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Social Dynamics of the Internet Academic Year: 2015-16, Michaelmas Term Day and Time: Tuesday, 9:00 – 10:00 Location: Room L5, Mathematical Institute, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road (Please note that in Week 8 the class will be in L4 at the Mathematical Institute) Course Provider Professor Ralph Schroeder, Oxford Internet Institute, ralph.schroeder@oii.ox.ac.uk Background The Internet has fundamentally transformed aspects of society in recent decades. This course will examine some of the main areas of change, including political communication, connectedness in everyday life, and information seeking. The course will examine several technologies - microblogging, the role of search engines, smartphones, and social networking sites. In each case, a key question is: How do digital media differ from traditional mass or interpersonal media? The course takes a global perspective, going beyond the United States to the rising giants of India and China. In these countries, smartphones rather than fixed lines and television provide the main means of internet access for much of the population, so the implications are quite different. One aim of the course is to understand new media in the context of some of the major current debates in the social sciences; globalization, democratization, and divides in access to information. Research on the social implications of the Internet is still at an early stage, but there are already some key insights. This course will provide an overview of the major findings to date within several social science disciplines, including communication studies, sociology, anthropology and political science. A further aim of the course is to identify the overlaps and divergences among different research approaches. Finally, the course aims to give students who come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds a common grounding in research on the Internet, its social shaping and impact. It will also introduce some of the main theoretical traditions in the social sciences, and assess their strengths and limitations in relation to analysing the Internet. Key Themes Three key themes will run through all the topics discussed in this course, and students are expected to bear these in mind when undertaking course readings or attending classes: 1. Do online relations depart from, reflect, or complement offline social structures? 2. Which disciplines contribute most to our understanding and knowledge of the social implications of the internet? What are the assumptions made, and how powerful – or uncertain – are the findings? Are the findings from different disciplines complementary, or at odds with another?

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3. Does the internet have one effect, or many? What is different about this technology, and sets its implications apart from those of other technologies? Course Objectives The course will identify the strengths and weaknesses of different social science approaches. It will cover major theoretical debates and the empirical evidence that is needed to assess them. The course will range across some key topics – including the role of information and communication technology in everyday life, digital divides between developed and developing societies, and the relation between the internet and other technologies such as mobile phones – in order to illustrate the breadth and variety of substantive areas of study of the Internet. The course will also introduce the different social science disciplines and theories that address the social implications Internet and related information and communication technologies. These include media and communications, politics, sociology, and anthropology. Theories include social shaping and technological determinism, social network analysis, and medium theory. By the end of the course, students will have a thorough understanding of the main perspectives and key findings about the social implications of the Internet and other new media technologies. Learning Outcomes At the end of the course students will:

• Have a thorough grasp of major theories and debates about new information and communication technologies and social change

• Be able to identify where insights from across the social sciences overlap or diverge • Be familiar with a number of substantive topics that will be relevant for research on many

aspects of Internet studies • Be able to relate social science research on the Internet to policy questions and to questions

about the design and development of the Internet Teaching Arrangements The course will be taught during Michaelmas term in eight weekly classes, each consisting of a lecture followed by seminars with student presentations and discussion. There will also be seminars of one hour which will be led by a teaching assistant. Students will also have weekly written assignments before each session in answer to questions posed for each week, based on the key readings, which will be reviewed during the seminar sessions or submitted to the convenor or the teaching assistant. Students will also be required to write one short (advised length: 1500-3000 words) essay on any of the 8 topics covered. This formative essay will provide a means for students to obtain feedback on the progress they have achieved. Note Students should note that over the course of the year, small changes may be made to the content, dates or teaching arrangements set out in this reading list, at the course provider's discretion. These changes will be communicated to students directly and will be noted on the internal course information website. Assessment The course will be formally assessed by an examination of three hours that will take place in the 0 week of Hilary term. The examination will consist of eight questions of which any three must be answered. (Please note that the assessment for this course is different for DPhil students. DPhil students should please refer to the Graduate Studies Handbook for guidance).

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Any student who fails the examination will need to follow the rules set out in the OII Examining Conventions regarding re-sitting failed examinations. Topics 1 Oct 13 Theories of Society and the Internet 2 Oct 20 Globalization and Domestication 3 Oct 27 Mobile Phones, the Internet, and Perpetual Contact 4 Nov 3 Gender and New Media 5 Nov 10 Search and Access to Knowledge and Information 6 Nov 17 Young People and New Media (Rebecca Eynon) 7 Nov 24 Microblogging among New and Old Media 8 Dec 1 The Internet and Democracy General Readings

Benkler, Yochai The Wealth of Networks. 2007. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Castells, Manuel Communication Power. 2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Haddon, Leslie Information and Communication Technologies. 2004. Oxford: Berg.

