[Note: This is a slightly edited version of a talk presented on May 1, 2012 at a small celebration in honor of the 15th Anniversary of the publication of the print edition of the book Netizens]

I – Looking Back

Fifteen years ago on May 1, 1997, the print edition of Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet was published in English. Later that year, in October, a Japanese translation of the book was published. Today we are celebrating the occasion of the 15th Anniversary of this event.

In honor of this occasion I want to both look back and look forward toward trying to assess the significance of the book and of Michael Hauben’s discovery of the emergence of the netizen. I want to briefly look at what has happened in the interim of these 15 years toward trying to understand what new advance this… weiter lesen

Part I – Netizen Journalism Panel: The Internet, Netizens, and Journalism

[Note: In October, 2008 there was a panel about Netizen Journalism at the 9th annual conference of Internet researchers (IR9.0 is the tag) which was held in Copenhagen. Following is an abstract for the panel, and then a summary that Axel Bruns posted on his blog of the session. A slightly edited version of one of the talks at the panel, my talk about Candlelight 2008 in South Korea as an example of Watchdog Journalism, is online in an earlier post on my blog.]

In his pioneering research about the impact of the Internet, Michael Hauben recognized that the nature of the Net made possible a new form of citizenship, a participatory form that is oriented toward a public purpose. He called the people who were developing this new form of citizenship, netizens.(1)

What would be the… weiter lesen