Does Web 3.0 come after Web 2.0? Deconstructing theoretical assumptions through practice

Introduction

In recent years, internet and media scholars have been confronted with new developments of the Web, developments that have seen the growth of social networking sites, the extension of mobile technologies and an increase in user participation. The term Web 2.0, as proposed by Tim O’Reilly (2005), has been adopted in a variety of studies aimed at offering at times very critical perspectives on the political economy of Web developments (Fuchs, 2010; Jarrett, 2008; Terranova, 2004, 2004; Van Dijck and Nieborg, 2009; Zimmer, 2008). At present, business and application developers are suggesting that there will be a new era of the Web: Web 3.0. This will be defined by a new online environment, which will integrate users’ generated data to create new meaning. In contrast to Web 2.0, which is understood as being based on users’ participation, Web 3.0 will be based on users’ cooperation (Fuchs et al., 2010; Harris, 2008; Tasner, 2010; Watson, 2009). Within these debates, the overall assumption is that the Web is changing and that these changes impact on the economic and political organization of society, as well as on people’s attitudes, beliefs and practices.

This article explores the somewhat scattered body of literature on Web developments and seeks to understand the logic of terms such as Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 by critically engaging with them. It will argue that although these concepts can be crucial when analysing the political economy of the Web, they present two main theoretical and methodological limitations for social research. In the first place, as some scholars have noticed (Everitt and Mills, 2009; Finnemann, 2010; Fuchs et al., 2010), they are entrenched within an evolutionary and temporary understanding of Web developments, which does not reflect processes of technological transformation and tends to give a linear progression to coexisting social and technical trends. The second problem – which has not yet been addressed in current debates and will be the main focus of this article – is the problem of practice. Concepts of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 often carry assumptions of users’ practices: Web 2.0 is seen as enabling user participation whilst Web 3.0 is seen as triggering users’ cooperation. In this article we argue that these assumptions can have serious limitations when exploring the impact of Web developments on people’s everyday experience. Drawing from multi-sited ethnographic research (Marcus, 1998) within the Italian student movement, this article will show that the division between different stages of Web development is not reflected within the everyday practices of activists. In fact, it will be argued that activists not only use different platforms to mediate their messages but they often use Web 2.0 platforms in non-interactive ways and in ways that would be classified as Web 1.0. Consequently, it will be shown that the Web uses of Italian activists challenge linear interpretations of Web developments, and shed light on how people critically negotiate with technological structures, and the political economy of the Web.

Web 2.0 between participation and exploitation

In 2004, at the first Web 2.0 Conference, Tim O’Reilly (2005) explained that the early 2000s had seen the development of a different type of Web, Web 2.0, which harnesses ‘the collective intelligence of crowds to create value’ (O’Reilly, 2005: para. 25). The new Web, in contrast to Web 1.0, is no longer based on a network of hypertexts, but is defined by a new ‘architecture of participation’ (O’Reilly, 2005: para. 24), which facilitates the co-production of information, social networking and rich user experiences. In the year following its introduction, the term Web 2.0 became extremely popular in a wide variety of contexts, to the point that at the end of 2005 it counted 9.5 million citations on Google (O’Reilly, 2005: para. 3). Also within academic circles the concept has become extremely pervasive. In her analysis of theoretical approaches, Song suggested that ‘Web 2.0 marks a broader cultural moment’ (2010: 270). It certainly marked the growth of significant debates within academic disciplines on the importance of analysing the internet as a technology in constant transformation and defined by different phases of development.

