The Internet and Society [Paperback]

James Slevin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0745620876 | ISBN-13: 978-0745620879 | Edition: 1

The Internet and Society explores the impact of the internet on modern culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'By far the most sophisticated historical and theoretical treatment of the Internet to appear so far, yet a real pleasure to read. Enormously comprehensive and tough minded, The Internet and Society dramatically raises the level of discussion about a phenomenon that is radically changing the way we live.' James Lull, Professor of Communication Studies, San Jose State University, California

'Slevin sets out to challenge traditional ways of looking at the internet and he achieves this. His book is challenging and thought-provoking, and a first step towards an understanding of the cultural impact of the internet. His work is well informed and well based in previous scholarship.' Business History

'An insightful analysis into the interplay between communication and culture.' Sunday Tribune (Dublin)

'This book deserves much praise. Slevin provides a well reasoned and systematic account that illuminates the social situatedness and significance of the internet within contemporary society.' Lincoln Dahlberg, Convergence

From the Back Cover

The Internet and Society explores the impact of the internet on modern culture beyond the fashionable celebration of 'anything goes' online culture or the overly pessimistic conceptions tainted by the logic of domination. In this major new work, James Slevin develops an original account of the internet and relates it to the analysis of culture and communication in late modern societies.

Slevin offers a critical appraisal of contributions to the study of the internet and its related networks such as intranets and extranets. He argues that these studies fail to deal adequately with the nature of communication and its role in an increasingly uncertain world.

Slevin addresses this deficiency by elaborating a distinctive social theory of the internet and its impact. He develops his argument by offering an in-depth examination of the connections between the rise of the internet and new issues concerning the state, political and economic organization, the process of self-formation, globalization, publicness, regulation and, above all, the management of risk and uncertainty. Throughout the book, James Slevin relates his analysis of the internet to a variety of substantive examples of internet use from around the world and sets out and redefines the tasks for further study.

This book will be of interest to second-year undergraduates and above in media and communications studies, cultural studies, sociology and social theory and students and academics across the social sciences who are interested in the impact of new communication technologies.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 265 pages
• Publisher: Polity; 1 edition (March 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745620876
• ISBN-13: 978-0745620879
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,016,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Certainly a good book about the Net, March 27, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Internet and Society (Paperback)

Good books about the Internet are rare, but Slevin's book is certainly one of them. It approaches the Internet from a social point of view, and describes the Net as a completely new medium, which covers aspects of all other existing media, and which, being so varied, has some major advantages over single, separate media (like newspapers or television). As Slevin argues, the Internet differs from a single, separate medium in that it does not merely have a push role, but can give people so much information as to make a real difference and a huge impact on society. Slevin might, as such, have named his book 'Internet is Society' rather than 'Internet and Society'.

The book is a good introduction to the origins and definitions of the Internet. It describes how young people basically grow up with the medium and how other people are spending more and more time and money to explore the Net. The book also deals with the Internet's possibilities and, not unimportantly, with the risks that are involved. These risks being a hot issue in society at the moment (risk management in organizations), Slevin's book provides some new insights into handling the Internet, both online as well as offline. So the book is a kind of a SWOT analysis of the Net and I am very impressed by this book!

René Kalsbeek M.A.Communication Studies, University of Amsterdam

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Internet's impact much broader than "online culture", December 14, 2000

By 

Cindy Royal (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Internet and Society (Paperback)

As a doctoral student in Mass Communcation at the University of Texas in Austin studying the social impact of the Internet, I was glad to find a text that discussed the Internet from a social and cultural perspective. It was so refreshing to find that someone recognizes that the impacts of technology are broader than just the "online culture."

I was also inspired by Dr. Slevin's active approach recommendation to technology, rather than the passive approach or wait-and-see approach, or the technozealot/technophobe approaches that are prevalent in current literature. I, too, feel that the impact will be the sum total of various pros, cons and indifferences of the medium and that only through a coherent study of technology and an analysis of communication and sociological theory will we be able to grasp its opportunities and consequences. I plan to refer to this book and the resources on the associated Web site as a key resource in my dissertation process.

The focus on the arguments of Giddens, Thompson and Baumann strengthened the position of the author and grounded the work in sociological theory. Slevin realizes that we must not assume that traditional theory will apply in this new medium, but that we must analyze existing theory and understand that the unique dynamics of the Internet might modify or even rewrite theory. This work is powerful and insightful in its ability to integrate and apply multiple perspectives. I only wish that I could have written this book myself!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A persuasive theoretical attempt to grasp of cyberspace, April 1, 2002

By 

Suckwoo Lee (Seoul, Seoul South Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Internet and Society (Paperback)

