by DK
A key idea for Castells is that the internet increases connectivity between people and places across the globe. Irrespective of anyone’s social and ethnic background, the internet provides a virtual space in which people can link up with whoever they like, whenever and wherever they want. Provided you can get online, you can cross social barriers, timelines, and national boundaries via digital media.
New identities and freedoms
For digital sociologist Deborah Lupton, the internet contributes to social solidarity and collective identity. She focuses in particular on the rise of virtual communities: online gamers who regularly link up to play computer games; political interest and activist groups; self-help forums; and chat-based sites through which people form relationships.
Lupton found that because the internet is anonymous people feel free to express themselves in ways that they would find impossible in real life. This is particularly true for those who are pushed to the margins of society because of their identity, as may be the case with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) groups and ethnic minorities.
Internet anxieties
Along with new freedoms, the internet has brought new concerns. Sources of information on websites are often unclear, so it can be difficult to tell whether online encyclopedias, for example, can be trusted. Anyone can post information or stories to serve personal interests. These could include allegations against people, whether false or true, or damaging reviews of restaurants and other services.
An increasing anxiety for parents, according to sociologist Roy Charkalis, is the amount of time their children spend online. Social media is a very recent technological innovation, and rules and norms as to what usage is considered “normal” and acceptable have yet to be properly established.
Another common fear is that the internet isolates people by taking them out of the real world. US sociologist Paul DiMaggio investigated this concern in his 2001 study Social Implications of the Internet. He found that people who use the internet are more likely to call or visit friends than less frequent users. This is because heavy internet users do feel isolated, and so crave real human company. DiMaggio’s work also shows that people who use the internet a lot are more likely to seek printed information from books and magazines. These findings are important in providing a perhaps unexpected account of how the internet shapes people’s perceptions and behaviour.
Connected Anywhere, anytime, the internet can be part of our social and cultural lives.
China was the first country to recognize internet addiction as a disorder, and to open special treatment camps.
social media is very important to young people, who often COMMUNICATE more confidently through an online IDENTITy than face to face. interaction VIA THE NET can be seen as a step towards developing relationships in real life. but there are risks in being part of a worldwide virtual society.
Creating an identity
An online, or virtual, identity is a collection of personal details about who and what you are. This may or may not be a true reflection of your “real life” self. Many young people create an online identity through which they communicate with friends and family via popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. As US sociologist Sally McMillan says, learning to find your way round a network of online relationships can be seen as preparation for interacting with people in real society.
Online status matters
Going online blurs the boundaries between the personal and public dimensions of people’s lives. What young people post on the internet can be a deliberately constructed version of themselves designed to raise their social prestige among their contemporaries. Pictures taken at a rock concert or on holiday, or selfies posing with a celebrity, are meant to impress, and tweaking reality for better effect is regarded as legitimate. Being seen to advantage online is vital for someone wanting to fit into peer groups and social networks. Winning approval from hundreds or even thousands of “followers” is a great boost to fragile self-esteem.
The pressure on people to maintain a constant online presence is growing. Experiencing what sociologists refer to as “digital exclusion” can spell social disaster. For example, being deprived of internet access or purposely excluded from chat groups may have a huge negative impact on young people.
The risks of a virtual world
The almost limitless scope for online social networking comes with certain risks. British sociologist Sonia Livingstone thinks this is particularly true in the case of young people and children, because the internet undermines their parents’ capacity to regulate what they see and learn. Many publicly accessible sites do not have parental controls, and a child browsing online can inadvertently tap into inappropriate material.
Another risk is not being able to know the true identity of a person behind an online profile. Internet chat rooms and computer gaming communities can be and are infiltrated by predatory people looking to start up “friendships” with the socially vulnerable, particularly young girls. What starts as a virtual relationship could become dangerously real.
Young people are also the most common victims of online crimes such as “trolling” and cyberbullying. These involve harassment and bullying of someone online by posting defamatory remarks, insults, and even threats. Anyone who puts personal details on, say, a blog or Facebook is an easy target.
For many young people, the internet is an indispensable tool for learning about social relationships. But in the virtual world, as in the real one, not everyone they meet will be quite what they seem.
