End of Semester.

The Spring semester of 2005-6 has ended. It was a great seminar with all of you, and wish you all good luck in your future academic endeavors. Though class is over, this blog will stay open for future students to refer to.

Is the real problem dichotomy?

It seems that human beings have a natural penchant for dichotomy. The prototypical report on truth is full of dichotomy. In myth or time-honored religious texts, everything is described in terms of dichotomy. Heaven is something that is opposed to the earth. Creation is antithetical to chaos – the list of dichotomy is endless. Academia has not been totally free from conceptual dichotomy, and it is true of the filed of the Internet research. Dichotomic thinking in Internet research is observed in explaining the technological nature of the Internet (synchronous/asynchronous), its overall social effect (positive/negative) and its influence on human relationships (primary, strongtie/ secondary,weaktie). Something seems to urge us to overcome this type of simplistic and reductionistic dichotomies. However, is the real problem dichotomy?
Though it might sound like a truism, what makes us feel tired of dichotomy in Internet research is that it is “too simple.” To say it the other way round, we tend to find the origin of the impression – it’s too simple! – from those dichotomies. However, it appears that what makes it simplistic, so that what turns our attention to “dichotomies” lies elsewhere. I believe that what makes current Internet research look simplistic is not those dichotomies, but "making simplistic connection" between the Internet and those dichotomic concepts. For example, the overall framework of some research takes the following logic:

The Internet -----------------> primary/strongtie
(facilitates)
The Internet -----------------> secondary/weaktie

As seen above, the dichotomy used above argument is between primary and secondary relationship, and the very dichotomy seems to make the argument simplistic. However, what makes it simplistic, so that problamatic in above conncetion is that 1) there is no intermediate factor between the Internet and primary/secondary relation and 2) there is no preceding factor before the Internet. Multiplex-multilayered-mutidimensional explanation in which prededing and intermediating factors are fully considered - that is one possible way to overcome the seemingly simplistic view of dichotomic observation.

Overcoming dichotomy in community relationships

The potentials of the Internet either as a community creating tool or destroying tool has been focusing more or less on the notions of the traditional dichotomy between Toennis' Gemeinschaft / Gesellschaft concept. Though those two concepts are coexisting elements of relationships in a given social grouping rather than absolute nametags (e.g. Bender), this dichotomy is commonly applied in diverse forms to dichotomize the networks of online individuals into personal versus functional relationships. But it has been argued that communities consist of much more complex relationships than this. And when we turn our focus to the online, such complexity become even more salient because more flexible forms of associations are technically feasible via the open structure of the Internet. Then the question is, how should we segment the gradating spectrum of the relational characteristics? My thoughts in progress are about the need to put more subtle levels into what is actually shared in a community at the various stages and its sub-activities.

Be it the classic functionalist Parsonian AGIL-model or networked individualsm of cultural tastes, communities can exist because their members share some common points together. Then, what parts (and how much of it) of an individual's personality and goals are shared? And how does it differ in various stages of being in a community? For example, an online community could only require a commonness of being a resident of Madison to become a member. But to stay a member requires clearly some other forms of commonness, such as being up-to-date with local events. In many other cases, even specific cultural tastes and political viewpoints exist as conditions to stay part of the community, which is often not explicit or even different from the conditions given at the stage when one enters the group. Also, the required commonness differs among the activities inside the community. For example I don't need to share a lot of political background when I have a chat about yesterday's TV program with other members of my community. But if the same community with the same people want to organize a social movement for a new referendum, commonness of the political views is required. I think this difference is important especially in context of online communities because the relationships are very flexible and it is easy to decide what parts of one's personality/identity to disclose or not.

New Media New Research Opportunities

The new electronic communication and information management technologies have emerged and changed so rapidly that studying the magnitude and direction of their effects on the social and economic aspects of life has been an ongoing challenge. While there certainly is no shortage of research on the effects of the Internet and other related communication technology, two areas that might warrant additional investigation are the interrelationship of the integration of the Internet at work with the personal life and also an examination of the leaders of social movements use of technology and if that’s affected their leadership style.

