Steven Jones 
Virtual Culture 
Identity and Communication in Cybersociety

Virtual Culture marks a significant intervention in the current debate about access and control in cybersociety exposing the ways in which the Internet and other computer-mediated communication technologies are being used by disadvantaged and marginal groups – such as gay men, women, fan communities and the homeless – for social and political change.

The contributors to this book apply a range of theoretical perspecitves derived from communication studies, sociology and anthropology to demonstrate the theoretical and practical possibilities for cybersociety as an identity-structured space.

Tabella dei contenuti

Introduction – Steven G Jones

The Internet and Its Social Landscape – Steven G Jones

The Individual Within the Collective – Jan Fernback

Virtual Ideology and the Realization of Collective Principles

Virtual Commonality – Ananda Mitra

Looking for India on the Internet

Structural Relations, Electronic Media and Social Change – Joseph Schmitz

The Public Electronic Network and the Homeless

Why We Argue about Virtual Community – Nessim Watson

A Case Study of Phish.Net Fan Community

Gay Men and Computer Communication – David Shaw

A Discourse of Sex and Identity in Cyberspace

Virtual Community in a Telepresence Environment – Margaret L Mc Laughlin, Kerry K Osborne and Nicole B Ellison

(Re)-Fashioning the Techno-Erotic Woman – Dawn Dietrich

Gender and Textuality in the Cybercultural Matrix

Approaching the Radical Other – Susan Zickmund

The Discursive Culture of Cyberhate

Punishing the Persona – Richard Mac Kinnon

Correctional Strategies for the Virtual Offender

Civil Society, Political Economy, and the Internet – Harris Breslow

Circa l’autore

Steve Jones is UIC Distinguished Professor of Communication and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA and Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute for Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is editor of New Media & Society and co-editor of Mobile Media & Communication. His research interests encompass popular music studies, music technology, sound studies, internet studies, media history, virtual reality, human-machine communication, social robotics and human augmentics. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and the Tides Foundation.