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Collab-U CMC Play E-Commerce Symposium Net Law InfoSpaces Usenet
NetStudy VEs VOs O-Journ HigherEd Conversation Cyberspace Web Commerce
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Lincoln Dahlberg
Massey University
New Zealand
Abstract
Introduction
Uses Determination
Technological Determination
Social Determination
Towards Non-Reductionist Research
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
References
About the Author
$
Internet research has become a "field" in its own right in the social
sciences, already boasting a number of peer-reviewed journals, a plethora
of book titles, and an international association that draws hundreds of
researchers from across the globe to its annual conference. This paper
contributes to this burgeoning field at a meta-methodological level by
considering what is needed to achieve non-reductionist understandings of
the Internet. It shows how Internet research perspectives draw upon
various established media and technology research traditions. These can
be grouped according to their emphasis upon three different aspects of
determination influencing media technology outcomes: uses, where the
instrumental use of the artifact is brought to the fore; technological, where
the form of media technology is focused upon; and social, where the
structuring of outcomes by social determinants is central. Consideration of
the research traditions emphasizing each of these aspects gives access
to previously recognized strengths and weaknesses associated with each.
In particular, my critical examination highlights how each perspective can
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fall into overly deterministic arguments: instrumentalist, technological
determinist, and social determinist. As such, I argue that to gain
non-reductionist understandings of the Internet, research ideally needs to
take into account the complex interplay between multiple constituting
elements. I point to a number of existing media technology approaches
that can help with this task. However, I also acknowledge the limitations
placed on research by resource constraints and recognize that
researchers may wish to follow a particular tradition and focus on a single
determination. I argue that these researchers must at least recognize the
multi-dimensionality of determination, and be reflexive about the limits of
their approaches, methods, and findings.
"
Internet research has recently become a rather fashionable undertaking in
the social sciences, spurred on by the rapid development of the
technology and by support from the many funding agencies intoxicated
with the "information society". Researchers coming from a variety of
disciplines and theoretical traditions have been undertaking an impressive
array of projects focusing on multiple questions. The hectic pace at which
research has proceeded has not stopped many researchers from taking
time to consider the suitability of existing methods, or developing
innovative approaches for the social study of the medium. However, there
has yet to be extensive reflection upon the background methodological
perspectives informing research programs. Here, I want to contribute to
the beginnings of such meta-methodological reflection. I provide a
broad-ranging critical exploration of three dominant perspectives guiding
current Internet research. This highlights possibilities for improving
methodology and consequently for extending understandings of the
Internet.1
The paper outlines three strands of Internet research, each focusing upon
a different aspect of the "circuit of technology": uses, artifacts, and social
contexts. I show how these perspectives can be found in well-established
approaches to the social study of both media and technology. Media
studies is seen by many practitioners as having bifurcated into culturalist
and structuralist approaches (Curran, 1990; Golding & Murdock, 2000;
Kellner, 1997a; Morley, 1992). It is divided between research that
concentrates upon an analysis of meanings developed at the level of
cultural artifacts and research that undertakes a broader sociological
analysis of media institutions and their products. The culturalist tradition is
itself divided between research that looks to meanings within texts and
research that emphasizes the readings of texts as constituting meaning
(Golding & Murdock, 2000, p. 71). These three strands (readings, texts,
contexts) are paralleled in approaches to the social study of technology
(Carpenter, 1992; Lacroix & Tremblay, 1997). Research tends to either
emphasize technological uses (paralleling readings of texts), the effects of
the technological artifact (paralleling the constitutive power of texts), or
the social context (paralleling the production and distribution of texts).
I critically examine each of these strands to determine what they
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contribute to an understanding of media technology in general and to the
Internet in particular. However, this assessment will not look to prescribe
the deployment of specific methods. Such decisions will depend upon the
particular questions and focus of individual research projects. The aim
here is to explore the links between Internet studies and media
technology traditions in order to identify major strengths and weaknesses
of the various perspectives taken, and to subsequently reflect on
possibilities for improving Internet research methodology.
% & '
Much Internet research focuses upon the ways in which individuals and
groups employ the new medium. This type of research is often found in
studies of the way people use the Internet in politics, domestic life,
community participation, and business (see, for instance, Harrison &
Stephen 1999; Katz & Rice, 2002; Sudweeks, McLaughlin, & Rafaeli,
1998; Thomsen, 1998; Waipeng & Eddie, 2002). For instance, The Pew
Center's Internet and American Life Project carries out large phone
surveys that gather statistics on how the Internet is being employed
socially, politically, and economically by ordinary US citizens. There are
also many extremely informative smaller scale uses-oriented initiatives.
Bimber's Government and Politics on the Net Project at the University of
California carries out valuable research on the use of the Internet in
political organization and participation. Facer et al.'s (2001) "grounded"
research - into young people's utilization of computers in a context
flooded with information society rhetoric - offers one example of the many
fascinating qualitative research efforts examining the uses of new
information and communications technologies (NICTs).