Although scholars concur on the importance of embracing the concept of Web 2.0 to address the Web developments of the last years, the Web 2.0 literature is defined by a variety of perspectives on how best to understand these technological transformations. The problem scholars are confronted with is represented by the fact that Web 2.0 technologies are defined by a double-sided nature, which Zimmer (2008) called the ‘Faustian bargain of Search 2.0’ and that was further developed by Langlois et al. (2009) as the ‘Web 2.0 Faustian trade-off’. On the one hand, Web 2.0 platforms such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Facebook allow users to become so-called prosumers (Bruns, 2008; Toffler, 1980). Hence, some scholars have argued that the interactive features of Web 2.0 technologies offer unprecedented democratic possibilities for individual engagement and empowerment (Castells, 2007, 2009; Gillmor, 2004; Reynolds, 2006; Shirky, 2008; Tapscott and Williams, 2006).

On the other hand, as Zimmer (2008) explained, Web 2.0 technologies also enable an increased flow of personal information across networks, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, the exploitation of free labour for commercial gain and an increased corporatization of online social spaces and outputs (Zimmer, 2008: 1). Therefore, many scholars have argued that, far from being democratic, the new online economy is linked to issues of neo-liberal surveillance, corporate control and the exploitation of users’ immaterial labour (Andrejevic, 2005; Everitt and Mills, 2009; Terranova, 2004; Van Dijck and Nieborg, 2009). It is for this reason that that Sandoval and Fuchs (2010) relied on Marcuse to argue that the participatory culture of the Web is today nothing more than ‘repressive tolerance’ (Sandoval and Fuchs, 2010: 144–145).

All these discussions on the capitalist and exploitative character of Web 2.0 technologies are of extreme importance, because they critically address the ideological and business rhetoric embedded in the concept of Web 2.0 as proposed by O’Reilly and others. Van Dijck and Nieborg (2009), for instance, brilliantly deconstructed Web 2.0 manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006), showing how business gurus endorse a notion of public collectivism that functions entirely inside commodity culture.

However, drawing from Langlois et al. (2009), we believe that often the rich cultural experiences witnessed on Web platforms cannot be ‘simply dismissed as yet another form of corporate control over culture, or Orwellian dataveillant machine’ (Langlois et al., 2009: 1). In fact, as Jenkins (2006) remarked, while it is undeniable that corporations make profits, hiding behind the ideological rhetoric of empowerment, it is also true that thanks to the multiple possibilities offered by Web 2.0 platforms, individuals have a new decoding power. Furthermore, as Castells (2007, 2009) argued, we must appreciate that the interactive and participatory features of Web 2.0 technologies have enabled a new form of mass communication of the self, which has given rise to new expressions of insurgent politics. Therefore, we believe that it is important to understand the participatory potential of Web 2.0 technologies, whilst at the same time – as Cammaerts (2008) does – take into account issues of commoditization, state censorship and market appropriation.

However, while we share the emphasis on Web 2.0’s capacity to strengthen networked protests, and we agree with Cammaerts (2008) about the necessity to assess critically the challenges to political participation on Web 2.0, in this article we urge scholars to take a step back. Thus, we question whether the interactive and participative possibilities – which, for most of the literature, characterize Web 2.0 technologies – will somehow be necessarily appropriated by users, and in particular by networked movements and activists.

Beyond Web 2.0? The rise of Web 3.0 and the semantic web

In the last few years a new concept has started to emerge amongst business Web developers and beyond: the notion of Web 3.0. Ideas on the current developments of the Web are still blurred and confused, yet contemporary business models stress the importance of moving beyond Web 2.0 and finding new ways to manage, organize and create meaning from the vast amount of user-generated data (Funk, 2008; Harris, 2008; Tasner, 2010; Watson, 2009).

The concept of Web 3.0, as it is imagined by business models and Web developers, is often associated with the idea of the Semantic Web. The idea was first coined in 1999 by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, who foresaw the possibility of enabling machines to ‘talk to one another’ and to understand and create meaning from semantic data (Berners-Lee in Floridi, 2009: 27). Floridi (2009) contended that the Semantic Web as portrayed by Tim Berners-Lee and the people of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is not feasible either technically (at least not yet) or socially, but he argues that the Web is developing well beyond the interactive processes of Web 2.0 in a variety of different ways.