Digital divide research, which tries to understand the conditions under which technological change enhances of diminishes socioeconomic differences, seems to focus on hardware access and personal use in the home and neglects to overlap it with how it is being used on the job. In the 1980s, business embraced technology because it facilitated the direction toward a more systems approach that had been underway in order to remain competitive. Plus, they had the resources to purchase it. Businesses learned that you couldn’t just put this powerful new communication and information tool on someone’s desk and expect them to intuitively know how to use it. Significant training dollars are and continue to be spent to transform workers into what Robert Reich called “a symbolic analyst,” someone who identifies and solves problems, works collaboratively on teams and acts as a strategic broker. Employees needed to be taught team skills – how to talk to each other, how to support each other – essentially how to have an informed, rational discourse in order to build knowledge and to run competitively. So are the knowledge, skills and abilities that people are learning on-the-job being brought into the home, the community and the public sphere? So perhaps if we first understand how the new communication and information management technology has transformed discourse and relationships within business, we can begin to understand the future of the public sphere.

The other area that would be interesting to examine is how leaders of social movements are using this new communication technology – cell phones, internet, etc. – to adapt their communication strategies and leadership styles. Who are they? What are their characteristics or leadership traits? What are they saying and how are they using this new communicating and information management tool? For example two recent events – the recent nationwide demonstrations by the Hispanic community about proposed immigration legislation and the worldwide, and at times violent, reaction of the Muslim community to the Danish cartoons which were published last Fall -- demonstrate the speed and cohesiveness of the message being delivered by the leaders of these two very public actions. It would be interesting to study the anatomy the communication strategy that was utilized and the characteristics of the leaders who facilitated it.

The Net and Everyday Life

We have explored media and societal institutions throughout this course, and ‘community’ constitutes the basic and essential unit of those societal institutions. Community, not as the aggregation of members, but as network, necessitates means of communication (technology). Changes in tools of communication become the main focus of community scholars since the changes implicate, in most cases, the transformation of community. Now, we are witnessing the growing power of the Internet, which have brought about hopes and fears simultaneously (Wellman). The speculation on the Internet and community can create more fruitful outcomes when the question is concretized at the level of everyday life. Thus, the departing point is “the Net and everyday life.”

“The reality of the Internet is more important than the dazzle” (Wellman et. al., 5). This point signifies one desirable methodological direction of the Internet research. Social Implications of the Internet, an overview (or meta-research) of the "reality of the Internet", shows the wide spectrum of the Internet research that covers manifold domains of social life to which the Internet has been incorporated. Wellman and Haythornthwaite point out researches on the Internet and everyday life indicate that “the Internet has continued this turn towards living in networks, rather than in groups” (33). This echoes the Manuel Castells’ perspective that considers the Internet as technology that strengthens the existing tendency of “networked individualism.” This line of arguments regards the impact of the Internet on society as concomitant to the ongoing changes in sociability, so that it considers the effect of the Internet as limited. Craig Calhoun exactly stands on this position: “The Internet is thus a very useful tool, but the strength of these movements still lies largely in their local roots” (382). In other words, in order for the Internet to exert the maximum power, it necessitates very complex preconditions.
More to the point of our class, Wellman raises a notable argument: “The personalization, portability, ubiquitous connectivity, and imminent wireless mobility of the Internet all facilitate networked individualism as the basis of community. It is the individual, and neither the household nor the group that is becoming the primary unit of connectivity…It is I-alone that is reachable wherever I am…The person has become the portal” (34). If the fundamental unit of relationship has significantly changed (“I” as the portal), thus the mode of networking in community has been substantially transformed, the old paradigm that defines community should be revised. To do this, the very old paradigm must be identified first and foremost. Based on this, a new paradigm of community definition can be created which overcomes the dichotomy between direct/indirect relationships.

