaction via computer networks and in online environments. Go directly to the Current Issue. Editor: John December

Bulletins and Newsletters

• Computers & Society
  A quarterly bulletin of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Computers and Society (SIGCAS) - Articles on social implications of computerization -- including computer ethics, privacy, organizational issues, intellectual and other property, equity, gender, health and safety, environment, professional certification, education, research, and similar topics. Editor: Tom Jewett (Department of Computer Science in the California State University at Long Beach).

• TechnoScience
  Newsletter of the Society for Social Studies of Science. To find out the latest news and debates in the science studies world, you can subscribe to the sci-tech-studies by sending an e-mail message to sts-request@cctr.umkc.edu with a message: <subscribe>.

• The Network Observer (TNO)
  A free on-line newsletter about networks and democracy. Editor: Phil Agre (Department of Communication, Univ. of California, San Diego, USA). It appeared monthly from January 1994 to July 1996.

Directories and Indexes

• Articles and Essays on the Internet
  From the English Server.

• Community Networks: an On-line Guide to Resources
  A compilation of references, links, and publications related to a variety of networked information infrastructures such as community oriented information networks (such as Community Networks, Free-nets, Civic Networks). School of Information MAnagement and Systems, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

• CyberSoc - Sociological and Ethnographic Research of Cyberspace
  Resources for social scientists interested in the study of the internet, cyberspace, computer mediated communication, and online communities. The site contains original papers, a Cybersociology Magazine, annotated bibliographies and categorized links, and an online cyberstudies bookstore. Users can join the Cybersoc mailing list for the latest information on upcoming conferences, calls for papers, and new book listings. Editor: Robin Hamman (Univ. of Westminster, London).

• Cyberspace Links
  An excellent collection of links to cyberspace journals, literature, activities, research centres, groups, and MUD's. Editor: Robert van Krieken (Univ. of Sidney, Australia).

• CyberStudies Links
  Editor: Jenny Vaughn (Philadelphia, USA).

• Digital Media: Communities
  Annotated directory of links for information about creating, managing, and studying online communities. Presented by: University of Iowa Libraries.

• INET'96 Papers
  A collection articles on several aspects of the internet that capture our imaginations and challenge our assumptions.

• Internet and Networking
  Resources on history of the Internet, Information Economy, Information Ethics, and General Reference. Presented by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).

• Kelly, Paul
  Netropolitan Life?
  A comprehensive guide to issues and resources pertaining to virtual communities. It is also the homepage for a course called: The Virtual Community: Daily Life in Cyberspace at Calumet College at York University. Paul Kelly is the course instructor and page editor.

• Net Culture & Cyber-Anthropology
  Lots of material on the Internet-culture.

• New Organizational Forms & Virtual Communities
  A Business Researcher's Interests.

• Policy Gateway - Harvard Information Infrastructure Project (USA)
  Provides links to Internet-based information infrastructure topics: telecommunications and information policy, applications, statistics and much more.

• Sociologie des Internet
  Resources and articles on the sociology of cyberspace. Editor: Rainer Rilling (Marburg, Germany).

• Towards Cybersociety and "Virtual" Social Relations - Online Publications
  From: Sociology in Switzerland.

• Virtual Communities
  A list of annotated links, gathered by Thierry Nabeth (Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies, CALT).

• When Harry@geocities.com meets Sally@hotmail.com: Communities and Relationships via CMC
  We did know that "the web isn't just about information; often people are online for participation, connections, and self-actualization" (John December). Joanna Boyd has collected some URLs on this theme.

Web Economy - CyberCapitalism

• Cappel, James J. (Dept. of Business Information Systems, Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University) and
  Myerscough, Mark A. (Information Systems Research Center Business Computer Information Systems Dept., University of North Texas)
  World Wide Web Uses for Electronic Commerce: Toward a Classification Scheme [1996]
  A categorization of company uses of the WWW for electronic commerce, along with examples of sites that represent each of these types. The classification scheme is designed to cover the major uses of the Web by "for-profit" companies. Some writers have defined electronic commerce strictly as the buying and selling of information, products, and services via computer networks. The proposed classification scheme assumes a broader definition that recognizes WWW uses that involve "support for any kind of business transactions over a digital infrastructure" (Bloch et al. 1996). Companies are utilizing the WWW today for purposes of: (1) promoting greater awareness of their companies and products; (2) providing customer support for their products; (3) offering sales of products or services directly or indirectly either exclusively through the Web or to supplement existing marketing channels; (4) selling advertising space on Web sites to other companies; and (5) offering electronic information services.

