Abstract
The nature and provenance of this handbook can be stated succinctly. It gathers a great range of expertise and disciplinary perspectives, among them communication, sociology, information studies and linguistics. Its 22 chapters, many featuring not only literature reviews and analyses of current issues but also recommendations for future research, are written to a clear, sensible template. It is edited by an eminent professor of philosophy, whose field regards itself as the mother of all disciplines, and a social scientist, making an effective combination. Both are, or at least were, involved in the Association of Internet Researchers, as are most of the contributors. Interestingly, a huge majority of the latter are female, if not feminist: there would seem to be no discrimination – unless, perchance, positive – at the top of internet studies.
The general introduction argues that internet studies is barely more than two decades old, even including all that trusty computer-mediated communication scholarship. While noting its complexity, in terms of interdisciplinarity, fluidity of its object, etc., Ess and Consalvo feel able to conclude that internet research is now ‘a relatively stable field of academic study’ (p. 2). Part of their evidence is the success of journals such as New Media and Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and Information, Communication and Society (The Information Society, which has been ploughing away faithfully since 1981, is not mentioned). After introducing the tripartite structure of the volume, they skilfully extract several common themes across the contributions. For example, many chapters agree that the dualisms of early internet research, such as that between reality and virtuality or between offline and online, no longer obtain, and also that technological utopianism is dead.
This is fine as far as it goes, but it is really only ‘low-hanging fruit’, to borrow a charming term from elsewhere in the volume (p. 21). I would venture that a fuller prospectus was in order, reflecting more epistemological and methodological self-consciousness at the level of the field as a whole. For example, the handbook neglects several key figures. It is mildly surprising not to see citations of, say, John Slevin’s The Internet and Society (Polity Press, 2000) or Kahin and Nesson’s Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure (MIT Press, 1997), and it is positively worrying to hear nothing at all of Daniel Bell, whose Coming of Post-Industrial Society (Basic Books, 1999 [1973]) is an essential reference point for studies of the social context of information and technology. Even Manuel Castells, who in some ways has taken on the late Bell’s mantle, is rarely mentioned. But if social scientists and humanists throughout the academy are debating his trilogy The Information Age (Wiley-Blackwell, 1999), this ought to be the case a fortiori for internet studies. More reflexivity might also have alerted the editors to an arguable distortion of focus. There is a preponderance of chapters on culture, broadly conceived, at the expense of other important realms of society. The polity is underrepresented, as is the economy. Dedicated treatment of the global dimension might also have been sought.
As regards individual chapters, all are worthwhile and thus deserve some notice, however perfunctory. Part 1 bills itself as ‘Beyond the great divides: A primer on internet histories, methods and ethics’. Barry Wellmann’s opener pursues some epistemological and bibliographical issues alongside internet research history. He observes that the transition from ‘punditry’ (p. 18) to ‘analysis’ (p. 20) has taken two forms: the growth of interdisciplinary internet studies complete with its own conferences and journals, and incorporation into existing disciplines. Thus, the so-called digital divide is now part of stratification research within sociology. It is a relatively light, sometimes personal – a ‘tribal elder’ (p. 17), he was in at the beginning – but always stimulating overview, and one that partially fills some of the gaps in the general introduction.
In Chapter 2, Niels Brugger offers an informative review of the craft of web archiving, making a persuasive case for specialists to highlight its importance to other academic disciplines, as well as to ‘memory institutions’ like museums and libraries (p. 39). Chapter 3 by Klaus Jensen confronts methodological issues. He quotes his great fellow-Dane Soren Kierkegaard, who thought that ‘life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards’, suggesting thereby that the job of internet research is not primarily to try to make predictions but to provide resources for studying media. He comments, as will many other contributors, that ‘the Internet has been going through a process of becoming ordinary’ (p. 47). Maria Bakardjieva, also stressing the unexceptional nature of the medium, gives a detailed history and evaluation of the diverse branches of research into the internet in everyday life. Elizabeth Buchanan covers internet research ethics. She makes an interesting case for a procedural, intercultural (relativist?) ethics after the manner of Habermasian, feminist and communitarian schools of thought, although it seems to rely on the dubious concept of Web 2.0 (there are few traits of the current web that were not present 10 or even 15 years ago).
Part 2 is entitled ‘Shaping daily life: The internet and society’. One might immediately ask whether Parts 1 and 2 do not overlap a little. For example, Bakardjieva might have fitted in the latter. Anyway, Chapter 6, by Naomi Baron, deals with the impact of the internet on language, as regards speed, informality, emoticons, etc. It is profound and informative but might have sounded a louder warning about linguistic standards. She asserts that ‘actual usage patterns may have little in common with media caricatures’ (p. 133), but I am not so sure: it is not only in saloon bars and conservative opinion columns that one hears such laments. Here would also have been a good place to address the issue of whether ‘Internet’ should retain its capital first letter. Like the former hyphen in ‘email’, one cannot see it surviving much longer (this reviewer has obviously already dropped it).
