Sociology of the Internet

The terminology Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a future where every day physical objects are connected
by the Internet in one form or the other, but outside the traditional desktop realm. The successful
emergence of the IoT vision, however, will require computing to extend past traditional scenarios involving
portables and smart-phones to the connection of everyday physical objects and the integration of
intelligence with the environment. Subsequently, this will lead to the development of new computing
features and challenges. The main purpose of this paper, therefore, is to investigate the features,
challenges, and weaknesses that will come about, as the IoT becomes reality with the connection of more
and more physical objects. Specifically, the study seeks to assess emergent challenges due to denial of
service attacks, eavesdropping, node capture in the IoT infrastructure, and physical security of the sensors.
We conducted a literature review about IoT, their features, challenges, and vulnerabilities. The
methodology paradigm used was qualitative in nature with an exploratory research design, while data was
collected using the desk research method. We found that, in the distributed form of architecture in IoT,
attackers could hijack unsecured network devices converting them into bots to attack third parties.
Moreover, attackers could target communication channels and extract data from the information flow.
Finally, the perceptual layer in distributed IoT architecture is also found to be vulnerable to node capture
attacks, including physical capture, brute force attack, DDoS attacks, and node privacy leaks.

In this article, author describes linguistic innovations created by fashion and beauty bloggers. She points out differences between language of fashion and beauty bloggers. The members of first group prefer to use loanwords (mainly anglicisms), whereas the second ones tend to invent words to describe new phenomena, mainly considering hair and skin care. She contemplates the reasons for such difference in blogosphere, taking into consideration social and cultural determinants. One of the important conlusions is that in fact bloggers use their own professiolect, as writing a blog, once a hobby, became a job.

Do czego potrzebni są zindywidualizowanemu człowiekowi inni ludzie? Jaką rolę pełnią nowe formy wspólnotowości w życiu współczesnego człowieka? Jaki przybierają kształt i w jaki sposób jednostka w nich funkcjonuje? Na przykładzie macierzyńskich wspólnot internetowych autorka odpowiada na te pytania, pokazując, jak obecnie człowiek coraz częściej musi działać na własną rękę, lecz jednocześnie nadal chce dzielić z innymi swoje życie.

L’émergence de l’administration électronique en France a vu s’élaborer progressivement le modèle d’une administration « en réseau », orientée « au service de l’usager » (Carcenac, 2000). Dans les rapports publics et les discours politiques dans leur ensemble, cette figure de l’usager peut sembler relativement abstraite. Nous étudions ici comment elle s’est construite et ce qu’elle représente précisément en analysant notamment comment l’administration entend-elle saisir ces usagers, dans le but affiché de concevoir des services qui leur conviennent, c'est-à-dire qui leur « simplifient » leur existence ? Paradoxalement, la mise en œuvre de la « modernisation » de l’administration fiscale – moteur et fleuron de l’électronisation de l’administration française – se concentre essentiellement sur un accompagnement du changement vis-à-vis des agents, et se satisfait d’un usage extensif des nouveaux services qu’elle propose. Aussi, dans quelle mesure les usages réels des services en ligne sont-ils analysés et pris en compte par les concepteurs ? Notre hypothèse est que l’ensemble des acteurs (politique, haute administration, bureaux de projets et agents) de ces projets se représentent des usagers sensiblement différents, conformément à leurs missions, lesquelles ne se recoupent pas toujours. Notre travail consiste à lier nos multiples observations des usagers finaux et l’inscription de ces usagers dans les processus de conception du portail général de l’administration en ligne et du site des impôts. Concepteurs et usagers peuvent en effet être associés et/ou confrontés en plusieurs moments du processus d’innovation, entrant alors dans un processus de co-production des services. Aux représentations des usagers que se font les concepteurs et aux mobilisations des usagers dans des discours généraux, s’ajoutent les usagers des divers tests, groupes d’études, expérimentations, « pionniers », etc. Des allers-retours entre concepteurs et usagers peuvent ainsi s’élaborer, entraînant des évolutions, adaptations et autres nouvelles versions pouvant répondre à une « demande ». L’exemple de l’administration fiscale implique par exemple de tenir ensemble l’appropriation conjointe par l’usager des domaines suivants : la fiscalité, le fonctionnement administratif, l’informatique et Internet. Nous élaborons ainsi une typologie des usagers selon des critères de connaissances mises en oeuvre et de savoir-faire composés progressivement. Les terrains institutionnels étudiés pour analyser le développement de l’administration électronique sont d’une part l’administration fiscale (Ministère des finances, Direction Générale des Impôts), et d’autre part La documentation française, qui gère le portail de l’administration en ligne, service- public.fr.