One such transformation is defined by the fact that businesses and computer engineers are developing increasingly small and mobile applications that harness the cooperation of crowds and work as databases organizing the data on the Web (Harris, 2008; Watson, 2009). The model shows some similarities to the Wikipedia model, which unlike Google – which works by matching words – contextualizes concepts, creating new information (Harris, 2008: 29–31). One example of this is provided by salesforce.com , a cloud service for companies that works as a database which integrates different data (e.g. the individual profiling of customers with the company information or the latest statistics) to create new data that strengthen marketing strategies (Harris, 2008: 29–31). A very different example of Web 3.0 technology is quora.com. This is a privately owned searchable question and answer platform of general knowledge, which harnesses the collaboration of users by enabling them to update their questions and answers live via social networking sites. As these two different examples of Web 3.0 technologies show, these new applications and platforms offer users the possibility to cooperate in the creation of Web data, whilst at the same time searching the Web in an intelligent way. Therefore, as many have noticed (Funk, 2008; Harris, 2008; Tasner, 2010; Watson, 2009), if ‘user participation’ was the key word within business models of Web 2.0, ‘users’ cooperation’ has become the new buzz word that identifies Web 3.0 technologies.

The understanding of Web 3.0 as a site of user cooperation can also be found in the work of Fuchs (2008). For him Web 3.0 is created by ‘networked digital technologies that support human cooperation’ (2008: 127). This focus on cooperation can be problematic. In fact, if we consider contemporary business models and objectives that are attached to the development of new Web 3.0 applications, we cannot overlook the fact that in stressing cooperation these applications propose to manage, organize and create meaning from user-generated data in such a way that it maximizes the tracing of digital identities (Harris, 2008; Watson, 2009) and behavioural advertising (Tasner, 2010). In this framework, we believe that it is essential to start thinking about the larger political implications that such Web developments would bring about, especially in terms of the issues of privacy, surveillance and control. Research in this area has become imperative.

In this article, however, our focus is not on foreseeing these implications but rather questioning whether concepts such as Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, which are entrenched within business rhetoric, can be appropriate theoretical and methodological tools for social research. Our understanding is that such concepts can be crucial to the analyses of the political economy of the Web, because they enable scholars to assess critically the business rhetoric embedded in understandings of Web developments. As we have seen above, the critical Web 2.0 literature that emerged as a response to Tim O’Reilly’s (2005) conceptualization of Web 2.0, has been crucial in unmasking the capital exploitation that was intrinsic to the discourse of a new ‘architecture of participation’. In similar ways, new literature and research should thoroughly engage with notions of Web 3.0, with the aim of exposing the logic of neo-liberal surveillance embedded in these new Web developments and critically assessing ideas of ‘cooperation’. Although the importance of such concepts in the analysis of the political economy cannot be dismissed, we believe that scholars must take a step back and critically reflect on the hidden theoretical and methodological limitations of such terms.

Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and the problem of practice

One of the key problems with the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 is represented by the fact that, as Finnemann (2010) argued, they do not reflect the actual technological transformation of the Web, and, as Everitt and Mills (2009) showed, such concepts apply a version number and a consequent notion of progress ‘to cultural shifts that speak more of a complex alliance of social, technological and commercial aims’ (2009: 765). The problem is that linear and evolutionary understandings of Web developments imply that one form of the Web can replace another. However, as Fuchs et al. (2010) argued, different Web platforms do not replace one another. Rather, the Web needs to be understood as an integrated socio-technical system, in which different Web applications and stages coexist.

Fuchs et al. (2010) argued for the importance of abandoning evolutionary and linear models of Web developments, yet within their work they contend that these concepts are important because they enable us to appreciate how different Web technologies facilitate different communication processes. In fact, the scholars contend that Web 1.0 technologies enable cognitive processes of communication, which are made possible through the individual’s relationship with the hypertext. Web 2.0 technologies create the basis for the development of communicative processes, which are guaranteed by interactive platforms (e.g. social media), and Web 3.0 technologies facilitate cooperative processes that are integrative in the construction of new information and meaning.

