Uncivil discourse is a growing concern in American rhetoric, and this trend has expanded beyond traditional media to online sources, such as audience comments. Using an experiment given to a sample representative of the U.S. population, we examine the effects online incivility on perceptions toward a particular issue—namely, an emerging technology, nanotechnology. We found that exposure to uncivil blog comments can polarize risk perceptions of nanotechnology along the lines of religiosity and issue support.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMOs) are spaces of socialization and relationship formation and maintenance. This qualitative study seeks to understand how MMO players delineate the boundary between play and life when it comes to their game-originated romance. A typology of players was devised to understand players' constructions of boundaries, and players' strategies against perceived stigma when moving their relationship offline were discussed. The findings call for a shift towards a more player-centric and pluralist conceptualization of the magic circle of play.

3D virtual worlds (VWs) enable perception of others' presence and actions. However, it is unclear how this influences behaviors in group tasks. We study the influence of ‘perceived colocation’ and ‘perceived coaction’, on cognitive absorption, which in turn predicts participative behaviors. Perceived colocation and coaction are central to social facilitation effects, tested primarily in face-to-face settings. We use distraction-conflict theory to explain how these may occur in VWs. Results from a quasi-experiment in Second Life support our hypotheses. We demonstrate the influence of perceived colocation and coaction and extend the applicability of social facilitation effects by incorporating the concept of cognitive absorption in VWs. We conclude with suggestions for the use of VWs for decision-making tasks.

The connections between anonymity and self-disclosure online have received research attention, but the results have been inconclusive with regard to self-disclosure in blogs. This quantitative content analysis of 154 personal journal blogs tested some assumptions of the online disinhibition effect in order to examine the effect of types of anonymity on the amount, breadth, and depth of self-disclosure in blog entries. Results showed that participants disclosed more information in their blog entries when they were more visually identified (sharing a picture of themselves), contrary to the assumptions of the online disinhibition effect. Overall, a trend emerged where visual anonymity led to less disclosiveness, and discursive anonymity (sharing one's real name) led to less disclosiveness for particular types of bloggers.

European self-regulation to ensure children's safety on social networking sites requires that providers ensure children are old enough to use the sites, aware of safety messages, empowered by privacy settings, discouraged from disclosing personal information, and supported by easy to use reporting mechanisms. This article assesses the regulatory framework with findings from a survey of over 25000 9- to 16-year-olds from 25 European countries. These reveal many underage children users, and many who lack the digital skills to use social networking sites safely. Despite concerns that children defy parental mediation, many comply with parental rules regarding social networking. The implications of the findings are related to policy decisions on lower age limits and self-regulation of social networking sites.

This paper examines the technologies that enable the representation of Hebrew on websites. Hebrew is written from right to left and in non-Latin characters, issues shared by a number of languages which seem to be converging on a shared solution—Unicode. Regarding the case of Hebrew, I show how competing solutions have given way to one dominant technology. I link processes in the Israeli context with broader questions about the ‘multilingual Internet,’ asking whether the commonly accepted solution for representing non-Latin texts on computer screens is an instance of cultural imperialism and convergence around a western artifact. It is argued that while minority languages are given an online voice by Unicode, the context is still one of western power.

This paper re-examines the concept of “meme” in the context of digital culture. Defined as cultural units that spread from person to person, memes were debated long before the digital era. Yet the Internet turned the spread of memes into a highly visible practice, and the term has become an integral part of the netizen vernacular. After evaluating the promises and pitfalls of memes for understanding digital culture, I address the problem of defining memes by charting a communication-oriented typology of 3 memetic dimensions: content, form, and stance. To illustrate the utility of the typology, I apply it to analyze the video meme “Leave Britney Alone.” Finally, I chart possible paths for further meme-oriented analysis of digital content.

This article analyses public service broadcasting in Europe, looking at public broadcasters' role as promoters of participative processes. Computer-mediated communication and studies rooted in mediated human interactivity are used to explore participative elements provided by digital technology, and how these can be incorporated into the news websites, through an empirical study of 5 case studies in the European market. The analysis is based on the methodology of content analysis with the goal of outlining the particularities of the participative elements implemented by each broadcaster and revealing the most common participative strategies. The findings suggest that although public service broadcasters offer a wide variety of possibilities, encouraging audiences to take on more active roles, their role is still peripheral and complementary.