The project of developing an anticipatory anthropology of the future reveals unique ethical opportunities. For example, the increased importance of performance means there is a substantial potential for a substantive "resocialing". of work in organizations, just as the decline of Modernism opens space for collective, situated ethics as opposed to individualized categorical imperatives.

When communication researchers make claims about the relationship of media to individuals or society, they use the term media to mean a variety of things. For example, a researcher might try to prove the claim "television causes X," where X might be anything from aggressive behavior to bad vision or a crisis in a sense of self. In this case, is the researcher talking about the television signals in the air, people who work at television stations, people who produce or act in television programs, the television programs themselves, television receiving sets, or some or all of these things?

Introduction

1.1 Sociological Research Online did not set out to be a journal about the Internet. It could more accurately be framed as "action research" where the Internet is concerned, since by the practical doing of Internet publishing, and by trying to exploit the possibilities of the technology, the journal has set out to change and challenge existing practice (Bulmer and Stanley, 1996). It is possibly not surprising, however, that it has often attracted sociologists who are interested in the Internet as a topic. Without ever setting out to be an authority on sociology of the Internet and sociology done via the Internet, the journal has over the course of time become a rich resource for finding sociologists who are unafraid of the Internet and who use it in interesting and fruitful ways in their research…

Originally published in Web.studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age, edited by David Gauntlett (Oxford University Press, 2000): 19-30

Di fronte al mare magnum d'informazioni disponibili su Internet, l'utente medio - in genere - dovendo operare una selezione funzionale ai suoi obiettivi conoscitivi può trovarsi in difficoltà, quando non sentirsi perso. La cernita nella mole di materiale non è peraltro l'unico problema di fronte al quale il 'ricercatore' impatta: la libertà totale su cui si basa la diffusione di informazioni - principio totalmente condivisibile - può non significare in assoluto che le stesse siano ineccepibili in quanto ai contenuti o al loro "processo produttivo". Le fonti dei dati, la validità, l'attendibilità, la fedeltà sembrano non avere a volte una grande rilevanza per coloro che diffondono conoscenza attraverso la rete. Francesca Zajczyk (1996) sottolinea giustamente l'importanza di alcuni concetti chiave nel momento in cui si procede sulla strada della raccolta dei dati prodotti da altri soggetti…

Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA
At any given moment there are thousands of surveys and polls being conducted on the web, yet surprisingly little scholarly research is reported about this new technique. After a summary review of the comparative literature on e-mail and "snail mail" and a more extensive review of research involving web-based methods, this article contrasts e-mail and web-based survey techniques used in an ongoing study of the web presence provider industry. Practical issues of web-surveying methods are highlighted, such as programming pitfalls, sample-building, and incentives.