This "uses" focus is not new. It links to research strands in the social
study of both media and technology. In media studies, both North
American communications research and British media studies have
responded to the pessimism of the Frankfurt School's Kulturkritik with a
turn towards the uses (or readings) of the media. Whereas Kulturkritik
advanced a somewhat passive mass audience, these other traditions
place human actors at center stage. In Britain, the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies maintained a critical perspective while
overcoming much of the Frankfurt School's high culture bias, emphasizing
instead the possibilities of oppositional politics within "popular culture"
(Kellner, 1997a). Audience reception studies have further developed this
focus upon the active role of the media user. Fiske (1987), who has
become a representative figure in the active audience school, stresses
that media texts are open to a range of different interpretations. For Fiske,
this "polysemy" implies that the reader holds the key to meaning: a
"work", following Barthes' distinction, becomes a "text" only upon its
reading (Morley, 1989, p. 21). This emphasis upon the autonomy and
cultural power of readership has been particularly strong in the North
American inflection of audience research (Morley, 1996, p. 286). This is
not surprising given that American communications studies has been
significantly influenced by the liberal pluralist "uses and gratification"
model that developed in response to "effects" traditions (Morley, 1989).
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Some studies of technology have extended uses and gratifications theory
to the issue of new technologies, including the exploration of
computer-mediated communication (CMC). Garramone, Harris, and
Anderson's (1986) and Garramone, Harris, and Pizante's (1986)
quantitative studies of motivations in the use of political-oriented computer
bulletin boards offer classic examples of the extension of the uses and
gratifications tradition to CMC research. These early studies have been
followed by numerous others that have applied the uses and gratifications
approach to the Internet (Charney & Greenberg, 2001; Chou & Hsiao,
2000; Dimmick et al., 2000; Ebersole, 2000; Eighmey, 1997; Eighmey &
McCord, 1998; Flanagin & Metzger, 2001; Kaye, 1998; Korgaonkar &
Wolin, 1999; LaFerle, Edwards, & Lee, 2000; LaRose & Eastin, 2003;
Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000; Parker & Plank, 2000; Perse & Dunn, 1998;
Song, LaRose, Lin & Eastin, 2002; Thomsen, 1996). Some of this
research has employed the approach to undertake comparative analysis
of the motives, interests, and attitudes behind face-to-face and online
communication (Birnie & Horvath 2002; Ferguson & Perse, 2000; Flaherty
et al., 1998). Other research has compared the gratifications of Internet
use with mass media consumption (Randle, 2002). These studies
generally assume that the gratifications sought from the Internet by
individuals can predict use of the medium.
In such studies, the technological artifact tends to be seen as a neutral
tool, able to satisfy the purposes of agents employing it. The artifact has
no intentions of its own; it is simply a formal device that extends the
capacities of its users no matter what the socio-political context (Trend,
1997, p. 105). As Welchman (1997) puts it, "technology itself has no
effects, it's all a matter of how it is used" (p. 155). Any effects are fully
controllable through both the use and the design of the artifact; we can
choose what technology comes into existence and how it will be applied.
The uses tradition of media technology research, taken as a whole,
provides a necessary emphasis upon the way actors purposefully employ
information and communications technologies. For instance, Facer et al.'s
(2001) qualitative study shows how young people, against the
expectations of information society "experts," develop their own
interpretations of ICTs and appropriate them for their own ends. However,
a uses emphasis can lead to a number of pitfalls if taken too far or in
singular fashion.
The idea of media technology as a neutral tool tends to assume a
technical fix logic, which sees the development and use of machines of
various kinds as the answer to social and political problems (Street, 1992,
p. 158). Tied to this is the notion that media technology is a discrete entity
with a "thingness" quality. Media technologies are external to both the
subjects using them and to the world upon which they are applied. This
argument is often ahistorical, presenting media technologies as given, as
somehow existing without social origin or context. Some electronic
democracy proponents make such technical fix assumptions, considering
the Internet to be the latest and best media technology by which to
overcome present problems limiting the advancement of democracy
(Street, 1997, p. 34). Similar arguments can be found within e-commerce
discussions about how to utilize the Internet for increasing profitability.
Studies of domestic uses can also follow this line of thinking, particularly
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when questions focus upon how people deploy the Internet to satisfy their
needs.
Such views of media technology draw upon an instrumentalist
understanding of the human agent (Carpenter, 1992, p. 166). They
assume an abstract, coherent, purposive subject able to manipulate
objects at will, with "uses and users as the causal agents in the
production of social action" (Lacroix & Tremblay, 1997, p. 85). This
methodological individualism also provides support for ideologies that
celebrate untrammeled consumer sovereignty (Golding & Murdock, 2000,
p. 71; Lacroix & Tremblay, 1997, p. 85; Morley, 1996, pp. 286-287).
We must not ignore the possibility and indeed the importance of using
and controlling media technology for democratic ends (Kellner, 1999).
However, it is a mistake to assume that individual actors are in complete
control of media technologies. Such an assumption overlooks the
structuring of actions by technological systems and neglects the social
embeddedness of these systems and their users. We need to take into
account these constituting factors if non-reductionist understandings of
the Internet are to develop. Hence, I will examine research that focuses
upon technological determination and social structuring.
