Resisting Government Internet Surveillance by Participating in Politics Online and Offline

2011 ◽  
pp. 129-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian S. Krueger

While more is probably known about the causes of political participation than any other political behavior, the research program suffers in that it generally assumes citizens operate within an unproblematic surveillance context. This chapter argues that the growing use of the Internet for political participation and the government’s expanded electronic surveillance capacities make this assumption increasingly dubious. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s insights concerning surveillance and resistance, I develop empirical hypotheses related to surveillance and Internet political participation. Testing these hypotheses using data derived from a unique probability sample survey of U.S. Internet users, surveillance is shown to influence online political activity. Those who oppose the current administration, and who perceive the government monitors their Internet behavior, participate in politics online at the highest rates. Next, I test whether perceptions of online surveillance lead to a similar higher probability of conventional offline political activity. The results suggest that for those opposed to the regime’s policies, online surveillance increases the likelihood of engagement in offline political participation.

Author(s):  
Kristin Johnson ◽  
Brian S. Krueger

Despite some promise, an emerging body of research suggests that email mobilization techniques generally will reinforce existing participatory patterns. Email mobilization campaigns rely heavily on individuals to first submit their email addresses for future contact. Because signing up for future political email is itself an act of political participation, mobilization resulting from these solicited contacts would serve to reinforce the engagement of those already willing and able to participate. Yet, many individuals do receive unsolicited political email. These unsolicited political emails hold the most potential to activate the inactive. Unfortunately, despite speculation about the mobilizing potential of these unsolicited email contacts, political scientists know little about whether unsolicited political messages induce engagement. This chapter seeks to answer the question: Does unsolicited political email independently induce individuals to participate in politics? Using data from a unique probability sample survey of U.S. Internet users, several multivariate regressions suggest that unsolicited email contact from mobilizing institutions does not induce individuals to engage in political activity. These results are robust even when analyzing subgroups most likely to be open to unsolicited email contact.


Author(s):  
Kai Zheng ◽  
Akhilesh Bajaj ◽  
Beth Osborne Daponte ◽  
John B. Engberg

How people use the Internet is an intriguing question to researchers, computer educators, Internet content providers (ICPs), and marketing practitioners. With the expansion of online information resources and the improvement of connection bandwidth, Internet users have been offered more and more choices, at the same time, faced with more and more dilemmas on how to allocate their time and energy online. How much time do people spend on surfing the Internet? What do they do? Are there any traceable patterns to interpret the Internet behavior and to predict future use based on people’s demographic, social, or psychological characteristics? These are all interesting questions that researchers attempt to answer. In 1995, the HomeNet project conducted at the Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, launched a series of field studies to examine the residential Internet behavior. It has found that social demographics—generation, race and gender, rather than socioeconomic factors—income, education—and psychological factors—like social extraversion and attitude toward computing—were major influences on use (Kraut, Scherlis, Mukhopadhyay, Manning, & Kiesler, 1996). Following the HomeNet project’s initial attempt, many empirical studies have been conducted globally to study the Internet behavior and its driving factors. Among these efforts, a noticeable focus is to resolve the long-lasting controversy, inherited from the similar debate of computer behavior studies, on how gender differences influence the way people use the Internet. Many researchers believe that females are less technology-inclined, less motivated, and therefore less competent in the masculine computer and Internet culture; on the other hand, some other researchers argue females have the ability to be proficient in use of the Internet. The present study is thereby conducted to provide more empirical evidence of gender effects on Internet usage and task preferences. In particular, we are interested in examining gender influences when users’ computer proficiency is controlled for. We believe that the results of this study can provide valuable insights into effective online content delivery, targeted marketing strategies, and customized computer education to encourage use. The close examination of people’s actual surfing data can also contribute to a better understanding of how the Internet is actually utilized. The next section describes the debate about how women and men respond in different ways to computers and the Internet. This is followed by a presentation of our study design: the monitoring software, the content classification schema and method, and the user population that we studied. The findings are presented next, followed by concluding remarks.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abd Hadi Borham

The development of communication and information technology (ICT) has been developed by the government since the 1980s. This development has contributed to the increasing use of the internet as a new medium for the purpose of partnership, business and knowledge. This socio-cultural change, based on the new media, has led to the receipt of information and forming a new environment in all aspects including religious life. The development of the internet in Malaysia has given a direct impression on the development of Islamic da'wah. Today's society gains exposure to Islam easily through social media such as facebook, newsgroups, e-groups and others. Therefore, this article aims to examine the impact of the new media toward Islamic da'wah. Data was obtained on library research through secondary data such as journal articles, government reports, books etc. Analysis shows that the flooding of Islamic information in the new media has affected the da’wah among internet users especially in the acceptance of Islamic understanding in aqidah, ibadah and akhlak


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian S. Krueger

An concern for students of political mobilization has been whether political mobilization efforts reinforce or expand current patterns of political participation. Despite some promise, an emerging body of research suggests that email mobilization techniques generally will reinforce existing participatory patterns. Email mobilization campaigns rely heavily on individuals to first submit their email addresses for future contact. Because signing up for future political email is an act of political participation, mobilization resulting from these solicited contacts would serve to reinforce the engagement of those already willing to participate. Yet, many individuals receive unsolicited political email, which holds the most potential to activate the inactive. Unfortunately, despite speculation about the mobilizing potential of these unsolicited email contacts, political scientists know little about whether unsolicited political messages induce engagement. Using data from a unique probability sample survey of U.S. Internet users, the author examines whether unsolicited political email independently induces individuals to participate in politics.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Melanie Radue