Going public Creating a virtual identity blurs the distinction between private and public life. Remember: details on the internet can be anyone’s business.
spyware for parents
Parents are increasingly making use of devices that allow them to monitor what their children are doing online A number of mobile phone apps have been developed that let parents follow a child’s social media activities, legally “hack into” messages and photographs posted online, or even track a child’s movements in the real world. Concerns have been raised that such so-called spyware could be exploited by the wrong people.
More than 600,000 Facebook accounts are hacked into every day.
See also: A sense of COMMUNITY | What does the Internet DO for us?
As society changes over time culture also changes. When technological innovations catch on, they bring about changes in social relationships and cultural activities too. Two of the main technological and cultural developments to shape modern society are the television and the internet.
CONSUMER SOCIETY
In the 1960s the term “consumer society” began to enter mainstream culture. Material goods could now be manufactured on a vast scale and cheaper than ever before, enabling many more people to buy them. The advertising industry arose to generate desire for this new range of consumer goods and services.
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan developed the influential idea that “the medium is the message” in 1964. McLuhan was urging sociologists to focus attention on the medium of communication, not the content. In particular, he discussed television, which requires little input from the viewer but offers multiple sensory stimulation.
CULTURE INDUSTRY
Early sociologists of the media, such as the Frankfurt School (a group of sociologists in Germany in the 1930s) regarded the modern media as a cornerstone in the “Culture Industry”. By this they were referring to the power of the organizations that decided on the news and stories that made up modern culture in the early 20th century.
FIRST INTERNET
The first network of computers able to communicate with each other was created in 1969, This was ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. ARPANET involved four US universities working together to research how computer scientists could develop the technology necessary for worldwide, online connectivity. This was the start of the internet.
FAKE
NEWS
In 2016, the term “fake news” entered popular culture. Fake news includes information and reports that look like news, but are actually made up in an attempt to influence the opinions and attitudes of the public. Users of the internet can easily remain anonymous making it easy to create and spread various kinds of disinformation.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The rising popularity of internet-based social media is one of the defining features of modern culture. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and friends at Harvard University launched Facebook from a computer in their room on campus. Today, it is estimated that Facebook has an estimated 1.86 billion users worldwide.
DECLINE OF NEWSPAPERS
The rise of the internet has impacted negatively on newspapers. In the last decade, newspaper publishers have struggled to compete with the immediacy and user-friendly format of online news websites and apps. The number of newspaper publishers that have closed, declared bankruptcy, or suffered severe cutbacks is rising, particularly in the US.
SOCIAL NETWORKING
Social networking is an integral part of modern culture in the West. In China too it is popular, though the government has sought to control access to this technology. China’s most popular social media platform is Weibo. Launched in 2009, Weibo is closely monitored so it is used for sharing jokes rather than posting news that could be controversial.
Directory of sociologists
Jeffrey Alexander (1947–)
US sociologist Jeffrey Alexander is based at Yale University, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology. Alexander believes that cultural ideas and values are more important than social class for shaping how people think and act. One of the world’s leading social theorists, Alexander outlines his approach to sociology in his book The Meanings of Social Life (2003). He has held posts at universities all over the world, including the University of Cambridge in the UK, and has received numerous international awards for his work.
Elijah Anderson (1943– )
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007)
The best-known work of French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard is his examination of the power of the media in society. He found that people’s perception of media images today is that they appear more real than the events they are meant to depict, a situation he called “hyper-reality”. Baudrillard expressed his views in his controversial book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991).
Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017)
Ulrich Beck (1944–2015) and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1946–)
German husband-and-wife-team Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim wrote a number of books together, including Distant Love (2013), which is about the changing nature of romantic relationships in a globalizing world. Ulrich Beck believed that globalization increases the risk of environmental disasters and breakdown in social order. He put forward these views in his book Risk Society (1992).
Howard Becker (1928–)
Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002)
Samuel Bowles (1939–) and Herbert Gintis (1940–)
While both sociologists are from the US, Samuel Bowles is a Marxist and a Professor in Economics and Herbert Gintis is a behavioural scientist and sociobiologist, whose work follows the theory that social behaviour is influenced by our genes. Together, Bowles and Gintis wrote a classic study about education in a capitalist society, Schooling in Capitalist America (1976).