This paper considers issues of sexual citizenship in light of new UK legislation that prosecutes the viewers of ‘extreme pornography’. Justified as an attempt to uphold public decency, government intervention seeks to prevent people seeing ‘extreme’ images not by limiting access to certain websites, but instead by intervening in the private consumption of these images. In this paper I draw on the discourses of those who have supported such intervention, and suggest that these arguments make a claim to space that defends the rights of some citizens over others. I examine the entwining of rights of expression, rights to identity and rights to safety. In conclusion, I argue that sexual citizenship is not just about the right to occupy actual physical places but also the right to inhabit the virtual. I hence argue that the internet plays a key role in transforming the sexual geographies of public and private.

В данном исследовании доверие рассматривается как одна из ключевых характеристик, свойственных локальному сообществу, его закрытой структуре. В работе ставится вопрос о том, возможно ли так же доверие в закрытом, но виртуальном сообществе и какую роль играет коммуникация между членами сообщества в формировании доверия.

As the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) prepares for its main annual fundraiser at the end of 2014, many Wikipedia readers are presented with a banner inviting them to donate an amount equivalent to the "price of buying a programmer a coffee". It's to keep Wikipedia "online and ad-free", the site says. However, this masks the fact that the WMF’s revenue, assets and expenses have risen by about 1,000% in recent years. While the WMF got by on annual donations totalling $5 million in 2007, it now wants over $50 million a year, despite reporting net assets of $45 million in summer 2013 and having taken another $50+ million in donations since then. Most of this money is not spent on keeping Wikipedia "online and ad-free", but on a ballooning bureaucracy that sees a select group of Wikipedians transitioning from unpaid volunteer to paid tech staff positions, creating a two-tier society and causing outgoing Executive Director Sue Gardner to raise concerns over the potential for "log-rolling and self-dealing" in 2013. Meanwhile, the WMF’s software engineering work has been judged inept by the unpaid volunteer community. The VisualEditor (VE), a WYSIWIG editor announced as "epically important" by Jimmy Wales, was so buggy and caused so many errors (such as inserting chess pawn characters in Wikipedia articles) that volunteer administrators rebelled, going over the Foundation's heads to disable VE as the new default editor. The new Media Viewer feature rolled out in August 2014 was equally controversial. The WMF created a new access right, "Superprotect", to prevent volunteer administrators from disabling it, bringing community relations between the WMF and the volunteer community to a new low. An open letter protesting the WMF’s actions acquired an unprecedented number of signatures. Flow, a planned Facebook-style revamping of Wikipedia discussion pages that has been in development for some time, is already mired in controversy, with volunteers complaining that the WMF is turning a deaf ear to their concerns. Donors should be aware that most of their money is not used to keep Wikipedia online and ad-free. It's not used to improve Wikipedia’s reliability either – the WMF neither measures content quality, nor employs staff to review and improve it. Instead, it funds the further aggressive expansion of an organization that's at loggerheads with its volunteer community and has been criticized for having a "miserable cost/benefit ratio".

Structures of social inequality and new forms of power inevitably arise inside the social space within the modern Internet despite the idea that Internet is a means of free communication based on the equality of users. The influence of traditional social inequality forms is absorbed and reduced within computer-mediated communication, so we suggest a hypothesis about emergence of radically new social resource. The paper presents the approach to study a virtual community as a social field (in terms of Bourdieu theory). The aim of this study is to measure and evaluate the contribution of different types of capital to unequal distribution of power within community. The author has developed the analytical matrix of social integration types provided by different web technologies, formulated the concept of communicative capital, operationalized different types of capital in cyberspace. Finally, the author presents the results of his empirical research showing and interpreting the distribution of different types of capital between two groups of users - moderators and ordinary users.