Week13--The Internet Today

Does electronic media, which includes computers, the Internet, and a range of other technologies, isolate people, provide new ways to connect, or does it simply supplement existing relationships? As this transition or evolution takes place, what is the long-term effect on community and civic involvement? Computer mediated communication (CMC) is nether the destroyer nor the savior of interpersonal relationships and community, but does appear to be facilitating flexible, spatially dispersed social networks in which each person uses it to meet such needs as collaboration and a sense of belonging. Calhoun acknowledges that the Internet does encourage public discourse, but the discourse is not “with a density of connections that facilitates much effective political action” (p. 392).
These “density of connections” can only occur within a public space where ways are found “to encourage mutual engagement simultaneously across significant differences of identity and interest, and across considerable social and spatial distances” (Calhoun, p.391). The Internet is a powerful medium because it provides users with multiple communication options -- print, broadcast and point-to-point interaction – in one place, but it is not a new or virtual public space for democracy to flourish. In fact, Calhoun argues that the kind of public life the democracy must depend upon had been eroding before the Internet became a pervasive part of society through the decentralization of cities which led to less power relationships and less public discourse. He does not see CMC changing that course.
Empirical evidence is beginning to show that Internet users are no different than non-users when measured for civic engagement. Internet use may enhance social capital that is there is an increase in participation in community networks and activities and which in turn, may have a positive indirect effect on political participation. There’s a lot that’s still unknown and the technology is not standing still. It continues to evolve allowing for more interactivity and more opportunities for those users with less expertise to use many different communication capabilities of the emerging electronic media. So in a sense, researchers are studying a moving target. I agree with Calhoun’s assessment that the Internet hasn’t surpassed the impact of television and radio, because it hasn’t been around long enough for any systemic changes to take place.
So the question is, are we studying the right dimensions of the emerging electronic media? Previous research has focused on the individual. Perhaps it is time to step back and examine the institutions and “social actors” that are shaping the Internet and the other emerging communication technologies. As the DiMaggio article points out, we need to understand how political and economic decisions that are emerging are having an impact on individual users and how that might constrain behavior. Historically, technologies developed or evolved in response to the agendas of powerful social actors. For example, radio was designed for use by the military, embraced by amateurs and commercialized by entrepreneurs. Who are the social actors that are shaping and developing the Internet and the emerging and corresponding information management technologies? What is their agenda and is it appropriate? Research should, as Calhoun suggests, take different approaches and look for today’s communities and then study the role of computers and other modes of communication within them or study the range of different forms of social solidarity and how does CMC figure into it.Economic and commercial interests are driving the development of the technologies on the Internet and that may or may not limit it from achieving its full cultural and political potential. The fact that 85% of web site visits are to 5% of all web sites shows either a movement to a common meeting area or the dominance of powerful manipulators of information such as MSN. Democracy may be running in second place to capitalism on the Internet as Calhoun says, but the potential is there in the new decade for it to play a role in democracy. According to Habermas, the early press arose out of capitalism and the merchant class’s thirst for shipping news and yet many years later, deTocqueville saw the press as the cornerstone to democracy in the U.S.

The Net of Life.

To understand how we should view the Internet as a media tool, DiMaggio et al make a valuable statement: the Internet is a meta-medium(Agre, 1998), referring both to the technical infrastructure and the uses this is put into. As such, the Internet is shaping the scope of mediated communication ever since its popular explosion. And we know by now that mediated communication is crucial in binding societies together by building various forms of social networks. This week's readings deal with the role Internet plays in our everyday life; naturally, the question loops back on what 'network' means in our everyday life. network forms that have been theoretically considered but were technically unfeasible, have been or are prospected to be made possible via the Internet.

In linking Internet with the features of changing scope of community in a urban public sphere, Calhoun took a rather conservative view of Internet-mediated human networks. He asserts that the kind of relationships that are bound by the 'online' foster "categorical identities", rather than multiplex and systematic relationships. The ideals of e-democracy is bound to be outrun by e-commercialization. The Internet facilitates maintenance of dispersed f2f networks, the ability to telecommunicate, socio-spatial enclaves, and buiding of a community without propinquity. Thus online communities tend to function on the basis of categories of similarity more often than they strengthen local networks. For him, "The Internet is thus a very useful tool, but the strength of these movements still lies largely in their local roots; the Internet is most empowering when it adds to the capacities of people organized outside of it, not when an attempt is made to substitute "virtual community" for the real thing."