Everywhere in the media, people talk about the so-called “Twitter and Facebook revolution” in regard to the Green Revolution in Iran or other new social movements which demand democratization in their countries and use the Internet for communication and mobilization. Libertarian advocates of the Internet state that the Internet has democratizing effects because of its reputed egalitarian, open and free technological structure for communication processes. Especially in countries in which the media is under strict control by the government, these characteristics are emphasized as stimulation for political liberalization and democratization processes. This essay critically examines the alleged democratizing effect of the use of the Internet on the Malaysian society exemplified on the social movement Bersih. The Bersih movement demands free and fair elections in Malaysia, often described as an ethnocratic and “electoral authoritarian regime”. 141 The objective of this study is to demonstrate the dependency of such possible effects on context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-118
Author(s):  
Realize Realize ◽  
Tukino Tukino

Home industry production results are only traditionally managed as promoted by word of mouth, and sometimes rely solely on the number of visitors to the sales place of the product, so the product takes a long time to increase sales volume. Now with capitalize a set of computers or smartphones that have been equipped with the Internet network can be used as a tool or media to publish all activities / promotional activities undertaken by the domestic business actors. In this activity, business activists will be given material about what the website, especially weblog and its benefits, how to make it, and how to use and manage it properly to support and improve the ability in promoting the product. This is not without reason, because almost all citizens who already have a household business is less understand the use of the internet let alone use the Internet media as one of the media to promote household products that they produce. The main target in the implementation of community service activities is to improve the ability of the community in the utilization of the Internet as a powerful medium as a partner of the government in moving the economic factors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110467
Author(s):  
Daniel Calderón Gómez ◽  
Massimo Ragnedda ◽  
Maria Laura Ruiu

This article investigates the entanglement between socio-economic and technological factors in conditioning people's patterns of Internet use. We analysed the influence of sociodemographic and techno-social aspects in conditioning the distinctive digital practices developed by Internet users. By using a representative sample of UK users and different methods of analysis, such as factor analysis, K-means cluster analysis and logit analysis, this study shows how techno-social variables have a stronger effect than socio-economic variables in explaining the advanced use of the Internet.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1818-1839
Author(s):  
Hosnieh Rafiee ◽  
Christoph Meinel

With the increased use of the Internet to share confidential information with other users around the world, the demands to protect this information are also increasing. This is why, today, privacy has found its important place in users' lives. However, Internet users have different interpretations of the meaning of privacy. This fact makes it difficult to find the best way to address the privacy issue. In addition, most of the current standard protocols in use over the Internet do not support the level of privacy that most users expect. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the best balance between users' expectation and the practical level of privacy to address user privacy needs and evaluate the most important protocols from privacy aspects.


Cyber Crime ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Tejaswini Herath ◽  
H. Raghav Rao ◽  
Shambhu Upadhyaya

It is estimated that over 1 billion people now have access to the Internet. This unprecedented access and use of Internet by individuals around the world, however, is accompanied by malicious and mischievous activities online. With the traditional crimes such as fraud, identity theft, and harassment now being committed with the use of the Internet, and networked home computers being exploited to carry out attacks such as denial of service, spamming, phishing and virus/worm propagation, it has become important to investigate security and privacy issues as they pertain to individual Internet users. To date very little is known about what characteristics of internet users affect their computing and on-line behaviors as they relate to security online. While some attention has been paid to understand the security issues affecting corporations, research investigating security issues as they relate to home users is still in infancy. Drawing from disciplines such as criminology, sociology, consumer fraud, and information security, this study seeks to find the role of computing skills and computer training, social influence, and gender on person’s vulnerability to Internet crimes. Our findings are significant and shed light in this important area of Internet crime contributing to the information security literature.


2011 ◽  
pp. 3371-3388
Author(s):  
Pippa Norris

The core issue for this study concerns less the social than the political consequences of the rise of knowledge societies; in particular, the capacity of the Internet for strengthening democratic participation and civic engagement linking citizens and government. To consider these issues, Part I summarizes debates about the impact of the Internet on the public sphere. The main influence of this development, as it is theorized in a market model, will be determined by the “supply” and “demand” for electronic information and communications about government and politics. Demand, in turn, is assumed to be heavily dependent upon the social characteristics of Internet users and their prior political orientations. Given this understanding, the study predicts that the primary impact of knowledge societies in democratic societies will be upon facilitating cause-oriented and civic forms of political activism, thereby strengthening social movements and interest groups, more than upon conventional channels of political participation exemplified by voting, parties, and election campaigning. Part II summarizes the sources of survey data and the key measures of political activism used in this study, drawing upon the 19-nation European Social Survey, 2002. Part III examines the evidence for the relationship between use of the Internet and indicators of civic engagement. The conclusion in Part IV summarizes the results and considers the broader implications for governance and democracy.


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