В статье строится портрет декларируемых участников акции протеста на Болотной площади на основании сообщества в социальной сети «ВКонтакте». Метод исследования – таргетинговый анализ. В рассматриваемом сообществе выделяются ядро (43% пользователей) и периферия (57% пользователей).
Фиксируется, что ядром протестного движения в виртуальном социуме преимущественно становятся
жители Москвы, мужчины и молодежь в возрасте от 18 до 34 лет. Значимыми для них являются такие
ценностные ориентации, как саморазвитие, семья и дети и совершенствование мира; в других они ценят
доброту и честность. Выявленные социально-демографические характеристики и ценностные установки
пользователей рассматриваемого сетевого сообщества существенно отличаются от аналогичных параметров по всему массиву пользователей социальной сети «ВКонтакте».

One general reservation should be expressed at the beginning
of this paper. Phenomena described below are based rather on specificity of Polish Internet, although this cannot be done without taking into account sub-system character of Internet treated as an element of media communication.
The analysis itself is based on the constructivist theory of communication.

Conference Proceedings of the International Conference
“Exploring Culture: Consumption, Organization and Communication”
May 17-18, 2012
Department of Philosophy and Culture Studies
Kaunas Faculty of Humanities
Vilnius University
ISBN 978-609-459-070-2

Wikipedia has often been credited with “democratising knowledge”. But it’s a peculiar sort of democracy. Wikipedia has a near-monopoly online: almost any search engine query will return a Wikipedia article as a top result. Naturally, there is great interest from the most diverse parties to influence Wikipedia’s content. Following the model of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan is another oil-rich country formerly part of the Soviet Union whose rulers have taken active steps to influence the development of their national language version of Wikipedia.

В работе оценивается влияние социальных сетей в  современном обществе. Приводятся результаты западных и
отечественных исследований, подтверждающих их тотальное проникновение в структуру повседневных взаимодействий и существенную роль в протестной мобилизации населения. Отмечается, что подобная риторика характерна не только для ученых, но и для политических лидеров.
Цель настоящего исследования заключается в выявлении динамики функционирования протестных сообществ в социальных сетях. Ее достижение осуществлено трехлетним мониторинговым исследованием (2012–
2014 гг.) одного из крупнейших и наиболее влиятельных в российском сегменте интернета сообщества «Свободные новости» в социальной сети «ВКонтакте». В качестве
методологического базиса выступил таргетинговый анализ. Была изучена вся генеральная совокупность рассматриваемого сообщества.
Анализ эмпирических данных за трехлетний период  продемонстрировал, что в протестном сообществе фиксируется рост числа декларируемых сторонников
виртуального протестного движения. Тем не менее в масштабах всего пространства российских пользователей социальных сетей данные показатели являются
незначительными, т.е. нет оснований говорить о том, что протестно настроенные пользователи репрезентируют все
виртуальное сообщество. Предпочитают вступать в протестные сообщества преимущественно жители Москвы или Санкт-Петербурга, мужчины, молодые люди от 18 до 24 лет. Актуальность для них имеют ценности семьи, наиболее важными качествами они признают доброту и честность.

After the VisualEditor, the Media Viewer is the second major new Wikipedia software update to have exposed rifts between the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteer editor base. A volunteer administrator who disabled the new feature in line with community consensus was threatened with removal of administrator privileges by the Wikimedia Foundation's deputy director. A case against the deputy director was brought in front of Wikipedia's arbitration committee.

... Foodscape by Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann Global Gender Research: Transnational Perspectives edited by Christine Bose and Minjeong ... Mexico Boundary by Joseph Nevins Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development by Ananya Roy Regression ...

This article considers spatial metaphors of the Internet and the possibility to extrapolate the frontier thesis of F. Turner on the electronic space. The authors believe that information and communication technologies and the digital world have become new spaces for the expansion of states or individuals. That is why there are ongoing scientific debates on the limits and potential of western and electronic frontiers’ metaphors for analytical description of the digital space. The metaphor of the Internet as a western frontier is quite controversial; many authors prefer the electronic frontier analogy as more heuristic and valid for constructing metaphors of the digital reality. The network frontier is defined as a dynamic, elastic and permeable border of social and cultural practices of the network society. The authors estimate the heuristic potential of the concept ‘network frontier’ developed on the basis of integration of the frontier theory and the concept ‘network society’, taking into account the effects of globalization for the study of elastic, permeable and movable border of the network landscape. In the digital world, the spatiality transforms, the geography of the Internet network determines the metamorphosis of the frontier as a contact zone between online and offline spaces, which is dynamic, innovative, encourages mobility, and its permeability depends on the digital competence of citizens. The authors explain the mythology of western and electronic frontier; name the main network frontier myths related to the rhetoric of western frontier myth; describe the main components of the western frontier myth associated with the idea of American exceptionalism; and conclude with the identification of nowadays myths about frontier-men and the online space they master.