If you look for a empirical and graphic illustration of cyberspace, this is not your choice. This book is intended to contribute to theoretical founding of cyberspace. So most pages are devoted to reviewing and elaborating various existing theories, researches. That is, this is a meta-theorizing. His founding theoretical orientation is not fashionable postmodernist but Giddens¡¯s theory of structuration, particularly the knowledgability of actor, and modernity. The author manages to bring about a persuasive extension of Giddens¡¯s approach to cyberspace. He argues there is no reason to see that online community is not that different from offline day-to-day life from totally discrepant angle as postmodernists claim. Online community also assumes the development of the integrity, trust and shared stock of knowledge. What is needed to assess the experience of this brave new world is the proper theory of media and modernity.
The overall outline of the book is like this:
Ch.1: dealing with the nature of ¡®risk society¡¯ depending on Giddens and Habermas.
Ch.2: illustrating the technological and institutional features of internet.
Ch.3: theoretical founding of internet as media based on Thompson¡¯s conception.
Ch.4: arguing that the virtual community is not that far cry from actual (offline) community. So we can cope with it based on existing framework.
Ch.5 arguing that mobilizing IT into organizations like the enterprise, i.e., restructuring, should be reconsidered in the light that IT changes the settings of interaction for IT is a form of media. This chapter tackles the cases of government and NGO¡¯s IT adoption too.
Ch.6: focusing on how the internet enriches and transforms the nature of the self and experience in everyday life. His position is like this: ¡®the self is not being transformed by forces that operate exclusively behind the backs of individuals¡¯.
Below are comments I posted on the bulletin board of a graduate class. Most are complaints. Yep. It¡¯s not fair to the author. But the reader I presumed are those who already read the text. So there was not much reason to recapping the text and writing down praises. And some are not that relevant to the book directly. But I think it would be helpful to get what is like the real line of the book.

1. (On Ch.1) This introductory chapter on founding concepts borrowed from Giddens and Beck, in the tint of Frankfurt¡¯s conception of life world, is much more graphic than Castells¡¯s. But the sketch of time-space distanciation or modernization, in the light of uncertainty and risk is not figurative. And that, there is no definition of ¡®risk¡¯. Yep. Risk is well known concept and widely used. But the writer mixes it with life world in the sense of Frankfurt¡¯s. he should have suggest the definition of those concepts to place in the context. And worse, he omits various ancillary concepts like danger vs. security, disembedding vs. reembedding, ontological security and so forth. Yep. Recapping whole line of ¡®The Consequences of Modernity¡¯ is not reasonable. But such a skipping causes confusion.
2. (On Ch.3) I can¡¯t understand why the author uses the ambiguous concept of culture, while he devoted a few pages to theoretical problems of that concept. He doesn¡¯t substantiates the intangible word at all. I¡¯m not sure what would be his object in this chapter. Frankly, I couldn't distinguish Geertz¡¯s conception from functionalist¡¯s. For that reason, Giddens expelled that word from his theorizing. I couldn't see any benefit to use that word. Culture is no more than a conceptual umbrella, at least in sociology, which unjustifiably conflate seemingly compatible phenomena, though actually discrepant in practical research. Its notoriety doesn¡¯t fall short of one of ¡®society¡¯. For this reason, Giddens restrains himself from the temptation to sue that word, rather confined it only to ¡®the locale of interaction¡¯. Thompson¡¯s analytic framework of ¡®cultural transmission¡¯ is awesome. In my opinion, his framework is wholly compatible to Giddens¡¯s. For Giddens himself doesn¡¯t offer sufficient theorizing on media or technology, his framework could complement the shortfall. But I don¡¯t think Giddens¡¯s stratification model, especially power, could go hand in hand with culture. Instead, why not replace ¡®modality of cultural transmission¡¯ with ¡®media¡¯ ? I suspect author¡¯s use of ¡®culture¡¯ is no more than the inflation of concept.
Besides the conceptual glitch, the intention of ch.3 seems successful: to link the internet to publicness or public sphere. It has been discussed for long. But the author¡¯s attempt to theoretically found it has a point in sketching out the field.
3. (On Ch.4) On the first section of ch.4, I wonder why the author simply ignore the very condition of those various citations he bombarded. Didn¡¯t he fail to be reminded that it could cause confusion? I won¡¯t say he should have reproduced the emptiness of postmodernists, but he should have sensitized, at least, and articulated what is his opponent. It¡¯s the way of discussion. Yep. He illustrates their position in ch.6. but ch.6 is not ch.4.
4. (OnCh.4) the author follows the line of Giddens to attack the babbles of postmodernists. As well known, postmodernists take the stance of poststructuralists in the conception of the self. It has some points in the sphere of philosophy. But it¡¯s hard to be so in sociology. As Giddens puts it, the agency should be conceived as knowledgable actor. This is the point of late Wittgenstein too. In this vein, the babble of postmodernist should be rejected. In this regard, author¡¯s sketching out of IRC, in the fashion of Goffman, is much more persuasive than empty discussion of postmodernists.