Communities In Cyberspace

This wide-ranging introductory text looks at the virtual community of cyberspace and analyses its relationship to real communities lived out in today's societies. Issues such as race, gender, power, economics and ethics in cyberspace are grouped under four main sections and discussed by leading experts: * identity * social order and control * community structure and dynamics * collective action. This topical new book displays how the idea of community is being challenged and rewritten by the increasing power and range of cyberspace. As new societies and relationships are formed in this virtual landscape, we now have to consider the potential consequences this may have on our own community and societies. Clearly and concisely written with a wide range of international examples, this edited volume is an essential introduction to the sociology of the internet. It will appeal to students and professionals, and to those concerned about the changing relationships between information technology and a society which is fast becoming divided between those on-line and those not.

Reading is both a social process and a social formation, as this book illustrates across centuries and cultural contexts. Highlighting links evident in reading communities from literary salons to online environments, each essay reflects the rich repertoire of research methods available to reading scholars.

The chapters in this book provide a basis for thinking about the dynamics of Internet community building. The book will interest educators, psychologists, sociologists, and researchers in human-computer interaction.

Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others? Online community has provided social researchers with insights into our evolving social life. As suburbanization and the breakdown of the extended family and neighborhood isolate individuals more and more, the Internet appears as a possible source for reconnection. Are virtual communities "real" enough to support the kind of personal commitment and growth we associate with community life, or are they fragile and ultimately unsatisfying substitutes for human interaction? Community in the Digital Age features the latest, most challenging work in an important and fast-changing field, providing a forum for some of the leading North American social scientists and philosophers concerned with the social and political implications of this new technology. Their provocative arguments touch on all sides of the debate surrounding the Internet, community, and democracy.

Virtual Politics is a critical overview of the new - digital - body politic, with new technologies framing the discussion of key themes in social theory. This book shows how these new technologies are altering the nature of identity and agency, the relation of self to other, and the structure of community and political representation.

Social Geographies, as spatial location, is a factor relevant to understanding the variety of people’s interpretations and appropriations of educational innovations and changes. Their location in the social space also influences their response to change. In the field of educational change, social space means for example, skin colour, gender distribution of teachers in one school, children’s self-cultural representations or parents’ religious attitudes. By using the notion of Social Geographies in the context of educational change, the authors address the following questions: How initiatives in a classroom or department are influenced by the surrounding context of the school, the district or the nation; How innovation spreads or diffuses from one school to another; How and whether reforms can be scaled up from a few schools to a whole system; How seemingly standardised reforms affect schools differently depending on where they are located; How schools influence one another; How the identities of, and interrelationships among, schools are affected by technology, principles of market competition and choice, and other initiatives. This volume is relevant to educationalists, policy-makers, teachers, and students interested in a more complex approach to understand and intervene in educational change processes.

A collection of essays that investigate the interaction of the real and the virtual life and their mutual influence on how members of communities adapt their behaviour in changing contexts. Especially the impact of virtually created identities with regards to personality and identity in real lives is a focal point for continuous exploration of individuals, nations or organisations. Conversations in cyber communities often extend those of the real world to previously unavailable or complicated subjects (both in the sense of topic and/or recipients), including reverse projections of cybercultural expressions and objects to the offline world. Conceptualising the habitat of cyberspaces needs a spatial praxis that ultimately provides orientation in the non-physical and potentially unlimited virtual space through reflections of cybergeography and maps of community networks.