Internet and Society

Internet and Society is a research field that addresses the interrelationship of Internet and society, i.e. of how society has changed the Internet and how the Internet is shaped by society. The topic of social issues relating to Internet has become notable since the rise of the World Wide Web, which can be observed from the fact that journals and newspapers run many stories on topics such as cyberlove, cyberhate, Web 2.0, cybercrime, cyberpolitics, internet economy, etc.As most of the scientific monographs that have considered Internet and society in their book titles are social theoretical in nature (Bakardjieva 2005, Fuchs 2008, Slevin 2000), Internet and Society can be considered as a primarily social theoretical research approach of Internet studies.Or|date=November 2007Fact|date=November 2007 The approach by James Slevin (2000) is a social theory of the Internet that is primarily informed by the line of thought grounded by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens. The approach by Christian Fuchs (2008) is a social theory account that is primarily grounded in the works by Critical Theory scholars such as Herbert Marcuse, by the concept of social self-organization, and by neo-Marxist thinking.Fact|date=November 2007Or|date=November 2007 Fuchs argues that not just any type of Internet studies is needed, but a primarily theoretically informed theory of Internet and society, and that such a theory should be critical in nature (Critical Internet Theory/Research).Fact|date=November 2007 In this context, critique and critical, he argues, should be understood in the sense of the notion of critique advanced by the Frankfurt School.Fact|date=November 2007

References

Maria Bakardjieva. 2005. The Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. London: Sage.
Christian Fuchs. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge. James Slevin. 2000. The Internet and Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity.