[This is a slightly edited version of a talk given in Copenhagen on 10-17-08 at the 9th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (The tag for the conference is IR9.0)]

This year, 2008 is the 15th anniversary of the publication of the “Net and Netizens” by Michael Hauben on the Internet in the summer of 1993. Michael posted this paper in parts because it was fairly long. It was based on research he had done about the Internet by asking people questions about how they were using the Net in that period of the early 1990s. Also at the time there was some use of the term net.citizen on the net. Michael contracted the term net.citizen into the term netizen. Based on the responses and his analysis of them Michael put together a paper defining what he called the netizen.

His paper was spread around the Net by… weiter lesen

Some scholars who study South Korean politics have observed that the conservative media presents a particular problem for those who are interested in democratic development. The conservative media, they argue, provides a support structure for the conservative political interests which must be challenged if there is to be a more democratic political structure developed in South Korea. (1)
Recently, large protests in the form of candlelight demonstrations have taken place in South Korea. Directed against the neoliberal policies of the Lee Myung-bak government, they have continued for over two months. The candlelight vigils began on May 2. Since then candlelight vigils, often followed by round the clock open public meetings and demonstrations, have been common.

Describing these demonstrations and the online communication that helped make them possible, Kim Dae-jung, a former president of South Korea, observed (3):
“We are experiencing an extraordinary phenomenon in Korea. We are… weiter lesen