The understanding of the Web as an integrated socio-technical system, we believe, is crucial to contemporary critical theory of the internet, because it challenges linear understandings of evolutionary progress. However, in our understanding of Web developments we distance ourselves from that of Fuchs et al. (2010) and question whether the fact that Web technologies can enable different communication processes (cognition, participation, cooperation), implies that these communication processes become the key definers of Web uses.

This question is particularly important for current research. In fact we believe that although the pitfalls of embracing evolutionary models of Web developments have been recognized by scholars (Everitt and Mills, 2009; Finnemann, 2010; Fuchs et al., 2010), another central problem embedded in these concepts has yet to be addressed. This is the problem of practice. Concepts such as Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 often deploy un-problematized assumptions of users’ practices. Yet, in this article we ask: what does an analysis of users’ practices tell us about these concepts as analytical and methodological models?

Deconstructing theoretical assumptions through practice

Since the early developments of new information and communication technologies, social theorists – and especially those who grounded their work on an ethnographic and qualitative perspective – have focused on the concept of practice in order to analyse how people creatively negotiate with and appropriate the structures of technologies (De Sanctis and Poole, 1994; Grint and Woolgar, 1995). Particularly significant in this regard is the contribution of those scholars who studied the workplace and organizations, and explored how everyday working life is structured around multiple and complex human processes of interaction and negotiation with technologies (Button, 1993; Orlikowski, 1992; Suchman, et al. 1999). The focus on practice enabled scholars to shed light on the social impacts of technologies, by highlighting the dynamic relationship between technological structures and social use.

In recent years, within media studies, much attention has been paid to the importance of developing a new paradigm of research that focuses on the understanding of media as practice (Couldry, 2004; Postill, 2010). Whilst there are those who contend that practice theory in the analysis of media is particularly important because it discards holistic assumptions on structure, culture or order (Hobart, 2010), others argue that the richness of a practice approach lies in its ability to look at the negotiations with structures and power (Bird, 2010; Postill, 2010). In the understanding of Web developments, therefore, we believe that a focus on practice theory enables scholars not only to explore how structural models are internalized – as Bourdieu (1977) and Giddens (1984) pointed out – but also to consider how actors interact and shape technologies in significant ways. In this regard, we draw heavily on the work of Orlikowski (2000), and believe that in the understanding of technological developments, it is important to complement the notion of ‘embodied structure’ with the notion of ‘emergent structure’, and the one of ‘appropriation’ with that of ‘enactment’ (Orlikowski, 2000: 405). In fact, as Orlikowski has argued (2000), scholars have much to gain if rather than starting with the ‘technology’ and examining how actors appropriate its embodied structures, they start with ‘human action’ and examine how people enact emergent structures through recurrent interaction with the technology at hand (2000: 407). This approach is particularly important in the analysis of Web developments, because as Orlikowski (2000) has pointed out:

Focusing attention on how structures are constituted and reconstituted in recurrent social practices acknowledges that while users can and do use technologies as they were designed, they also can and do circumvent inscribed ways of using the technologies […] (Orlikowski, 2000: 407)

Riding ‘The Wave’: Exploring the Italian student movement

In order to reflect on how people critically negotiate with technological structures, in this article we draw on two different multi-sited ethnographic projects (Marcus, 1998), which studied the Web practices of activists within the Italian student movement. In 2008, Maria Stella Gelmini, the Education Minister of the Berlusconi Government, put forward a controversial decree aimed at cutting state funds for the education sector. By October 2008, at national level a large student movement emerged that was not only defined by the participation of students (high school and university students), but also by the participation of young activists and precarious workers (Mattoni, 2008). The movement was known as Onda Anomala (Anomalous Wave) or simply L’Onda (The Wave). The two different multi-sited ethnographic projects were undertaken during and after the Onda movement.

