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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/6/2019, SPi

Society and the Internet

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/6/2019, SPi

Moments in the Development of the Internet

1950s: Early development of computing 1950

for domestic purposes

1955
1962: Doug Englebart began design of
an “oN-Line System” (NLS), demonstrated 1960: J. C. R. Licklider’s call for a global
in 1968 network

1960
1963: Ted Nelson coins the term
“hypertext”

1967: L. G. Roberts publishes his plan

for the ARPANET at DARPA 1965
1969: ARPANET Commissioned by US
Department of Defense for research on
networking; and the first message is sent
1972: ARPANET’s first public over the network
demonstration 1970

1972: e-mail system begins on ARPANET

1973: TCP/IP is developed by Robert Kahn
and Vint Cerf
1975 1981: US National Science Foundation
(NSF) develops the Computer Science
Network (CSN), later NSFNET, expanding
ARPANET

1982: Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) is 1980

standardized
1986: NSFNet created

1989: Tim Berners-Lee and CERN

colleagues invent the World Wide Web;
Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE) is formed by 1985 1990: ARPANET decommissioned, ceases
European service providers to exist

1991: World Wide Web service becomes

publicly available on the Internet
1990
1993: Mosaic Web browser developed, 1992: Internet Society is chartered; World
soon commercialized as Netscape Wide Web is released by CERN
Navigator
1994: World Wide Web Consortium
1995: Internet commercialized, Netscape (W3C) founded; NSFNET decommissioned
launched, Amazon.com and eBay are 1995
founded
1998: Google starts as a research project
2001: Tim Berners-Lee and others call for at Stanford University
a new semantic (data) web
2000 2001: Wikipedia is founded by Jimmy
Wales and Larry Sanger.
2001: Original peer-to-peer file-sharing
music site, Napster, is shut down. 2003: Hacktivist group Anonymous is
formed.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/6/2019, SPi

2004: Social networking site, Facebook, 2005

is launched
2006: Wikileaks is launched by Julian
2005: YouTube is launched Assange.

2010 2007: One of the first large state-

2007: The iPhone is publicly released, sponsored cyber-attacks is launched on
popularizing mobile applications (apps) Estonia by Russia

2011: Face Recognition and Voice Search 2009: The first block of the Bitcoin chain
commercially available is mined.
2015
2013: Edward Snowden leaks classified 2013: Silk Road, the first modern darknet
information about the global surveillance marketplace, is shut down.
operations being conducted by most
Western powers. 2016: Cambridge Analytica micro-targets
US voters in the presidential election
2017: European Union’s General Data 2020
Protection Directive (GDPR) comes into
2019: The Internet reaches 3.9 billion
force
people, over half (51.2 percent) of the
world’s population.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/6/2019, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/6/2019, SPi

Society and the Internet

How Networks of Information and
Communication are Changing Our Lives

Second Edition

Edited by
Mark Graham and William H. Dutton

with a foreword by
Manuel Castells

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/6/2019, SPi

3
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Foreword

Internet: Utopia, Dystopia, and Scholarly Research

The Internet has become the fabric into which our lives are woven. It is
relentlessly changing our communication environment. And communication
is the essence of being humans. It is not “I think, thus I exist,” but “I commu-
nicate, thus I exist”. If I do not communicate, no one knows what I thought
and therefore I exist only in my inner self—which only becomes fully human
when I leave my shell and I venture into the wonders and surprises of life.
Indeed, forms and technologies of communication have differentiated our
societies throughout history. The advent of the Internet has represented a
quantum leap in the transformation of communication. Yet, half a century
after its first deployment (in 1969) the social meaning of this interactive,
multidirectional, global, digital network of communication remains obscured
in the media, in the institutions, and in people’s minds, by the utopias and
dystopias that emerged from the very moment of its inception.
Utopians hailed the Internet as the coming of the kingdom of freedom.
Freedom from the state, and from big corporations.
Dystopians warned against a technology that would bring widespread iso-
lation and alienation to society, as people would be transformed into nerds
mired to their computers day and night, leaving reality and being submerged
into virtuality. Furthermore, Big Brother would use the pervasiveness of the
Internet to construct a digital panopticon and establish a surveillance system
as never before possible.
Both positions were proven right and wrong at the same time.
On the one hand, it is true that unfettered, multimodal, ubiquitous
communication has extraordinarily enhanced the capacity of individuals to
construct the networks of their lives. In so doing, they have largely bypassed
the mass-media control exerted by either governments or media corporations,
creating a space of autonomy that has impacted everything, from business to
social movements, from cultural creativity to the rise of the sharing economy.
However, states have rushed to limit the newly developed free communica-
tion by setting up sophisticated systems of censorship, by blocking access to
websites, by approving and enforcing restrictive legislation, by engaging in
Foreword

