Published by
The Annenberg School at USC


Match:

Format:

Sort by:






9(3) April 2004        Margaret McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli, Editors

    Internet research has become a field in its own right in the social sciences, already boasting a number of peer-reviewed journals, book titles, and a scholarly society. The author contributes to this burgeoning field at a meta-methodological level by considering what is needed to achieve non-reductionist understandings of the Internet. He shows how Internet research perspectives draw upon various established media and technology research traditions.

    The authors investigate the development of relational intimacy in CMC by comparing it to FTF interaction in a laboratory experiment. Zero-history dyads were asked to cooperate on low- and high-equivocality tasks over a series of three meetings. Relational intimacy increased over time, but a significant interaction with medium and subsequent analyses reveal that this was only true for the CMC condition. Task type also interacted with time, but it did not have a significant effect on relational intimacy, nor did it interact with medium.
    Online groups have embraced the Web for its potential to connect them to users directly, but must now face increasing security problems, the lack of traditional gatekeeping controls, and a rapidly changing environment. Playboy has to confront not only these, but also its own unique exigencies to develop and maintain credibility with target audiences. Drawing upon classical conceptions of ethos and contemporary theories of identity, the author finds a large range of linguistic and non-linguistic techniques available for meeting these demands.


An official publication of the International Communication Association
Susan Herring, Indiana University
Editor-Elect


    Findings from a telephone survey of 204 respondents indicated that general WWW apprehensiveness was notably related to the amount of time the respondents spent online. Additionally, the findings indicated that general WWW apprehensiveness and the misuse of personal information were strongly related to participants' WWW purchasing apprehensiveness for commercial transactions, but the findings were inconsistent with the hypothesis that a need for interpersonal contact while shopping would also influence WWW purchasing apprehensiveness

     The Hispanic market in the U.S. offers promising and lucrative online business opportunities.Millions of Hispanic households and small businesses are using the Web. Still, little published research exists documenting the shopping preferences for buying from the Web by this growing segment of the U.S. population. Applying the product classification and perceived risk literature, the authors explore the Hispanic Web user's preferences for shopping from the Web.