& '
There is considerable scholarly interest in the way that the technological
form of the Internet affects uses and agents. In particular, researchers
have looked at how CMC may affect communication patterns,
organizational systems, identity, and society at large. One of the most
influential bodies of research on the social effects of CMC is known as the
reduced social cues theory (see Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & Sethna, 1991;
Sproull & Kiesler 1986, 1991). According to this theory, the "inherent
characteristics" of CMC lead to a reduction in social cues, with the
resulting effects of depersonalization (lack of intimacy), equalization
(flattening hierarchy), disinhibition, and subsequently, anti-normative
behavior. However, these effects have been readily questioned. The
theory has particularly been criticized for its use of overly individualistic
(psychology based) assumptions, methods, and interpretations, and its
narrow focus upon the norms of business communication and
decision-making (Spears & Lea, 1992; 1994; Spears, Lea, & Postmes,
2001; Walther, 1996; Walther & Burgon, 1992). Research drawing upon
other starting assumptions and methods has interpreted the social effects
of CMC differently. In fact, there is extensive research reporting that the
lack of bodily markers in cyberspace may in various ways encourage,
rather than inhibit, intimacy and commitment to others (see, for instance,
Argyle, 1996; Baym, 1995; 1998; Correll, 1995; Watson 1997; Watt, Lea,
& Spears, 2002; Wilbur, 1997). More sophisticated research on the social
impact of the Internet's form makes room for the possibility of a diversity
of effects of CMC, and accepts that such effects may depend both upon
users adapting the technology to their purposes and upon the social
contexts involved.2
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A complex understanding of the effects of the Internet is often adopted by
media technology researchers and theorists influenced by postmodern
ideas, such as Mark Poster. Poster (1997) notes that in some respects
the Internet can be conceived of as a tool (for transmitting data, for
example). However, he believes that more socially significant is the way
the Internet "instantiate[s] new forms of interaction" and "new kinds of
relations of power between participants" (p. 206). Other postmodern
theorists agree. Nguyen and Alexander (1996) write that the Internet is a
"constructive" medium, producing new realities as "electronic pulses
permeate our daily lives" (p. 113). Likewise, Stone (1995) believes that
"the Internet, cyberspace, and virtual reality . . . are parts of our very
selves . . . they are languages . . . what they do is structure seeing. They
act on the systems - social, cultural, neurological - by which we make
meanings" (p. 167). Kroker (1992) theorizes "technology as cynical power
. . . technological society is described under the sign of possessed
individualism: an invasive power where life is enfolded within the dynamic
technological language of virtual reality . . . . Indeed, virtual reality - the
world of digital dreams come alive - is what the possessed individual is
possessed by" (p. 2).
Such arguments draw upon an effects research tradition within both
media and technology theory. McLuhan's "the medium is the message"
slogan made popular the notion that there are explicit effects embedded
within a given medium. The Frankfurt School analysis of the pervasive
effects of the mass media has also been very influential, but unlike
McLuhan the focus was upon the media's content. In its strongest
formulations, the cultural products of the mass media were seen as
agents of socialization and political indoctrination. Poststructuralism, with
its focus upon language and discourse, has provided impetus to the
analysis of the way media texts constitute meaning. This emphasis on the
structuring of meaning through the media is extended by Baudrillard and
followers who, drawing upon McLuhan, theorize the medium and not just
the content as text inscribing meaning.
This tradition in media studies corresponds to the "social impact of
technology" literature, which emphasizes the transformations caused by
technologies acting on society. The Frankfurt School's pessimism about
the colonizing spread of instrumental rationality through, among other
things, technological systems, is infamous (Marcuse, 1941; Habermas,
1970). Theorists of postindustrialism, postmodernity, and the information
society also tend to see technology as a causal agent, having a pivotal
role in social change. For Bell (1973) technology is a central organizing
factor in social transformation. Lyotard (1984) and Baudrillard (1983)
argue that technology, particularly information technology, is a central
agent in the development of the postmodern condition. Similarly, Castells
(1999) understands information technology to be the principal driving
force in the "network society".
This effects approach highlights the need to consider artifacts as both
constituted and constituting. Even in their design and development media
technologies are not under the complete control of particular human
agents. The Internet is a perfect example of this. Although designed and
developed by specific scientists and research institutions linked to
particular commercial, political, and military interests,
the Internet was not created by a sheer act of will . . . . technical change has
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a momentum which is often independent of those who appear to control it.
They [those who appear to stand behind the technology] are as often forced
to cope with the many unanticipated consequences of technical change as
they are able to plan that change. (Street, 1997, p. 34)
An emphasis upon the social impact of technology must be part of any
communications research. However, as already suggested with regards to
reduced social cues research, such an emphasis can lead to distorted
understandings if developed without recognition of the social
embeddedness of technology. Of course, the enormous impact of media
technologies on modern life, including their numerous unanticipated
consequences, should not be underestimated. More and more areas of
life are encompassed by media technologies. They increasingly shape the
way we think and the choices we make. Nevertheless, this impact is not
as independent of human control as some utopian (Gates, 1995; 1999;
Pool, 1983; 1990; Toffler & Toffler, 1994) and dystopian (Ellul, 1964;
Heidegger, 1977; Postman, 1992) media technology theorists indicate.
