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The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet’s implications in five domains: 1) inequality (the “digital divide”); 2) community and social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities. | Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2001. 27 307-36 Copyright 2001 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved Social Implications of the Internet Paul DiMaggio1 Eszter Hargittai1 W. Russell Neuman2 and John P. Robinson3 Department of Sociology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey 08540 e-mail dimaggio@princeton.edu eszter@princeton.edu 2Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail rneuman@asc.upenn.edu 3Department of Sociology University of Maryland College Park Maryland e-mail robinson@bss1.umd.edu Key Words World Wide Web communications media technology Abstract The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet s implications in five domains 1 inequality the digital divide 2 community and social capital 3 political participation 4 organizations and other economic institutions and 5 cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use adapts to existing patterns permits certain innovations and reinforces particular kinds of change. Moreover in each domain the ultimate social implications of this new technology depend on economic legal and policy decisions that are shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. Sociologists need to study the Internet more actively and particularly to synthesize research findings on individual user behavior with macroscopic analyses of institutional and political-economic factors that constrain that behavior. introduction By Internet