cyberwarfare, and by inducing massive disinformation, amplified by armies of

robots that populate digital networks. As for the corporations running these
networks, they have become gigantic oligopolies, and have used their control
of traffic to transform our lives into data, the sources of their profits: data
capitalism is a fundamental industry of the twenty-first-century economy.
Freedom of information is the subject of a decisive fight against the freedom
of producing and propagating “fake news.”
On the other hand, the myth of the alienated Internet user has been
debunked repeatedly by a flurry of studies that have found the obvious: soci-
ability is hybrid (as it always was), made of both face-to-face and technology-
mediated interaction. Of course, there are people alienated and isolated
among users. As they are in the whole of society. In fact, the Internet has
alleviated these feelings, by providing an alternative for people who tend not
to be very sociable. And, yes, a new pattern of sociability has emerged: it is
what we conceptualize as networked individualism. Individualism is the
predominant culture of our societies because of a number of factors that are
not rooted in technology. What the Internet does is to provide an appropri-
ate platform for the full development of this new form of sociability. The
Internet and social media are as sociable as any other forms of mediated
communication: in traditional sociological terms, we moved from commu-
nity to association, and then from association to networking.
Yet, the dystopian view of the Internet finds strong support in the extraor-
dinary rise of government surveillance apparatuses after 2001, exploiting the
emotion and the fear caused by the terrorist attacks on 9/11. As Michael Hayden,
the director of the US National Security Agency (NSA) said at the time,
referring to the difficulty of finding terrorists in a world of ever-growing infor-
mation: “In order to find a needle in a haystack, I need the entire haystack.”
Thus, while most of the alarm about the power of digital Big Brother has
been aimed at the attempt to control Internet communication by China, in
fact the NSA has become the core of the most comprehensive surveillance
system on the planet, particularly through its connection with the sophisti-
cated British intelligence agency, GCHQ, and their counterparts in Germany
and Israel among others. Together they constitute a global bureaucracy of
surveillance, with occasional collaboration with the independent Russian
and Chinese agencies.
However, while surveillance is the domain of the state, the total loss of
privacy is mainly the result of the practice of Internet companies, such as
Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. These companies retrieve
and store data about all of our communications, sometimes with our (forced)
consent (we need their services because they are an oligopoly), and some-
times without it. In principle, they aggregate our data without personal iden-
tifying information, but the advertising we receive relentlessly in our

viii
 Foreword

electronic addresses is customized, and so someone enabled the advertisers

to personalize content for our tastes, preferences, and behavior. However, not
all of this is the fault of the Internet, because a key source of the data is the
digitization of everything, starting with our bank cards, that tells the story of
our life in minute detail. It is the formation of a “digital exhaust” by the
linkage between all our digital traces that provides the basis of this panopticon
resulting largely from the exchange of data between different corporations
and, ultimately, the state itself.
Nonetheless, the digital panopticon is not an overwhelmingly dictatorial
system, because people are still able to communicate in a horizontal manner,
and even to rebel, and mount political challenges, as we have witnessed, par-
ticularly since 2010, in multiple countries around the world. We can say
that a new form of social movement has been born: the networked social
movement, with extraordinary impacts in political processes. But this says
nothing about the ideological orientation of these movements, as extreme
right movements have taken advantage of these autonomous networks, at
least as much as progressive social movements have. Technology does not create
the content of the behavior of the actors in the networks: it amplifies its effect.
Thus, the simplistic debate between utopians and dsytopians blocks our
understanding of the key communication technology of our lives. Because, as
in all technologies in history, in the first stage of their development there is a
reaction of fear of the unknown, particularly among the older generations,
overwhelmed by the proliferation of machines that they ignore. These fears
are deepened by the mass media, because “only bad news is news.” And
because of the potential existential threat to traditional media, from the
press to television, that is posed by social media, traditional media have a
vested interest in delegitimizing social media as a form of reliable information
and communication. And so, our world has entered the Internet Galaxy at full
speed, without awareness of its implications.
Scholarly research, conducted in the usual conditions of intellectual inde-
pendence and rigorous methodology, is the only way to clarify the issues at
stake, as a precondition to designing appropriate polices and legislation that
could eventually restore human control over new, powerful machines, and
people’s autonomy vis-à-vis the proprietary networks of communication.
This is why the field of Internet studies is essential for the construction of
human consciousness in our contemporary context. And this is why this book
that summarizes, updates, and theorizes critical research findings on Internet
and society, is a necessary guide to address key dilemmas of our time.
Manuel Castells
Los Angeles and Barcelona,
March 2019