• CIO WebBusiness
  Mastering the Web in Business.

• Economics of Financial Networks and Electronic Trading
  A collection of papers on financial exchange networks, electronic trading, call marktes, and market liquidity. The main issue of these papers is the micro-structure of financial exchange. Collected by Nicholas Economides.

• Economics of Networks Internet Site
  A collection of information on economic issues of networks, such as the internet, telephone and fax communications networks, the railroad network, the airline network, as well as financial exchange and credit card networks. Collected by Nicholas Economides.

• Economics of Networks
  Special Issue of the International Journal of Industrial Organization. Vol 14(6), dec. 1996. Edited by: Nicholas Economides & David Encaoua. You can read the articles online or download them in postscript or pdf format.

• Economides, Nicolas
  Bibliography on Network Economics
  An interactive bibliography on the economics of networks and related subjects. Very extensive and probably the best you can get.

• Haley, Barbara J. / Carte, Traci A. / Watson, Richard T. (University of Georgia, Management Department)
  Commerce on the Web: How is it Growing? Commercial activity on the Web is a hot topic. While many researchers have investigated Web end-users, few systematically have studied the companies conducting Web commerce. These authors have examined 98 businesses listed on the Commercial Sites Index (CSI) by content analysing sites. They ask: How quickly is commercial Web activity growing? What types of businesses are using the Web? How are businesses using the Web? How is commercial Web activity changing? They conclude: "The overall picture indicates continued rapid Web development by organizations both in terms of new adopters and expansion by early adopters. Both are signs that the Web contributes to organizational performance."

• Information Economy, The
  The economics of the Internet, information goods, intellectual property and related issues. This site is part of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California Berkeley (USA). Editor: Hal R. Varian.

• Intellectual Property Resources (Subject Areas)

• Kelly, Kevin (Wired)
  New Rules for the New Economy

• Kollock, Peter (Univ. of California, Los Angeles, USA)
  
  • [1997] The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace
    Published in: Marc Smith and Peter Kollock (eds.) [1999] Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge.

  • [1999] The Production of Trust in Online Markets
    Published in Advances in Group Processes (Vol. 16), edited by E.J. Lawler, M. Macy, S Thyne, and H.A. Walker. Greenwich Ct: JAY Press.

• Lemley, Mark A. [1999] (University of California-Berkeley, USA)
  The Law and Economics of Internet Norms [pdf]
  Should the law defer to social norms on the Internet, either by abdicating its role entirely to cyberspace self-governance, or by carving out particular roles for nonlegal rulemaking? No, says Lemley. He argues that Internet norms are elusive and rapidly changing, and that in most cases there is noting like the consensus required for norm creation. Internet norms are likely to be inefficient, particularly when they are enforced by the underlying threat of exclusion from the network itself. Lemley suggests that neither Net "vigilantes," judges, nor code itself can be relied upo to identify and enforce Internet norms with an appropriate sensitivity to efficiency and policy concerns.

• Mackie-Mason, Jeffrey K. / Varian, Hal R.
  Economic FAQs About the Internet
  A set of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) about the economic, institutional, and technological structure of the Internet.

• Robins, Kevin / Webster, Frank
  Cybernetic Capitalism: Information, Technology, Everyday Life

Web History

• 25th Anniversary of ARPANET
  Center for the History of Information Processing (Charles Babbage Institute, USA).

• Arpanet Maps
  Covers the period 1969 to 1997.

• Benschop, Albert - Univ. of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  Web History
  A very short history of the Internet from Paul Baran's report On Distributed Communications [1962] via the Arpanet [1969] to Bill Gates initiatives in the 90th. See also the expanded Dutch version.

• Berners-Lee, Tim
  • [1989] Information Management: A Proposal
    In this document Berners-Lee tried to persuade CERN management that a global hypertext system - he called it "Mesh" - was in CERN's interests.