But is it really so? Calhoun takes some of the prominent social movements as examples, but mainly rests on theoretical assertions. Thus the "Internet as part of everyday life" view by Haythornthwaite & Wellman is a valid and much-needed one. It is not looking into Internet in terms of what it should and could do, but what it already does. They emphasize the need for actual empirical studies on how people actually use the Net, based on survey studies in many parts of the world (although already outdated). They summarize the large chunks of findings into tendencies of increasing access, committment, domestication, longer work hours, networked society, among others. But the most overarching theme of all is the notion of "networked individualism" which we have already introduced to in Castells' work. This concept is that people in the Internet age live in networks rather than in groups, and each person is taking charge of one's own network.

However, the thing we must always take into account is that this is not about whether such forms of social networks (or communities) are desirable or not. It is already upon us, a part of our everyday life. We still continue to have our social bonds in our spatial dimensions, and now we are also getting more networked in the 'communities without propinquities' as well.
Then, how will the "individualistic networks" that is more or less bound to be effected by categorical relationships interact with the more multiplex and systematic relationships that can be found by locally-based communities of direct interaction? Thus the question of Internet and everyday life is nothing else than the problem of how the two kinds of social networks smoothly can be integrated into one's everyday life, and how we should utilize the valuable mediating tools that Internet provides.

Net neutrality article...

Hi class, this is the article about "Net neutrality" by Jeff Chester that Lew metioned last session.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester

Clear and easy to understand.

The information society

The title of this book, “”The Internet Galaxy” connotes much of the Castells’ arguments. (Castells created the term “internet galaxy” by analogy to McLuhan’s term, “Getenberg galaxy”). At first glance, a galaxy appearing in the night sky does not seem to have unity. In fact, what we see seems like a jumble of random stars. However, while those stars may seem scattered separately, in fact, they form patterns and reveal some kind of organization around certain pivotal stars. The birth and extinction of those pivotal stars determine the fate of other ones, i.e., the planets which revolve around them. According to Castells, one of those pivotal stars in our days is the Internet . The Internet is “the fabric of our lives” (p.1).

In the analogy of galaxy, those pivotal stars are independent variables, and the planets revolving around them are dependent variables. However, in fact, the Internet in Castells’ arguments is both an independent and dependent variable. (In this sense, there is logical contradiction between his title - the galaxy analogy - and his arguments). The Internet as an independent variable, according to Castells, has caused tremendous changes in business. For example, networked business model (Cisco) became possible with the help of the Internet. In addition, the Internet has created a new form of “acting, informing, recruiting, organizing, dominating and counter-dominating” (p.137) processes in political realms. However, in his core arguments, the Internet is also a dependent variable. His perspective that views the Internet as a dependent variable can be observed in many parts of his book. Most importantly, he captures the advent of the Internet age in a way that it was an inevitable outcome of the macro-changes of society. He argues: “the Internet is effective in maintaining weak ties, which otherwise would be lost in the trade-off between the effort to engage I physical interaction” (p.129). In other words, it was the very tendency of “networked individualism” and the new form of sociability that necessitates the pervasiveness of the Internet, not vise versa. To be sure, he seems to pay great attention not to make any causal relation between the Internet and society. However, in the logical extension of his arguments, it seems that the Internet is a social outcome of the “privatization of sociability” (p.128).

The reason he understands the Internet as simultaneously independent and dependent variable lies in the fact that he emphasizes analysis over prediction. In most cases, the Internet is considered only as an independent variable in the arguments of scholars who try to ‘make prediction’ of the future effects of the Internet on society. At the same time, throughout the whole book, he maintains bifocal perspectives on the Internet and macro-changes in society. It leads to his awareness of the complex relationship between the Internet and society that defies any reductionistic unilaterality. In this awareness, it seems that he can escape from uni-demensional prospects that reduce the Internet simply to either an independent or dependent variable.