Kraut, Robert

Brynin, Malcolm

Kiesler, Sara

Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology. 2006. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Graham, Mark

Dutton, William

Society and the Internet. 2014. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dutton, William Handbook of Internet Studies. 2013. Oxford University Press.

Rainie, Lee and Wellman, Barry.

Networked: The New Social Operating System. 2012. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Selected Internet Resources Mapping Digital Media http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/projects/mapping-digital-media Pew Internet and American Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/index.asp World Internet Project http://www.worldinternetproject.net/ Key to Readings A reading list is given below for each class. Those items marked with an asterisk (*) are essential reading and MUST be read by all students in preparation for the class. Items which are not marked with an asterisk are additional readings which need only be consulted in the preparation of student presentations or for essays. Week 1: Theories of Society and the Internet Theories about the social implications of the internet at the macro- level have emerged in sociology and media and communication studies. This lecture will introduce a range of these, including medium theory, social versus technological shaping, and social network analysis. Is it useful to speak of the power of new media, or if the self has changed in a network society? Where do technological

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determinism and the social shaping of technology depart from each other in understanding the implications of the Internet? Is it possible to distinguish new from old media? Question: Which social theory best explains the asymmetries of power relations brought about by information and communication technologies in contemporary societies?

*Castells, Manuel Communication Power. 2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 2, Conclusion

*Thompson, John B. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. 2001. Cambridge: Polity Press.

• Chapters 7 & 8

Couldry, Nick Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. 2012. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Meyrowitz, Joshua No Sense of Place. 1985. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Webster, Frank Theories of the Information Society. 2006. London: Routledge..

Fischer, Claude S. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 Social. 1992. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Schroeder, Ralph Rethinking Science, Technology and Social Change. 2007. Stanford: Stanford University Press

Week 2. Globalization and Domestication We all use a number of media on to maintain our relationships on a day-to-day basis. The ‘domestication’ theory of ICTs proposes that users shape new technologies by embedding them in their everyday lives. This perspective focuses on the social relations around ICTs in the home and changing patterns of – for example - time use and mobility. From this perspective, how do the uses of the Internet compare with the uses of telephones, mobile phones, television, and other new media? There are now also extensive cross-national surveys of the uses of the Internet and other ICTs: Clearly there are ever denser global networks, but how do media fit into theories of globalization? To what extent is it possible to answer a basic question such as whether the Internet and other ICTs homogenize social relations or make them more diverse across the globe? Question: ‘What are the primary uses of the Internet in everyday life? Are the uses of the Internet and ICTs converging or diverging in the developed world?’

*Haddon, Leslie Information and Communication Technologies. 2004. Oxford: Berg.

• Chapters 6 & 7

*Rantanen, Tehri The Media and Globalization. 2004. London: Sage.

• Chapters 4 & 5

Silverstone, Roger

Hirsch, Eric (eds)

Consuming Technologies. 1994. London: Routledge.

Flichy, Patrice Dynamics of Modern Communication. 1995. London: Sage Publications.

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Norris, Pippa

Inglehart, Ronald

Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World. 2009. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hallin, Daniel

Mancini, Paolo

Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. 2004. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bolsover, Gillian; Dutton, William; Law, Ginette; Dutta, Soumitra

‘China and the US in the New Internet World: A Comparative Perspective’, in Mark Graham and William Dutton (eds), Society and the Internet. How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing our Lives. (2014). Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.117-34.

Schroeder, Ralph ‘A Weberian Analysis of Global Digital Divides’, 2015, International Journal of Communication.

Week 3: Mobile Phones, the Internet, and Perpetual Contact Mobile Phones are becoming a complement to other forms of computer-mediated communication, and are themselves a means of maintaining ‘perpetual contact’. In some parts of the world, mobile phones have become much more rapidly diffused than other technologies. In others, they are commonly used for emails and access to information. Are mobile phones an indication of convergence? Is it possible to compare voice and text communication across devices? How do theories of ritual interaction and how social cohesion is produced compare with theories of multimodal connected presence? This session will compare the internet and mobile phones as well as examining the social implications of mobile telephony. Question: ‘Critically assess the idea that mobile communication reinforces social cohesion’.