ix
Preface

As we completed this second edition of Society & The Internet, the Internet had
reached over half of the world’s population. There was surprisingly little
fanfare for such a major milestone. To the contrary, there was concern that
the rate of the Internet’s diffusion was slowing—an inevitable pattern in the
diffusion of all innovations.1 But more alarming was the rise of increasingly
major concerns over the societal implications of the Internet and related
media, information, and communication technologies. Pundits argued that
social media was destroying democracy, big data was undermining our priv-
acy; screens were affecting the health and sociability of children; artificial
intelligence (AI) would kill jobs; states were engaged in “World War Web”;
and the Internet and Web were fragmenting as the balkanization of the global
information system speeded up.2
As Manuel Castells elucidates in the foreword to this book, this is part of an
enduring utopian–dystopian dialogue about the societal implications of the
Internet and related media and communication technologies. However, what
is somewhat different about these debates from past hopes and concerns
about technology is the degree to which they are current rather than future
issues. That is, concerns at a level bordering on panic have emerged around
actual developments, such as revelations about government surveillance,
massive data breaches, and disinformation campaigns.
Has the dystopian narrative been proven right? Alternatively, are such
concerns based on overly simplistic and often deterministic logics that do
not withstand the scrutiny of empirical and theoretically sophisticated ana-
lyses? We hope this book’s collection of research will help you answer such
questions.
This book, as Manuel Castells points out, is an attempt to bring independ-
ent, disinterested, and empirically informed research to bear on key questions.
We want to show the reader how research is being conducted in central

1
This refers to the S-curve of any innovation that describes how the rate of diffusion slows after
it reaches most adopters (Rogers, E. M. (2004). Diffusion of Innovations, fifth edn. London: Simon
and Schuster.).
2
“World War Web” was the cover title of the September/October 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs.
Preface

domains of Internet research: demonstrating a breadth of theoretical and

methodological approaches to developing understanding about the societal
implications of the Internet. Each author was tasked with not just laying
out key disagreements or debates, but also explaining how they interrogate
them. We hope this collection therefore conveys the significance of varying
perspectives on the Internet and brings Internet studies alive for anyone
who seeks to understand the many ways in which the Internet is impacting,
co-constituting, and being impacted by society.
Central to understanding the role of the Internet in society, is to focus on
not just its material, but also its discursive power. Visions of the Internet have
always been a critical driving force behind its development. Ted Nelson, the
person who coined the term “hypertext,” has been a critic of the design of
the Web and many other information technologies. He explained the failure
of so many technical designs by famously saying: “Tekkies have created the
world in their image; I believe today’s computer world is a result of tekkie
misunderstandings of human life and human thought.” Despite spectacular
advances, there remains much room for improvement.
But utopian visions of the Internet live on and continue to be a force driving
individuals, companies, and governments to invest in its potential. As the first
edition of this book was nearing completion, we learned of the death of
Douglas C. Englebart (1925–2013), an engineer and one of the first scholars
to envision a future in which computers and telecommunications would be
networked worldwide in ways that could augment human intelligence. In
1962, over fifty years ago, he started work on the design of what he called an
“oN-Line System” (NLS), which he demonstrated in 1968, one year after his
team invented the “mouse”—a device that has since changed the ways in
which people interact with computers.
He was one of many pioneers who helped shape what we have come to
know as the Internet, the Web, and related digital technologies, ranging from
telecommunications infrastructures to tablets, smartphones, and voice search.
He was inspired by earlier pioneers, such as Vannevar Bush and J. C. R. Licklider,
who called for a global system, and in turn inspired others, such as Ted
Nelson, who conceived and developed the concept of “hypertext,” to
describe the nonlinear pathways that can link digital text and images, and
which move away from the model of a linear book.
As we were working on the second edition of this book in 2018, another
Internet pioneer passed away, but one of a very different sort. Not an engineer,
but a poet and essayist, and a lyricist for the Grateful Dead (as well as a
cattle rancher). John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Founda-
tion, dedicated to protecting digital rights, and in 1996 penned one of the
early Internet’s most utopian visions: “A Declaration of the Independence
of Cyberspace.” The declaration boldly proclaimed: “Governments of the