Such accounts tend to reify media technology as an autonomous causal
agent, proceeding as if it acted on social life from above with its own
independent logic and momentum. media technology in such strong
determinist arguments assumes the form of a discreet entity, autonomous
from individual or social control. It becomes "a tangible determinate entity
- a kind of thing" (Marx, 1997, p. 981).
More sophisticated effects analysis, such as can be found in Poster's
(2001a, 2001b) and Castells' (1999) work, emphasizes the way media
technologies are socially shaped as well as shaping.3
Yet for
techno-determinist commentators the properties of a particular technology
predetermine social outcomes. Little thought is given to the socio-political
forces shaping the technology, or the way users may affect final
outcomes. Toffler's (1981) work is the classic example of such
de-contextualized analysis, where "virtually no consideration is given to
the social and historical forces which have shaped the information and
telecommunications technologies identified with the third wave of change"
(Smart, 1992, p. 74). Many Internet commentators, particularly
techno-philic ones like Cairncross (1997) and Negroponte (1995), follow
Toffler's lead. For such techno-utopians, refusing to adopt the latest
media technology will lead societies to social and economic
backwardness (see, for instance, Gates, 1999; Pool, 1990). In fact, they
generally do not see refusal as a choice. In the case of digitization,
Negroponte (1995) argues, "[t]he change from atoms to bits is irrevocable
and unstoppable" (p. 4). We must simply accept and adapt to the
inevitable social transformations wrought by media technologies such as
the Internet, transformations that are foretold and subsequently helped
along by Net-guru prophecies. Such rhetoric also indicates the operation
of a naturalistic discourse, where media technology is seen as part of an
evolutionary process free from political control. This is clearly found in
Gates' (1999) biological model of digital capitalism. Moore's law, which
states that the number of components on a microchip doubles every
eighteen months (originally a year), is also often referred to as though it
were natural. This naturalistic discourse, as Kellner (1997b) explains, has
become particularly evident in "information society" and "information
superhighway" rhetoric:
the 'natural' discourses of the information superhighway (i.e., surfing,
cruising, the net, the web, connectivity, etc.) transform culture into nature and
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make the dramatic development of the information society a force of nature,
a natural event that cannot be stopped. Indeed, the discourse appropriates
both biological/natural metaphors and the figure of evolution to make it
appear that the development of the new technologies and resultant social
transformation is a natural process that in addition is a force of human
progress, of development to higher spheres of social evolution. Such
metaphors of nature and progress cover over the social constructedness of
the new technologies, the corporate interests behind the project of
technocapitalism and the infotainment society, and the social struggles over
its future.
As Kellner indicates, this information society rhetoric is often used to
justify ideologically-driven public policy. Examples include the Bangemann
Report (1994) which has been used throughout Europe to justify
liberalization of the information and media sectors, Gates' (1995, 1999)
writings on the inevitability of digital capitalism which operate not only as a
marketing tool for Microsoft's latest products but also provide legitimation
for free market agendas, and Toffler's techno-determinist "third wave"
thesis which was used by Newt Gingrich to legitimate his information
super-highway plans. Toffler's writing also inspires the work of
cyber-libertarians like Barlow (1996), Dyson et al. (1994), Grossman
(1995), Keyworth (1997), and Kelly (1998). These libertarians promote
their particular form of politics as the singular evolutionary path of a
technological development that is to be most fully realized as a state-less
cyberspace. We must, it seems, accept and adapt to the social and
political forms that new media technologies necessitate. Debate about
alternatives is superfluous. We cannot decide what type of society we
want to develop through cyberspace; cyberspace itself will determine the
socio-political forms that arise. This argument obscures the interests and
social forces behind the discourses and material forms developing. By
calling upon an asocial necessity, it justifies any social consequences that
result from the implementation of "technologically progressive policies".
Cyber-libertarianism tends to be positive about the direction of the
Internet for society. A more dystopian current of technological
determinism can be found in some cyber-theory inspired by stronger
currents of postmodernism (see, for instance, Kroker, 1992; Kroker &
Kroker, 1997; Kroker & Weinstein, 1994). Borrowing from poststructuralist
discourse theories and Baudrillardian hyperreality, and reminiscent of the
pessimism of the Frankfurt School, this fatalistic discourse tends to
totalize the domination of life by large technological systems (Marx, 1994,
p. 257). This pessimistic postmodernism, like the more celebratory
cyber-libertarianism, encourages mystification and passivity: withdrawal
from cyberspace being seen as the only option and even this may not be
possible. There is also a strain of conservative, non-postmodern
techno-dystopianism that calls for withdrawal from cyberspace on the
basis that it is essentially corrupted and corrupting (see, for instance,
Slouka, 1995). These pessimistic techno-determinists see definite and
unremedial effects written into the Internet, deeming it irredeemable no
matter the social context.