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963)
A US sociologist and civil rights activist, William Du Bois was the first African–American to obtain a doctorate from the University of Harvard, in 1895. After securing a job at the University of Atlanta, he wrote what are now considered classic studies of the identity and experiences of African–American people in US society. The most famous of these are The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The US Civil Rights Act of 1964, the year after Du Bois died, implemented many of the civil liberties Du Bois had campaigned for all his life, including making racial segregation and discrimination illegal.
Judith Butler (1956–)
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1931–)
Brazilian sociologist and politician Fernando Henrique Cardoso wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of São Paolo on the subject of slavery in Brazil. He has held posts at prestigious universities such as Cambridge, England, and Stanford and the University of California in the US. Always politically active, Cardoso served as the 34th President of Brazil between 1995 and 2003. Now retired from public office, he is committed to putting an end to social problems, and is currently Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Manuel Castells (1942–)
Based at the University of Southern California, Manuel Castells is a Spanish sociologist whose work concentrates on globalization and communication. He focuses on the impact of internet-based technologies as the force behind social change. Castells sets out his ideas most clearly in The Rise of the Network Society (1996).
Nancy Chodorow (1944–)
Feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst, Nancy Chodorow spent much of her career at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. She used her psychoanalytic training as a basis for her sociological work, producing a number of highly influential studies such as The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978) and Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (1989). Now retired, Chodorow continues to lecture around the world.
Patricia Hill Collins (1948–)
Patricia Hill Collins is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, USA. She developed the concept of “intersectionality”, first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, which explores the ways in which ethnicity, such as being black American, ‘intersects” (overlaps) with other aspects of identity such as class and gender. Her book Black Feminist Thought (1991) was awarded the C. Wright Mills Award by the American Sociological Association for outstanding and innovative work.
Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
French philosopher Auguste Comte is widely regarded as the founder of sociology. He believed that the methods used in the study of natural sciences, such as biology and chemistry, could also be used to investigate the causes of social problems. Comte thought that modern society should be founded on non-religious and scientific principles. Comte’s views strongly influenced Émile Durkheim, the first European university professor of sociology.
Christine Delphy (1941–)
Delphy, a French sociologist and feminist, founded the Women’s Liberation Movement in France in 1970. She is a “materialist feminist” meaning that she studies the effect of inequality on women in the domestic environment. She believes that men have exploited women, especially with the marriage contract, which Delphy describes as a “labour contract”.
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–)
US feminist Barbara Ehrenreich abandoned an early scientific career to become a writer and political activist. During the 1970s, she held a post at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, where she taught and wrote about the sociology of women’s health from a feminist point of view. Ehrenreich’s work is much praised and she has received numerous awards. Her bestselling books include Nickled and Dimed (2001) and Living with a Wild God (2014). She is now a freelance writer and commentator on a wide range of social and political issues.
Norbert Elias (1897–1990)
Norbert Elias was a German thinker forced, as a Jew, to flee his home country when the Nazi Party rose to power before World War II. Elias took refuge in England in 1935. During this time, he continued writing his most famous work The Civilizing Process (1939), a historical study of the changes in manners and behaviour in Western society from the medieval period onwards. The book is now a classic text for sociology students.
Amitai Etzioni (1929– )
An American–Israeli sociologist, Etzioni is best known for his studies of small, self-governing societies. Etzioni believes that the individual members of a community should be grante
d certain rights and freedoms, providing they contribute to the overall running of their society. He is the author of over 20 books, the most influential of which is The Active Society, published in 1968.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
Michel Foucault was a philosopher and social theorist. He was especially interested in issues of power and how power is exercised, not only through physical force, but also in the way that people are categorized as different or problematic. In one of his important books Discipline and Punish, published in 1975, he developed his ideas on surveillance. He believed that the effectiveness of surveillance lay in the fact that people only have to think that they are being watched (even though they probably are not) to make them follow the rules. Michel Foucault has been influential not just in sociology but in many other disciplines too. His ideas have been adopted in the fields of cultural studies, archaeology, and literature amongst others.