* Ling, Rich

Donner, Jonathan

Mobile Communication. 2009. Cambridge: Polity Press, chapter 3 & 4

*Napoli, Philip

Obar, Jonathan

The Emerging Mobile Internet Underclass: A Critique of Mobile Internet Access, The Information Society: An International Journal; 2015: 30:5, 323-334.

Baron, Naomi S. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. 2008. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ling, Rich Taken for Grantedness: The Embedding of Mobile Communication into Society. 2012. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Hutchby, Ian Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. 2000. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Jeffrey, Robin

Doron, Assa

The Great Indian Phone Book: How the Mass Mobile Changes Business, Politics and Daily Life. 2013. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Katz, James E. Handbook of Mobile Communication. 2008. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Licoppe, Christian “‘Connected’ Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Managing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape.” 2004. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22(1): 135-156.

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Schroeder, Ralph

Ling, Rich

“Durkheim and Weber on the social implications of new information and communication technologies.” 2014. New Media and Society, 16: 789-805.

Week 4: Gender and New Media  In countries like China and India, there are major differences in men’s and women’s uses of the internet and of cell phones. In the United States and other Western countries, it is hard to detect differences by gender, with the possible exception of time spent. Gender is often treated in the literature on development studies and in terms of skills and empowerment. Here, instead, ICTs will be examined as part of the household and in everyday life. One area that will be explored in depth is online matchmaking, which has rapidly become widespread in India and China. One question raised is whether new practices of finding partners and greater expression of sexual freedoms online contribute to the Westernization of gender roles. Question: How are gender roles changing with ICT uses in India and China?

*Farrer, James China’s women sex bloggers and dialogic sexual politics on the Chinese Internet. China Aktuell. 2007: 36 (4), 10-44.

*Titzmann, Fritzi-Marie Changing Patterns of Matchmaking: The Indian Online Matrimonial Market. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 2013: vol. 19, no.4, pp.64-94.

Anzari, Aziz Modern Romance. 2015. London: Allen Lane.

*Please note that this book contains sexually explicit material.

Wajcman, Judy Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Time in Digital Capitalism. 2015. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, chapter 5,6.

Rosenfeld, Michael

Thomas, Reuben

‘Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as Social Intermediary’, 2012. American Sociological Review, 77(4): 523-47.

Doron, Assa ‘Mobile Persons: Cell Phones, Gender and the Self in North India’, 2012. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13(5): 414-33.

Farrer, James Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai. 2002. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wallis, Cara Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones. 2013. New York: New York University Press.

Week 5: Search and Access to Knowledge and Information Search engines have become ubiquitous as means to access the Web, reconfiguring knowledge and information in the process. A number of studies have found that, rather than democratizing the sources of information, search concentrates attention on a few dominant sites. How do search engines shape access – via commercial dominance, link structure, or user skills (or lack of skills)? Can theories of gatekeeping, and of ‘domestication’, shed light on how search shape the dissemination of information and ways in which information is used in everyday life? This session will provide an overview of search engine uses and findings about their implications.

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Question: Do search engines act as gatekeepers? How is this gatekeeping effect different from traditional media and sources of information?

* Hindman, Matthew The Myth of Digital Democracy. 2009. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Chapter 4

*Zimmer, Michael

Web Search Studies: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Web Search Engines, in Hunsiger, J, Klastrup, L. and Allen, M. (Eds). 2010. International Handbook of Internet Research. London: Springer, pp. 507-521

Granka, Laura A. “The Politics of Search: A Decade Retrospective.” 2010. The Information Society, 26: 364-74.

Havalais, Alex Search Engine Society. 2008. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Barzilai-Nahon, Karine ‘Toward a Theory of Network Gatekeeping’. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2008. 59(9): 1493-1512.

Hargittai, Eszter;

Neumann, Russell

and Curry, Olivia

Taming the Information Tide: Perceptions of Information Overload in the American Home" The Information Society (2012). 28: 161-173.

Waller, Vivienne ‘Not Just Information: Who Searches for What on the Search Engine Google?’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2011. 62(4): 761-75.

Aspray, William

Hayes, Barbara

Everyday Information: the Evolution of Information Seeking in America. 2011. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Schroeder, Ralph ‘Does Google shape what we know?’, Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation. 2014. 32(2): 145–160.

Week 6: Young People and New Media (Rebecca Eynon) In the media, there is a great deal of hype and myths around the use of new technology by young people. Popular opinion ranges from perspectives where young people are seen as “ digital natives” who have an innate ability to use and excel at using technologies - to those where children are seen as highly vulnerable and susceptible who need protection from ICTs.Linking to wider sociological and psychological debates about the meaning of childhood and adolescence, this session will explore the available social science research that examines young people and the Internet to critique and explore the relationship between popular discourse, policy contexts and the available empirical evidence. Question: ‘How can concerns about harm be balanced against the need to maintain the openness of the Internet?’