Despite its neglect of the agency of subjects, techno-determinism has
strong parallels with one-sided uses arguments. Both imagine media
technology as independent from social contexts. In both cases media
technology is external to the social, the difference being where the agency
is placed - with the user or with the technology. Whereas a strong uses
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position would go as far as to say that there is no text outside of readings,
a strong technological determinist position sees nothing outside text. But
the social context must be taken into account. While many of the theorists
and researchers considered above do in fact admit the social
situatedness of media technologies, there are powerful traditions of social
research that see the social context as the central determining aspect of
media technology outcomes. I will now consider how these traditions
influence the perspectives of a third strand of Internet research.
( & '
This third strand of Internet research focuses upon the way outcomes are
affected by social and economic structures and by the social construction
of technological artifacts. Here researchers emphasize the development
and deployment of the Internet within social systems and cultural contexts
that have continuity over time and between media technologies. As such,
they directly draw upon "social determinations" traditions of media and
technology research. In media and communications studies the approach
is most prominently represented by the critical political economy tradition,
while in technology research it is promoted by a range of approaches
which come under the general category science and technology studies
(STS).4
Critical political economists of communication look at the determining
impact of the ownership and control of the media upon subsequent
development, deployment, and use (see, for instance, Golding &
Murdock, 1997; Mosco, 1996). They generally promote a complex reading
of Marxism, going beyond models that assume a direct determination of
culture by economic structures. For instance, Garnham (1990) proposes
"a hierarchy of determination within a (capitalist) mode of production such
that the possibilities at each succeeding level are limited by the resources
made available by the logically preceding level" (p. 10). Although positing
ultimate determination by the economic, determination is used in a "soft"
sense, not as the fixing of a causal relationship but rather as a setting of
limits. The economic does not unilaterally predetermine human action but
"it does make some courses of action more likely than others" (ibid, p. 6).
Golding and Murdock (2000) similarly argue for a critical political economy
that rethinks "economic determination in a more flexible way",
emphasizing the need to focus "on the interplay between the symbolic
and economic dimensions of public communications" (pp. 70, 74).
However, they also contend that the economic organization of the
communications industry is "the logical place to begin an analysis of
contemporary culture", following "Stuart Hall in seeing determination as
operating in the first instance" (ibid, p. 74). Like Garnham, they argue that
"critical political economy is concerned to explain how the economic
dynamics of production structure public discourse by promoting certain
cultural forms over others" (ibid, p. 85).
In the field of technology studies, the STS tradition has focused upon the
way technology is socially embedded and constituted. It intends to
investigate fully the social make-up of technology: to open the "black box"
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of technology in order to expose and analyse its social, cultural, and
economic patterning, factors which are often neglected by researchers
focusing upon uses or technological effects (Williams & Edge, 1996, p.
54). Social and technical "choices" (whether in "invention", "production",
or "implementation") shape the form and content of technological artifacts
(ibid).
Although critical political economists and STS adherents both agree that
the uses and impacts of media technologies are framed by social context,
their focus is somewhat different.5
While STS researchers often
concentrate upon the direct social inputs in the development of specific
technological systems, critical political economists attempt to explore
systematically the role of wider power relations and social structures.
Despite their differences, the research of both groups, like that of the uses
and effects approaches, can lead to distorted understanding of media
technology processes if developed without reference to user agency or
material limits. As Golding and Murdock (2000, p. 73) point out, social
contextualist positions, when over-extended, can degenerate into
instrumentalism and/or structuralism. In terms of instrumentalism, critical
political economists and STS adherents can place too much emphasis
upon the intentionality of agents. STS researchers tend to concentrate
upon the micro settings of the development and deployment of
technological artifacts, focusing particularly on the interactions between
actors within systems. The risk is that such research may become
narrowly focused upon the role of agents and ignore the broader
institutions and/or structures impacting on outcomes. This leads to
descriptions and post-hoc explanations that over-emphasize the power
and autonomy of actors (Williams & Edge, 1996, p. 65).6
Yet, according to STS proponents, the idea that technologies embody
social choice is meant to allow for a more complex understanding of the
place of agency in technological development than "choice" may imply.