The first project was carried out between 2008 and 2009, and involved a five-month period of participant observation (October 2008 to February 2009) and 17 individual semi-structured interviews, amongst the students of the ‘Permanent Assembly of the Anomalous Wave Movement’ collective, at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bologna. The city of Bologna was chosen for its pivotal role in the student struggles, a role that this city has repeatedly played in student protests (Tarrow and Maddaloni, 1990). In addition to that, five group interviews (N = 21) were also carried out with activists of the following student groups: ‘Collettivo 133’, University of Trieste; ‘Autoconvocati’, University of Udine; ‘Permanent Assembly of the Liberal Arts College’, University of Siena; ‘AutArt’ collective, Brera Art Academy (Milan); and the ‘Onda Anomala Padova’, University of Padova. The groups were selected due to the important role played by the universities in the protest (Milan, Padova, Siena), but more peripheral realities were also taken into account (Trieste, Udine). Participant observation and qualitative interviews were also enriched with the qualitative content analysis of both online and offline documents produced by activists.

The second project was a year-long ethnographic research with a political group based in Milan – the Corsari (in English, Pirates) – which was born during the Onda Movement. The Corsari was created in July 2008, and brought together different student groups (collettivi studenteschi) that belonged to the Onda movement with activists who belonged to those Milanese social centres (especially Bulk, Orso, Panetteria Okkupata, etc.) that had been closed down by the right-wing Milanese city administration. In January 2011, the Corsari – together with the Rete degli Studenti (a secondary school activist network) and other political collectives – opened a new social centre, Zona Autonoma Milano (ZAM – Autonomous Zone Milan). The research amongst the Corsari/ZAM took place between July 2010 and July 2011, and combined four periods of two weeks’ fieldwork that took place over the course of one year with 12 months of online ethnography. The offline ethnography consisted of attending meetings, events and parties, following key informants in their everyday life and taking part in actions and demonstrations. The one-year online ethnography by contrast consisted of daily participant observation of their social networking sites and mailing lists, combined with a qualitative analysis of the texts produced. The ethnographic research was also enriched by 25 one-hour-long semi-structured interviews with key members of the group and other networked organizations (e.g. ‘Autistici Inventati’, ‘Rete Studenti’, Partigiani in ogni Quartiere; Uninversi; Milano Movida; Zona Autonoma Milano, etc.). All the interviews focused on a life history approach, which analysed the political biography of the informants as well as narratives of technological adaptation. The aim of the project amongst the Corsari was to gain an in-depth and thick understanding of the critical Web practices and the human experience of technologies, by looking at the life of a political group that was born within the Onda Movement and has today become a key player in the antagonist scene in Milan.

The Italian student movement and its critical Web practices

The ethnographic context of the Italian student movement is particularly interesting for the social analysis of Web practices for two main reasons: in the first place because activists combine a variety of Web 1.0 and 2.0 platforms (e.g. traditional websites such as http://www.uniriot.org – ‘the network of rebellious faculties’, the use of mailing lists, social networking sites and blogs), and in doing so through their everyday Web practices complicate linear understandings of Web development; in the second place, because within this social context activists use the Web critically.

During our research it emerged that, whilst activists recognized the participatory potential of Web 2.0 technologies for the mobilization of political action, they also believed that political ‘participation’ on Web 2.0 platforms, (e.g. the posting of information and the engagement in online political discussion) needed to be controlled and limited in order to counteract the risks of information leaking and data mining involved in the use of Web 2.0 platforms.