  • [1991/2] WWW - An Illustrated Seminar

  • [1995] Hypertext and Our Collective Destiny

  • [1998] The World Wide Web: A very short personal history

• A Brief History of the Internet,
  The history of the Internet written by people who made it. The authors are: Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf (TCP/IP), David Clark (simple TCP implementation), Robert Kahn (ARPANET), Leonard Kleinrock (packet switching theory), Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel (RFCs and IP number assignments), Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff (NSFNET). They concentrate on four areas: technological evolution, operations and management, social aspects, and commercialization aspects.

• Cailliau, Robert
  In 1990 Cailliau proposed, with Tim Berners-Lee, a hypertext system for access to CERN documentation. That joint project became the World Wide Web.
  • [1995] A Short History of the Web
    Text of a speech delivered at the launching of the European branch of the W3 Consortium, Paris, 2 november 1995.
  • [1997] How it really happened
    Interview with Robert Cailliau by Charles Petrie.

• Cerf, Vinton
  How the Internet Came to Be
  In this article Cerf -- who created the TCP/IP-protocol -- discusses the birth of the ARPANET and the Internet and his personel involvement in this development.

• Community Memory
  Discussion List on the history of cyberspace from the Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility (CPSR). A moderated discussion list whose purpose is to explore the origins, history and development of computer networks, computer hardware, software, and computer science, and the environment collectively known as "cyberspace." Emphasis is placed on human factors -- on who knew whom, how ideas spread and originated. You can subscribe to the list by sending an e-mail to listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu with the message "SUBSCRIBE CYHIST firstname lastname". Moderator: David S. Bennahum.

• DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
  The central research and development organization for the U.S. Department of Defence.

• Hardy, Henry Edward (Univ. Michigan, USA)
  History of the Net
  A master's thesis.

• Hauben, Michael
  History of ARPANET
  

• Hauben, Michael / Hauben, Ronda
  Netizens - On the history and impact of Usenet and the Internet
  A netbook presenting the history and impact of various aspects of the Net: Internet, ARPANET, Usenet, etc.

• Historical Maps of ARPANET and the Internet
  A range of historical maps of ARPANET, Internet and Usenet, showing how these networks grew and developed from their beginnings in 1960s. Presented by the Cyber-Geography Research.

• History of the Internet and the WWW
  Information and original documents on the birth of the internet, beginning with the ARPANET. Presented by Web Developer's Virtual Library.

• Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is building a library of snapshopts of publicly accessible Internet sites.

• Internet History and WWW History
  A resource dedicated to providing the best links of Internet history, WWW history, Internet statistics and Internet usage. Editor: Jesper Vissing Laursen (Copenhagen, Denmark).

• Kahn, Robert E.
  Role of Government in the Evolution of the Internet
  The article focuses on the primary - but declining - role the U.S. government has played in the Internet's evolution and discusses the role that governments around the world may have to play as it continues to develop. Kahn concludes that there is a major continuing set of roles and responsibilities for government to undertake, both in the United States and around the world.

• Kleinrock, Leonard
  • The Birth of the Internet
    Essay on the installation of the first ARPANET node. Kleinrock is known as the inventor of the internet technology: a decade before the birth of the internet he created the basic principles of pachet switching.

  • The Day the Infant Internet Uttered its First Words
    A record of the first message ever sent over the ARPANET at 22.30 hours on October 29, 1969.

• Kristula, Dave
  The History of the Internet
  A timeline of the internet.

• Kulikowski II, Stan
  Timeline of Network History

• Marsh, David
  History of the Internet
  An internet timeline: 1836-1997.

• Net Timeline: Life on the Internet

• Salminen , Harri K. [1998]
  All About The Internet
  A timeline of the internet: from the 60's till 1998.

• Sterling, Bruce
  Short History of the Internet
  From The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1993.

• Stewart, Bill
  The Living Internet
  Comprehensive information about the internet. The site is equivalent to a book of more than 600 pages with more than 2,000 intra-site links and 2,000 external links woven into the text.

• Tappendorf, Sean
  ARPANET and Beyond

• Zakon, Robert H.
  Internet Timeline
  History of Internet, from the ARPA-net (1957) untill the last events in this year. With several other resources and growth tables.

 

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2007-02-02