Users do not simply manipulate the material world at will. Rather, there is
a mutual shaping process between social contexts, technology, and
users. The various choices stemming from the social settings involved in
the process of innovation and deployment become embodied within
technologies such that
technology can be regarded as congealed social relations - a frozen
assemblage of the practices, assumptions, beliefs, language, and other
factors involved in its design and manufacture. . . . [this] suggests that the
social relations which are built into the technology have consequences for
subsequent usage . . . The social relations confronting the user of technology
are therefore relatively durable because they are not easily disrupted and
repackaged. (Woolgar, 1996, pp. 89-90)
Critical political economists, though generally placing more importance
upon the wider social context than STS researchers, can also be guilty of
a certain voluntarism: they may overstate the degree to which media
technologies are tools for the powerful to pursue their interests. Golding
and Murdock (2000) point to Herman and Chomsky's "propaganda model"
as a good example of this exaggeration of the extent to which the
powerful "manage" public opinion through the mass media (p. 73).7
Some
recent critiques of the commercialization of cyberspace could be seen as
echoing a similar conspirational air. Herbert Schiller (1995), for instance,
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argues that there has been an orchestrated corporate takeover of
information and communication systems, including the Internet, which are
now at the disposal of unaccountable private economic power. While
certainly important for alerting us to the dangers facing democratic
communications due to the concentration of power and wealth in the
hands of the few, there is a tendency for such analysis to inadequately
account for how media technologies involve multiple interests, unintended
consequences, institutional and technological (material) rigidity, and
possibilities for alternative uses.
However, like STS researchers, most critical political economists are well
aware of this instrumentalist pitfall. They attempt, as Golding and
Murdock (2000) assert, to take into account the contradictions and
complexities that always prevent the powerful (or any other groups) from
having total control (p. 74). Both traditions focus upon the embeddedness
of media technologies within social and cultural systems. However, such
an emphasis on embeddedness could lead too far in the other direction,
emphasizing social structuring to the neglect of technological or user
determinations. A social determinism that neglects the materiality of
technology can be found in some work associated with the STS tradition.
STS researchers generally insist upon the mutual shaping of
technological artifacts and social life. An emphasis on social shaping is
meant to remedy the problems of technological determinism while
avoiding "a simplistic notion of 'social determinism' that sees technology
as reflecting a single rationality, such as an economic imperative"
(Williams & Edge, 1996, p. 54). Yet stronger social constructivist accounts
can be read as neglecting the very real effects of the form and physical
properties of technology on meanings and uses.8
While technologies are
given meaning by cultural understandings, needs, and values, they also
have very real material characteristics and limits that must be addressed.
One-sided social determinism can also be detected in some recent critical
political economy media analysis. But rather than ignoring the material
effects of technology, the problem here is that overly structuralist critical
political economy accounts can downplay the agency of certain users. For
instance, Schiller (1995) argues that the rules of the market have taken
over. Information technology is simultaneously a tool of the powerful and
an essential structural component of the capitalist economy.9
This may
largely be true, but analysis also needs to take account of the possibility
of factors acting in multiple directions, not simply those actions or
mechanisms supporting corporate domination. A one-dimensional
systems analysis is clearly apparent within Harris and Davidson's (1994)
Marxist analysis, The Cybernetic Revolution and the Crisis of Capitalism.
Drawing out a strongly determinist reading of Marx via Toffler's third wave
thesis, Harris and Davidson argue not only that the economic base drives
social and cultural change, but that information has now become the
central means of production so that "information capitalism" now fully
determines our collective fate.
This critical review of the social contextualist strand brings to a close my
survey of some of the central methodological traditions informing Internet
research. I have shown that these traditions tend to emphasize either the
use, technological form, or social context associated with communications
media. All three aspects clearly have bearing on outcomes, but they can
lead to flawed analysis when taken alone. In the next section I will reflect
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upon how to undertake Internet research so as to overcome the problems
that can result from simply focusing on one type of determination.
! "
Internet research is not a monolithic entity, but is undertaken by a
diversity of researchers from a variety of social science traditions,
researchers who draw on numerous methods to ask a multiplicity of
questions. However, I have argued that much Internet research fits into
three broad strands that each draw upon media technology traditions
prioritizing particular determinations. I have shown that over-emphasizing
a particular determination can lead to narrow or distorted understandings.
Despite the differences of approach, these limitations arise from two
common and overlapping problems: separating technology from its social
context, and narrowly focusing upon a single aspect of determination. I
will briefly discuss these two problems in order to consider possibilities for
how to undertake research that will provide non-reductionist
understandings of the Internet.
The first problem occurs when media technology is seen as an
independent "thing." This notion of media technology as an autonomous
artifact needs to be avoided. As Leo Marx (1997) says, there is always a
"distinctive material device, a piece of equipment", but this often
constitutes a small aspect of technology. "[I]n the major contemporary
technologies the material component - technology narrowly conceived as
a physical device - is merely one part of a complex social and institutional
matrix" (p. 979). This matrix, Marx argues, stretches across a wide range
of social institutions, including private corporations, systems of capital
investment, organized bodies of technical know-how, government
legislative and regulatory bodies, the military, universities, and so on. With
technology, Marx (1997) asserts, we are dealing with an indeterminate,
messy, incoherent entity (p. 980). The lines separating different
technologies from one another and from society are murky, relative, and
contingent upon a prevailing social consensus. As Menser and Aronowitz
(1996) argue,
technology permeates, or inheres in, all . . . regions, practices, and
ideologies. . . . The objects of our critiques have become impure, confused,
indistinct, "fuzzy" in the way in which even mathematics has accepted
"inexactness" as sometimes closer to the way things really are. (pp. 8-9)
However, we must be careful not to take such claims of indeterminacy too
far, for as Marx (1997) warns, this may lead to an understanding of
technology so inclusive, so general, so vague that it becomes almost
completely vacuous and resistant to designation (pp. 981-983). Such an
understanding would mean that we are unable to say anything of any real
interest or value about a technology or about technology in general. This
is the case, as Marx (1997) indicates, with Jacques Ellul's notion of
technique: "By identifying it with every act of making or doing, material or
social, he drains it of all particularity and discreetness; the result is that it
has little or no useful, specifiable meaning" (pp. 983-984). And because
this technique is so intangible and all-pervasive, it seems to fall beyond
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human control.