Because of this critical understanding of the Web, activists combined the use of corporate Web platforms with the use of ‘autonomous’ ones, provided by Autistici Inventati. This is a tech-collective that was born in 2001 with the aim of developing a strategy of internet resistance against the appropriation of users’ data. Hosting more than 5000 email addresses, around 500 websites and over 700 mailing lists, A/I today is committed to protecting the online autonomy, anonymity and privacy of Italian activists who share left-wing and progressive ideologies. In order to do so, A/I provides email addresses and blogs to activists, without requesting them to input personal data, and provides them with a certain degree of autonomy from the commercial and governmental tracing of digital identities. Although activists were aware of the pivotal importance of defending their internet autonomy, they also feared that the exclusive use of autonomous networks would confine their alternative messages to ‘online ghettos’; for this reason they strategically combined the use of A/I platforms with the sharing of communication within the online spaces of social media, in particular Facebook and YouTube. However, as we shall see later, they used these platforms critically by limiting the content posted and controlling the information disclosed.

The critical use of the Web by Italian activists reveals an important complexity of Web practices that can inform further research. In fact our research reveals that Web practices are embedded in a tension between strategies and tactics (De Certeau et al., 1980; De Certeau, 1984), and that understanding such a tension is of pivotal importance in order to challenge contemporary generalized assumptions on the relationship between web developments and users’ practices.

In his seminal work on the understanding of everyday social practices, De Certeau (1984; De Certeau et al., 1980) argues that institutions and power structures usually have a spatial dimension in which they operate and therefore that their practices can be understood as strategies that shape specific social environments. Hence for De Certeau (1980) strategies have a spatial dimension and reflect the relationship between power, theory and practice (1980: 7). However, De Certeau believes that the practices of power (strategies) need to be differentiated from the practices of the ‘weak’. This latter, instead, need to be understood as tactics. Tactics, in contrast to strategies, reflect the relationship between ‘negotiation, practice and experimentation, they have a temporal dimension and they are connected to the idea of cultural adaptation’ (1980:7). This is because, for De Certeau, the weak must continuously turn to their own ends forces that are alien to them’ (1984: 11).

In a recent article Manovich (2009) has adapted De Certeau’s theory to the analysis of Web 2.0 technologies and has argued that business strategies have incorporated people’s tactics, by developing business models that strategically exploit users’ ability to customize Web content. Our research shows that if, within the Web 2.0 environment, business models are strategically incorporating the tactics of Web users, Web users are appropriating the communication strategies of business models to develop their own communication tactics. Examples of this can be found in the choice by Italian activists of opening accounts on corporate social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube despite being critical of these Web spaces or – as we shall see later in an interview with an organizer of A/I – another example can be found in current discussions amongst activists on how to appropriate contemporary business models for their own cause.

However, despite activists developing communication strategies that follow linear understanding of technological developments (e.g. Web 2.0; Web 3.0 etc.), and seeming to believe in the insurgent potential of the Web 2.0 (Castells, 2009), they use these platforms tactically, by actively negotiating with the structural constrains of technologies. This tactical use of Web platforms, we argue, challenges linear understandings of Web developments, and sheds light on the complexities involved in people’s everyday interaction with technological structures.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the critical Web 2.0 literature that has emerged in recent years has been of fundamental importance in highlighting the political economy and the neo-liberal discourses of new Web applications, and in pointing out that Web 2.0 is a cultural construct profoundly influenced by business rhetoric (Everitt and Mills, 2009; Fisher, 2010; Fuchs, 2010; Sandoval and Fuchs, 2010; Van Dijck and Nieborg, 2009; Zimmer, 2008).

This article is intended as a contribution to the on-going critical debate on Web developments. While we highlight the business rhetoric that often blankets the ideas related to Web developments, we also question whether concepts such as Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 can be viable and successful theoretical models for social analysis. Our aim has been on the one hand to urge scholars to take a step back and question the appropriateness of their theoretical models and on the other hand to stimulate the need to investigate users’ media practices as a way to inform the development of these models.

