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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Mixing Metaphors: Sociological And Psychological Perspectives On Virtual Communities, Kevin Wang
Mixing Metaphors: Sociological And Psychological Perspectives On Virtual Communities, Kevin Wang
Kevin Wang
This chapter explores the theoretical and conceptual assumptions underlying the notion of virtual community. Drawing from relevant literature, the author first examines the fundamental properties of the Internet as both technological and cultural artifact and argues that the Internet can embody different technological, functional, and symbolic meanings that will have direct implications for how communities are formed and experienced. Building on that framework, the second part of the chapter focuses on the sociological and psychological bases of community and explores how such conceptions change with the emergence of the Internet. The author concludes that studies of virtual communities must be …
Uprising: The Internet's Unintended Consequences, Marcus Breen
Uprising: The Internet's Unintended Consequences, Marcus Breen
Marcus Breen
The Internet has transformed the social relations that were once managed by the powers that be. As a rapidly maturing communications technology, the Internet has brought people together even while it has reinforced privatism. The desktop computer, the laptop, the cellular and mobile phone, the Global Positoning System, the pilotless drone aircraft, video games and government documents courtesy of Wikileaks, all are connected on the network of networks. Together these converged elements of a global socio-technical system offer wonderful possibilities for human emancipation, even while those ideas collide with established ideas of civility and decency. Utilizing a transdisciplinary approach, Uprising …
Internet Pornography: Another Step Towards Proletarianization, Marcus Breen
Internet Pornography: Another Step Towards Proletarianization, Marcus Breen
Marcus Breen
Within the current period of shifting international trade, sexuality has been “globalized” in new ways. Rather than working with the generalization that characterizes globalization in line with the somewhat predictable binaries of the WTO/US market opening hegemonic model versus the anti-hegemonic opponents of this same capitalist enterprise, sex as presented in pornography on the World Wide Web offers a counterintuitive way of thinking about globalization. Internet pornography presents a system of unintended consequences. That is, it offers a site where the full investigations of human ambition, desire and degradation are represented and played out, offering the voiceless and the powerless …