To avoid viewing media technologies as either autonomous "things" or
amorphous "no-things," it is important to view them as both constituted
within and impacting upon social relations and cultural meanings (Sclove,
1992, pp. 140-141). This idea - that media technologies are both socially
constituted and constituting - helps overcome the second closely related
problem that the three traditions may slip into: the problem of singular
causation arguments.
In some media technology research, as demonstrated earlier, one factor
can become a fixed variable in a linear relationship with outcomes. Even
those who prescribe complex levels of determination, such as critical
political economists, in the end tend to favor just one determination. As
seen above, such singular causation arguments risk instrumentalism,
technological determinism, or structural determinism. In reality, no simple
hierarchy or linear causation can be finally specified. As Menser and
Aronowitz (1996) argue, we need to counter such determinism with a
"theory of complexity" that rejects determination in the sense of "a
one-to-one correspondence between the causal agent and its effects"
(pp. 8). Following Mosco (1996), it is necessary to take into account the
"overdetermined" or "multiply determined" nature of social phenomena
including media technology (pp. 5, 137-138).
This calls for a non-reductionist analysis that is sensitive to the complex
interplay between multiple elements. Such a multi-determinations or
mutual constitution analysis recognizes that each so-called determining
factor is itself embedded within and constituted by a system of inter-linked
constitutive processes.10
These processes and the relationships involved
must not be assumed to be linear or fixed or of equal influence (although
such cannot be discounted). A multi-determinations perspective "remains
open to specifying the nature, strength, direction, and duration of a
relationship between processes" (Mosco, 1996, pp. 5-6).
But how is such analysis to be undertaken in practice? We can find within
the media technology traditions already discussed productive starting
points, points from which some Internet research is already developing.
For instance, Mosco (1996) - along with other reflexive critical political
economists - has been rethinking political economy in a non-reductionist
way, advancing a multi-dimensional and trans-disciplinary analysis of
networked communications that pays particular attention to the
contribution of cultural studies. An evaluation of the Internet via a
combination of political economy and cultural analysis is effectively
undertaken in Franklin's (2001) STS-informed evaluation of the politics of
representation through cyberspace. STS, which in general strongly
emphasizes mutual constitution, also provides a useful starting point for
non-reductionist research, particularly when sensitive to the broader
social systems involved. Flichy (1995) offers an exemplary study,
exploring technological innovation through an examination of the technical
and scientific sphere, the political and economic context, and the uses of
the technologies involved. Other NICT researchers have adopted
Giddens' structuration theory when attempting to account for mutual
constitution. For instance, Samarajiva and Shields (1997) have directly
drawn upon it in their social study of computer networks. Structuration,
together with John Thompson's critical media theory and Bauman's
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sociology of post-modernity, strongly influences Slevin's (2000)
wide-ranging analysis of the Internet and society. Habermas'
system-lifeworld distinction offers another multi-dimensional
methodological framework for overcoming the partiality of the three
dominant strands of media technology research, a framework that I
utilized to evaluate the Internet-democracy relationship (see Dahlberg,
2000).
The list of possible beginnings for non-reductionist Internet research could
be extended further. Here I want to point to just one more interesting
possibility. David Morley and Steve Woolgar, amongst others, have
utilized the metaphor of the text to think through the mutual constitution
involved in media technologies. Against Halloran's (1970) and Fiske's
(1987) models of "reader sovereignty" and also against the opposite,
textual determinism, Morley has developed Hall's idea of a "preferred
reading" structured by the social context. According to Morley (1989),
"[t]he point of the preferred reading model was to insist that readers are
engaged in productive work, but under determinate conditions. Those
determinate conditions are supplied both by the text, the producing
institution and by the social history of the audience" (pp. 19). Applying the
metaphor of the text to technology, Woolgar (1996, 1991a, 1991b) shows
how the idea of a preferred reading allows for all three forms of
determination. Embedded within the social context, technology can be
thought of as "congealed social relations" that "configures the
user-reader" and has "interpretive flexibility:" while containing a preferred
reading, technology is open to various uses. This conceptually rich
understanding of media technology has yet to be explicitly applied by
Internet researchers. In fact there is some doubt, even amongst
sympathizers, whether or not the text metaphor is as straightforwardly
applicable to the Internet as it is to more bounded and located
technological artifacts (Hine, 2000, p. 35). However, the metaphor does
capture mutual constitution nicely, providing a useful conceptual guide
(rather than specific methodological model) for Internet research.