This paper draws from a federally funded study on intelligent, real-time mass analysis of public life in Germany. It examines how large-scale monitoring data and learning algorithms are currently used in local police procedures – ranging from classic public place surveillance for the prevention of violence to smart face and gesture detection for manhunt purposes – in a country where privacy is a notorious public issue when it comes to digital technologies (e.g. Google Street View debate). Monitoring public life has been a topic of intensive discussion for quite some time. Driven by large-scale availability of new technologies and an increase of hardware networking, software possibilities are adding to legal and public monitoring discussions. Learning algorithms, for example, are used to operate smart cameras that (help) identify people, gestures and movements in public places. This paper provides insight into current developments and challenges of using algorithm-enabled monitoring ...

O objectivo maior deste texto é integrar os media no âmbito da teoria social e nos esforços para compreender a interação entre indivíduos, instituições, tecnologias e seus usos. Começa por situar historicamente o termo "novos media" a partir do quadro mais geral da história recente dos media, com o objetivo de justificar a validade atual do par "novos media". Sustenta a análise a partir de posições/debates já consolidados nos estudos críticos dos media e da sociedade, que dedicaram uma atenção importante ao papel dos media no âmago das sociedades de massa e aos seus desenvolvimentos através das sociedades pós-industriais até aos nossos dias. A partir daqui defende, enquanto perceção final, a relação estreita entre a estrutura tecnológica (e a sua ligação aos media) e os seus usos humanos, que definem os novos media como um sistema técnico-social – um sistema inédito, inovador e dinâmico.

Wiek biologiczny od początku istnienia gatunku ludzkiego w mniejszym lub większym stopniu wyznaczał miejsce człowieka w konstelacji otaczających go zjawisk, zarówno o charakterze przyrodniczym jak i społecznym. Jednocześnie, fizyczna aspekt starzenia się nie jest jedynym czynnikiem klasyfikującym. Młodość i starość są także kategoriami podlegającymi społecznej konstrukcji. Rodzaj i charakter czynników dających podstawę do włączania poszczególnych osób do abstrakcyjnego zbioru ludzi młodych lub starszych podlega w różnych okresach społecznej renegocjacji, w zależności od uwarunkowań demograficznych, kulturowych czy ekonomicznych. Kategorie te mogą mieć zarówno pozytywne, jak i negatywne konotacje.
Prawidłowość ta znajduje swoje odzwierciedlenie także w przypadku wirtualnego świata, który staje się obecnie coraz istotniejszym rozszerzeniem przestrzeni życia jednostkowego i zbiorowego. Mimo, iż nowe technologie (na przykład internet) są stosunkowo młode, to obecnie można już mówić o różnych generacjach ich użytkowników. Marc Prensky wprowadza rozróżnienie na cyfrowych imigrantów (jednostki urodzone i wychowane w rzeczywistości nienasyconej technologiami) i cyfrowych tubylców (jednostki urodzone i wychowujące się w świecie nowych technologii). Niektórzy badacze proponują bardziej szczegółowe typologie.
Negocjowanie granic poszczególnych generacji w świecie wirtualnym ma miejsce także pomiędzy samymi członkami społeczności świata internetu. Świadczy o tym zarówno konstruowanie tożsamości pokoleniowej w ‘sieci’ przez jednostki, jak i kreowanie kategorii dających ramy interpretacyjne służące społeczności wirtualnego świata do podziału użytkowników internetu na różne generacje. Sposób w jaki przebiegają te negocjacje wydaje się być specyficzny, odbiegający od wzorców świata realnego.
W swoim tekście chciałbym przedstawić wyniki badań (analiza debaty w internecie) na temat społecznego konstruowania kategorii pokolenia i generacji w wirtualnym świecie. Dodatkowo, chciałbym prześledzić indywidualne strategie konstruowania tożsamości i autoidentyfikacji pokoleniowej w sieci (analiza treści zamieszczanych przez użytkowników na portalach społecznościowych).