Volume 12, Issue 3, April 2007

Special Theme I: The Social, Political, Economic, and Cultural Dimensions of Search Engines

Eszter Hargittai, Guest editor

1. The Social, Political, Economic, and Cultural Dimensions of Search Engines: An Introduction
   Eszter Hargittai
   This collection explores how search engines are embedded in social processes and institutions that influence how they function and how they are used.
2. Heuristic and Systematic Use of Search Engines
   Werner Wirth, Tabea Böcking, Veronika Karnowski, and Thilo von Pape
   Different types of cognitive processing of search results may occur, depending on situational demands and the Web experience and domain-specific involvement of the user.
3. In Google We Trust: Users' Decisions on Rank, Position, and Relevance
   Bing Pan, Helene Hembrooke, Thorsten Joachims, Lori Lorigo, Geri Gay, and Laura Granka
   Users have substantial trust in Google's ability to rank search results by their true relevance, even when abstracts are manipulated to be less relevant.
4. Searching for Culture—High and Low
   Jennifer Kayahara and Barry Wellman
   Torontonians first obtain cultural information from interpersonal ties or other offline sources and then turn to the Web for efficiency and up-to-date information.
   
5. Learning to Search and Searching to Learn: Income, Education, and Experience Online
   Philip N. Howard and Adrienne Massanari
   Years of online experience, frequency of use, and sophistication with multiple search engines can overcome socio-economic status in predicting how active a person is in searching across different topics.
6. Is Relevance Relevant? Market, Science, and War: Discourses of Search Engine Quality
   Elizabeth Van Couvering
   Fairness and representativeness are not key determiners of search engine quality in the minds of search engine producers. Rather, they invoke alternative standards of quality, such as customer satisfaction and relevance.
7. Equal Representation by Search Engines? A Comparison of Websites across Countries and Domains
   Liwen Vaughan and Yanjun Zhang
   A study of search engine coverage of websites in four domains from four countries finds that U.S. sites received higher coverage rates than their counterparts in other countries.
   
8. Google Bombing from a Time Perspective
   Judit Bar-Ilan
   The behavior of Google bombs over time seems to be dependent on the type of Google bomb (humor, ego, or ideological) and on the community promoting the bombed page.
   

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Special Theme II: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Religion and Computer-Mediated Communication

Charles Ess, Guest editor (with Akira Kawabata and Hiroyuki Kurosaki)

9. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Religion and Computer-Mediated Communication
   Charles Ess (with Akira Kawabata and Hiroyuki Kurosaki)
   Individually and collectively, the articles in this collection highlight characteristics that foster or hinder religions' migration online.
10. Diaspora on the Electronic Frontier: Developing Virtual Connections with Sacred Homelands
    Christopher Helland
    Diaspora religious groups use the Internet for long-distance ritual practice and cyber pilgrimage to connect to their homelands.
11. Internet Use among Religious Followers: Religious Postmodernism in Japanese Buddhism
    Kenshin Fukamizu
    Japanese Buddhists who participate in online interaction have a more critical attitude toward their faith systems than their non-Internet using counterparts.
12. Online-Religion in Japan: Websites and Religious Counseling from a Comparative Cross-Cultural Perspective
    Akira Kawabata and Takanori Tamura
    The new Shinto-derived religions Konkōkyō and Tenrikyō provide successful Internet-based religious counseling services.
13. Conflict and Intolerance in a Web Community: Effects of a System Integrating Dialogues and Monologues
    Mitsuharu M. Watanabe
    Users less tolerant of different views post more often to the BBS than to the weblogs of the Spiritual Navigator system, which is designed to balance conflict with stability.
14. Who's Got the Power? Religious Authority on the Internet
    Heidi Campbell
    There is a need to distinguish layers of authority in online religious contexts in terms of hierarchy, structure, ideology, and text.
15. Islam, Jihad, and Terrorism in Post 9/11 Arabic Discussion Boards
    Rasha A. Abdulla
    Message exchanges on three Internet discussion boards in the Arab and Muslim world shed light on how Muslims viewed the attacks from a religious point of view.
16. Islam and Online Imagery on Malaysian Tourist Destination Websites
    Noor Hazarina Hashim, Jamie Murphy, and Nazlida Muhamad Hashim
    Malaysian tourism destination organizations display few Muslim images on their websites.
17. Virtually Sacred: The Performance of Asynchronous Cyber Rituals in Online Spaces
    Stephen Jacobs
    Designers envisage the Christian Virtual Church and Hindu Virtual Temple websites in terms of conventional notions of sacred space and ritual performance.
18. Technological Modernization, the Internet, and Religion in Singapore
    Randolph Kluver and Pauline H. Cheong
    Technological modernization and religion co-exist and mutually reinforce one another within the Singaporean context, according to religious leaders.