* Boyd, Danah It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens. (2014). Yale University Press. Chapter 1

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* Selwyn, Neil ‘”Doing IT for the kids”: Re-examining children, computers and the “Information Society”’. Media, Culture and Society, (2003) 25(3), 351-378.

Helsper, Ellen and Eynon, Rebecca

‘Digital Natives: Where is the evidence?’ British Educational Research Journal (2010) 36 (3) 503-520.

Livingstone, Sonia ‘Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression’. New media & society, (2008). 10(3), 393-411.

Ito, Mimi et al.

Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. (2009) MA: MIT Press.

Thorne, Barrie ‘“Childhood”: changing and dissonant meanings’. International Journal of Learning and Media. (2009) 1(1), 19–27.

Week 7: Microblogging among New and Old Media Twitter and other microblogging services have rapidly become popular ways of disseminating and sharing information. Is it possible to compare microblogging services in different settings, for example comparing Twitter with Sina Weibo, one of the most popular services in China? How do the affordances of the medium, with Weibo closer to a social networking site like Facebook, shape the uses and implications of the technology? How do information flows take place, and is it possible to trace influence through networks? Theories of social networks and affordances can be used, but it is also important to locate microblogging within the larger environment of old and new media, and different media systems when comparing countries and languages. Question: ‘What distinguishes microblogs from other new and old media?’

Marwick, Alice

boyd, danah

“I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience.” New Media & Society. 2011. vol. 13 no. 1 114-133

King, Gary

Pan, Jennifer

Roberts, Margaret E.

How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression. American Political Science Review 2013. 107, no. 2 (May): 1-18

Wilkinson, D.

Thelwall, Mike

Trending Twitter topics in English: An international comparison. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2012, 63(8), 1631-1646.

Van Dijck, Jose The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. 2013. New York: Oxford University Press, esp. chapter 4.

Kwak, H. et al. ‘What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?’ Proceedings of the 19th International World Wide Web (WWW) Conference, April 26-30, 2010, Raleigh North Carolina.

Cha, Meeyoung

Haddadi, Hamed

Benevenuto, Fabricio

Gummadi, Krishna

‘Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy’, 2010. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), May. Available at http://twitter.mpi-sws.org/

Chen, Shaoyong ‘Comparision of Microblogging Service Between Sina Weibo and Twitter, 2011. International Conference on Computer Science and Network

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Zhang, Huanming

Lin, Min

Lv, Shuanghuan

Technology, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=06182424

Murthy, Dhiraj ‘Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter’. Sociology. 2012. vol. 46 no. 6 1059-1073.

Sullivan, Jonathan ‘A Tale of Two Microblogs in China’, Media, Culture & Society. 2012. 34(6), 773-83.

Rauchfleisch, Adrian

Schaefer, Mike

‘Multiple public spheres of Weibo: a typology of forms and potentials of online public spheres in China’, Information, Communication & Society, 2015. 18(2): 139-155.

Week 8: The Internet and Democracy Political communications research has a number of well-established research traditions and concepts, including theories of ‘gatekeeping’ and ‘agenda setting’. Does a greater diversity of content and of media channels affect political opinion? Does the Internet offer new choices and enhance diversity, or does it does fragment and homogenize news and political opinion? The US is often seen as exemplary, but how representative are its media institutions? And can it be expected that new social media enhance democratization processes? In this respect, we shall put the US into the context about democratization (and its absence) in other parts of the world Question: ‘How do digital media enhance democracy? Discuss with reference to the case of any one country’. *Howard, Philip N.

The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam. 2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 1 & Conclusion

*Bimber, Bruce Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power. 2003. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Chapters 1 & 6

Luhmann, Niklas The Reality of the Mass Media. 2000. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Starr, Paul. The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. 2004. New York: Basic Books.

Neuman, W. Russell

Bimber, Bruce

Hindman, Matthew

Shapiro, R. Y. and Jacobs, L. R. (Eds). 2011. The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 2: The Internet and Four Dimensions of Citizenship

Prior, Markus Post Broadcast Democracy. 2007. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cook, Timothy E. Governing with the News. 2005. Chicago: University of Chicago. (esp. Afterword to 2005 ed.)

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Stockmann, Daniela Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China. 2013. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yang, Guobin

The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online. 2009. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chapters 2 & 7