Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson
ABSTRACT
The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing
theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it
is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms
of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet's implications in
five domains: 1) inequality (the "digital divide"); 2) community and
social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic
institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent
theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace
existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims
and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have
given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use
adapts to existing patterns, permits certain innovations, and reinforces particular
kinds of change. Moreover, in each domain the ultimate social implications of
this new technology depend on economic, legal and policy decisions that are
shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. Sociologists need to study
the Internet more actively and, particularly, to synthesize research findings
on individual user behavior with macroscopic analyses of institutional and political-economic
factors that constrain that behavior.