I do not wish to promote any one of these approaches in particular, or for
that matter to argue for specific methods (which would be dependent
upon the questions at stake). I merely wish to argue that a
multi-determinations methodological perspective is needed. Ideally,
research would take into account the complex interplay between multiple
intersecting and constituting elements. So, for example, research into
Internet-democracy practices would want to explore the democratic
possibilities afforded by the technical aspects of the medium, user
motivations and intentions, and the social structuring of online
communications and identities. However, resource constraints may make
fully multi-perspectival and multi-dimensional studies infeasible in many
cases. Researchers may also wish to follow a particular media technology
tradition and/or focus closely on a single relationship. In these cases,
researchers must at least recognize the multi-dimensionality of
determination, and be reflexive about the limits of their approaches,
methods, and findings. While this may seem a rather banal conclusion,
the critical examination of Internet research in this paper has shown the
necessity for this call for greater sensitivity to the complex interplay
between multiple intersecting elements that make up the character of the
Internet.
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)
1. In this paper I am talking about enhancing understanding of any aspect
of the Internet, its development and deployment, how it is used, who uses
it, its impact on self and social relations, etc.
2. Watt, Lea, and Spears (2002) outline one such sophisticated approach
within CMC research and reference a number of studies that look to
account for the variable effects of the technology within social context.
3. Castells' network society theory could be seen as bordering on
technological determinism, as van Dijk (1999) illustrates.
4. For recent critical political economy analysis of the Internet, see Barney
(2000), McChesney (1999), McChesney, Wood, and Foster (1998), and
Schiller (1999). STS encompasses a number of schools of research,
ranging from the sophisticated realist social shaping of technology
tradition to more constructivist approaches. It is not my task here to define
and delineate these particular traditions, see instead Lievrouw (2001) and
Mackenzie and Wajcman (1999) for useful overviews. My task is to focus
upon the social determinations perspective as a whole. Internet research
that draws upon STS approaches includes Bakardjieva and Smith (2001),
Flanagan, Farinola, and Metzger (2000), Hine (2000), Lievrouw (2001),
and Thomas and Wyatt (1999). STS has been influential within a number
of large-scale information and communications technology research
programs in the UK including the 1985-95 Programme on Information and
Communications Technologies (PICT) (see Dutton, 1996, 1999), The
Virtual Society? research program(see http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/
and Woolgar, 2002), and its successor The E-Society research program
(http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCContent/ research funding/E-Society.asp).
5. It is important to note here that a central part of this social constitution,
as Golding and Murdock (2000) and Garnham (2000) emphasize, is an
analysis of the historical processes involved. For examples of such
historical analysis of the social constitution of NICTs including the Internet
see Flichy (1995), Thomas and Wyatt (1999), and Winston (1998).
6. Another example of this narrow focus upon individual agency and
descriptive accounts of technical developments is Ceruzzi's (1996)
account of the invention of personal computing. In contrast, other STS
examinations of NICTs, such as Winston's (1998) history of
communications technology and Abbate's (1999) history of the Internet
have investigated the economic and political forces (material and
ideological) involved in innovation.
7. Herman (1996) argues that there is less intentionality and more
complexity involved in the 'propaganda model' than his critics believe.
8. It is important to emphasize that it is only some radical or misguided
proponents of the social construction of technology position can be read
as promoting the non-materiality of technology. While arguing that the
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16 of 24 16.2.2005 18:30
meaning of technology is thoroughly socio-cultural, none of the main
branches of STS would deny that the material elements of technological
artifacts guide or limit interpretation and action.
9. Schiller's work shows how structural determinism can slide into
instrumental determinism and vice-versa: the argument that the relations
of production determine social outcomes sliding into the claim that media
technologies are instruments of elites. Despite this tendency towards
economic reductionism (and instrumentalism), I agree with Thompson
(1995) that his general theory has been helpful for understanding media
globalization (p. 164).
10. I concur with Mosco (1996) that in order to emphasize the interplay
between non-reducable factors the term mutual constitution may be
preferable to a term containing the word determination (pp. 137-138).
Determination to some would connote singular linear causality. At the
same time, mutual constitution does not indicate the same sense of
multiplicity that multiply-determined or overdetermined does. As such, I
have preferred the negative term non-reductionist in the title of this paper.
I would be open to suggestions as to a more positive and encompassing
term.
* '
This research has been undertaken with funding from the New Zealand
Foundation for Research, Science, and Technology. I am very grateful to
Nicholas Jankowski, Stephen Kemp, Chamsy Ojeili, Brennon Wood, and
Sally Wyatt for helpful comments on this paper.
+
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$ " "
Lincoln Dahlberg is Foundation for Research, Science & Technology
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sociology programme at Massey University,
New Zealand. His research involves a critical investigation of the practices
and meanings surrounding Internet use, with particular focus on
processes of democratization. He also teaches media studies at Victoria
University, New Zealand, and is an editor of New Zealand Sociology. He
has recently co-edited a special issue of this journal on the topic of
cultural studies in New Zealand.
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