The example of the Italian student movement has proven to be of central importance in highlighting how people critically use the Web, and how they negotiate with its structures and political economy. With their critical awareness of capitalist exploitation on Web 2.0, and their Web tactics directed towards the protection of activists’ political autonomy and anonymity, Italian activists provide us with important insights on the social complexity of everyday Web practices. In fact although activists develop their communication strategies on the basis of models of Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 and benefit from technological advances (e.g. they open websites, social media accounts, blogs, etc.), their everyday uses of these platforms do not reflect the communication processes (cognition, participation, cooperation) that are usually associated with Web developments (e.g. they use social media in non-interactive, unidirectional ways), because they are informed by tactics of resistance and adaptation to technological structures. Looking at the difference between Web strategies and Web tactics, at their tension and relationship, is of central importance for future research as it allows scholars to deconstruct generalized understandings on the social uses of technologies.

Although the focus on the critical Web practices of Italian activists can shed some light on the complexities of people’s everyday interaction with the Web, and on the tension between strategies and tactics, there is a main limitation of our research that needs to be addressed. In fact, it must be acknowledged, that the Web tactics of Italian activists are grounded on a political critique against neo-liberalism, and hence are the product of a politically informed social discourse which critically assesses the relationship between Web platforms and corporate and political power. Such political discourse is not common in everyday non-political contexts. Consequently, following De Certeau’s analysis (De Certeau et al., 1980; De Certeau, 1984) of everyday practices in consumer culture, we believe that it would be important for scholars to explore the complex tension between Web strategies and tactics within those contexts that, contrary to our own, are not informed by political critique. Such an approach may shed some light on the relationship between business models, technologies and everyday Web uses, and critically inform current research on the transformations affecting the Web.

We think that our ethnography shows that there is a need for more fine-tuned analysis of online technologies’ adoption and resistance, especially in the field of digital activism. In the realm of conventional politics, scholars have argued that the possibilities provided by Web 2.0 technologies have not been fully deployed by most actors and that in many cases we can speak more of a hybrid logic instead of a full Web 2.0 appropriation (Nielsen, 2011; Sorice, 2010; Túñez and Sixto, 2011). In the same vein, in this article we have shown that the opportunities offered by new online environments are differently adopted and resisted by activists. Like many politicians who simply create and own a Facebook account but do not use it to engage in any sort of dialogue, activists do not want or need to use Web 2.0 platforms in their fullness of possibilities.

Therefore, our research demonstrates the necessity, in particular within future investigations regarding digital activism, to look more at the co-existence and co-evolution of old and new online technologies and not to take for granted that activists will ‘normally’ or ‘automatically’ adopt them in their fullness of networking potential. As our research and others (Nielsen, 2011) have shown ‘1.0 applications’ such as emails still play a decisive role in movements’ communicative dynamics and are sometimes more deeply integrated into mobilizing practices than 2.0 tools. Even so, they are often not considered because there is a tendency to overemphasize the role of emerging or recently emerged online tools (for instance social media). In the light of our findings we thus recommend that future research on digital activism and Web practices employ an holistic and ethnographic focus and explore the often complex tension between Web strategies and Web tactics, which often defines people’s engagement with the Web. To a certain extent we see these recommendations for future research as an ‘antidote’ to the techno-deterministic assumptions that define much of contemporary research on digital practice.

In conclusion, while we certainly need strong theories to address the Web, we also have to investigate users’ media practices in order to provide more fine-tuned analyses of the multiple uses of the internet and its impact on social contexts and lived experience. Doing so would imply that we are ready to take a first step and move beyond generalized and fetishized assumptions of what the Web is and does. This would enable us finally to appreciate the fact that the Web is not a monolithic thing that can be studied and analysed as such. It is a complex socio-technical environment that is created by a variety of different and often contradictory technical applications, platforms, texts, discourses, cultural, political and economic processes, practices, stories, lived experiences and human relations. Understanding this is of pivotal importance to starting to address future technological and social developments and come to terms with the fact that the notions of Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 are in fact cultural constructs.