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 form a natural constellation that casts concentrated light on political questions; Dyson’s chapter, discussed below, also belongs here. Sandra Braman develops her groundbreaking work on information policy, concluding that there are now four ‘big’ issues: access to infrastructure (digital divide, etc.), access to content (censorship, network neutrality), property rights and privacy. Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Alexis Wichowski cover online political discussion. They explain the potential of the internet to improve participatory democracy in terms of interactivity, co-presence, anonymity and the like, but are predictably unable to conclude that it has yet been realized. Deborah Wheeler asks whether the internet empowers developing countries: her welcome discussion of social theory is complemented by case studies of worthy attempts to bridge digital divides. These are all sound chapters but overall, if I am correct, the handbook needed more politics. Teledemocracy research is not highlighted. The digital divide surely also demanded its own chapter, given its high profile (at least until very recently) in policy reports, research journals and other genres.
Lorna Heaton discusses competently the vital area of health communication. Heidi Campbell’s chapter on online religion identifies phases of research that mark ‘a progressive refinement of research themes, methods, and questions’ (p. 232). Thus research into online religion has seen shifts away from utopian/dystopian dichotomies, one-dimensional research designs, technological determinism and exceptionalism. It is an exemplary critical review, pinpointing the role of previous works since Jones’s 1995 volume CyberSociety ‘earmarked [sic] the birth of Internet studies’ (p. 233). Laurel Dyson covers indigenous peoples. It is heartening that, while acknowledging challenges, she feels able to deduce that ‘far from a colonizing force, ICT has become a powerful weapon for fighting colonization and the postcolonial forces that continue to oppress Indigenous peoples’ (p. 261). However, this is perhaps another chapter which misses the opportunity to bring in broader information society theory, such as Castells’ discussions of her theme. Janne Bromseth and Jenny Sunden address gender and homosexuality. Theirs is an erudite, theoretically-rich chapter and also quite ‘literary’ in approach, complete with eye-popping vignettes. Expounding a ‘queer feminist politics of the sensorial’ (p. 273), it has a distinctly didactic feel. But then, belief and passion are so rare among the intelligentsia that this is actually rather refreshing.
Part 3 turns to ‘Internet and culture’. Again there is the overlap issue. The concepts of daily life (Part 2) and culture (Part 3) are hardly mutually exclusive; indeed, they are more or less co-extensive. Anyway, Lori Kendall provides a masterly examination of complex issues regarding community and identity. Mia Consalvo attacks these too, with specific reference to virtual worlds. She thankfully concludes, contra the determinists, that ‘such spaces [Second Life, etc.] are no more inevitable than any other technology’ (p. 344). Sonia Livingstone’s chapter on the opportunities and risks presented to children by ‘their’ medium shows intellectual class by plugging into the work of Beck and Giddens. TL [sic] Taylor demystifies games, a topic that comes up frequently, arguably too frequently, in the handbook. Nancy Baym deals with ‘social networks 2.0’. She rightly shakes her head at ‘the idea that the contemporary Internet is “user generated” while that which preceded it is not’ (p. 384). After a proficient synthesis of past research, she suggests, I think correctly, that the most important future area is the ‘practical and ethical implications of the move from socializing in not-for-profit spaces to proprietary profit-driven environments’ (p. 399).
David Marshall then supplies an authoritative chapter on how the internet has affected the media landscape. The collection as a whole would have benefited from further contributions on the vital social and political functions of journalism and broadcasting. Susanna Paasonen covers online pornography, noting that it has been a driver of the internet, as of other media. She is absolutely right – and this is what many of the contributors are basically saying – that the internet is much more than just a ‘new container’ (p. 435). Steve Jones, of CyberSociety fame, provides an overview of impacts on the popular music industry. Finally, Marka Luders’ chapter revisits social networking, with special reference to teenagers. It is capable work but overlaps, perhaps now inevitably, with previous chapters, and it is too narrow a theme on which to end the volume as a whole.
Typographically, the handbook is fairly polished but there are a few careless errors, such as ‘peaked my curiosity’ (p. 191) and ‘between these to extremes’ (p. 226). The index is strong, although it omits Marc Porat, a significant early information policy scholar cited in the text. Generally, the work is edited and produced to a high standard.
However, to return to my first, substantive, point about internet studies as a field. Logically there are (at least) three ways that it can travel. If the internet is merely a new technology and/or medium, then internet studies needs to be placed alongside the scholarship of other technologies and media; it must become a subset of technology studies and/or media studies. But if the internet is much more than a new technology and medium, if it is nothing less than the nervous system of a new social and even ontological order, then the locus of its study must migrate to social theory and metaphysics. A third, intermediate, option is to subsume it in existing interdisciplinary specialisms, such as social informatics, political economy of communication, or information society studies. Of course, these theoretical frames themselves overlap in myriad ways, and their cooptation of internet studies would only complicate the situation further. Reflective equilibrium on the matter is obviously a long way off, but I am not certain that the present volume takes us far enough in its direction. So while The Handbook of Internet Studies is indeed an excellent state-of-the-art, and a ‘no-brainer’ for acquisitions librarians, a more programmatic approach and tone might have made it even more valuable.