xii
 Preface

Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace,
the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave
us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we
gather.” The declaration, in other words, introduced the idea that the Internet
could allow its users to transcend many of the world’s preexisting material
constraints.
Such early visions of what would become the Internet of the twenty-first
century were formed when computing was out of the reach of all but a few
organizations. Englebart’s vision was developed when nearly all computing
was conducted on large mainframe computers that were so expensive and
complex that only large organizations and governments possessed them. In
the sixties, the very idea that households, much less individuals in their
pockets, would have access to a computer networked with billions of other
computers around the world was viewed as folly—completely unrealistic “blue
sky” futurology. Ironically, even Barlow’s ideas of the 1990s were developed
when mobile computing was still a far distant dream for the general public.
And yet today a majority of humanity takes the Internet—often via a mobile
device—for granted as a central feature of and tool in use for everyday life
and work.
Of course, many pioneers followed in the steps of Englebart, Barlow, and
other early visionaries and developed the technologies and visions that have
shaped access to information, people, and services in the twenty-first century.
They include Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, inventors of the protocols that
define the Internet, and Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN, who invented
the World Wide Web. Of course, there are many more—too many to list.
But the most unsung pioneers of the Internet are its users—people like you
who use, view, mediate, edit, make, and therefore profoundly change the ways
that much contemporary knowledge is circulated and recirculated, and com-
munication is enacted and used. This book provides many examples of how
users have shaped—and continue to shape—the development of the Internet
and its application across nearly every sector of society, always coming back to
the key issue of what difference the Internet makes in all aspects of our lives.
Influential pioneers in the design and development of the Internet, like
Doug Englebart, understood the importance of users. As computing moved
from large mainframes to personal computers to the Internet becoming your
computer, it became clear that users were playing a major role in shaping the
Internet in ways many of its designers could not have imagined. For example,
many did not foresee the Internet becoming so widely embedded in core
activities of everyday life, from correspondence to banking and shopping. It
was originally designed to share computing resources in the computer-science
community. In a personal conversation about cybersecurity, one of the key
engineers involved in developing the Internet argued that—to paraphrase

xiii
Preface

him—if he had known how the Internet would develop, he “would not have
designed it as he did.”3 Fortunately, the Internet was designed as it was, which
led to its becoming one of the most transformative technologies of the
twenty-first century.
Likewise, while the Internet was developed originally to support collabor-
ation and sharing among computer scientists, few early developers would
have anticipated the ways in which crowdsourcing—tapping the wisdom of
Internet users distributed across the globe—has enabled users to play more
important roles in science and society in what has been called “citizen sci-
ence.” Who would have envisioned, for instance, that people from all over the
world would edit Wikipedia, averaging about 1.7 edits per second around
the clock?4 However, even with enormous numbers of people being creators
and makers on the Internet, huge inequalities remain in terms of who gets to
have a voice there and what is represented. As new uses evolve, there is a need
for even greater ingenuity and creativity on the part of developers and users
alike to address the problems and risks of the digital age.
In the half-century since Englebart envisioned an NLS, the promise of the
Internet, Web, and related digital information and communication technolo-
gies to truly augment human intelligence has become evident, but so has
the centrality of a global Internet to such valued outcomes as freedom of
expression, privacy, equality, and democratic accountability. The visions
and work of the John Perry Barlows, as well as the Douglas Englebarts, of
this world continue to be needed as much as ever. In fact, most debates over
such central values as freedom of expression in the twenty-first century are
about the Internet.
It is important to recognize that present-day concerns, such as those over
disinformation, are not new. Well before the twenty-first century, many
people considered the potential societal implications of computing and tele-
communications enabled by digital technologies. As early as 1973, computer
scientists such as Kelly Gotlieb began to write about some of the key social
issues of computing, such as the implications for freedom of expression,
privacy, employment, education, and security. Most of these issues remain
critical today. In the early 1970s, Gotlieb and others discussed the idea of an
“information utility”—analogous to other utilities, such as those for electricity
or water. They were well aware of J. C. R. Licklider’s call for a global network,
even though ARPANET—the early incarnation of what would become the
Internet—was only at the demonstration stage at the time they wrote, and
governments were the primary adopters of computing and electronic data-
processing systems. Nevertheless, the issues defined as early as the 1970s

3
David Clarke in a personal conversation with Bill Dutton.
4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics/

xiv
 Preface

remain remarkably key to discussions of the Internet, big data, social media,
and mobile Internet, over forty years later.
As the second edition of this book was nearing completion, the world was
only beginning to recover from a moral panic over the rise of fake news, the
fear of filter bubbles and echo chambers, and a declining trust in the Internet
to deliver on its promise. Major changes have occurred across the decades and
even since this book’s first edition. Two are absolutely fundamental in intro-
ducing this edition.
First, the Internet has increasingly been perceived as a serious threat. In the
Internet’s early years, it was an interesting innovation, but viewed as of no
particular importance by many in government, business and industry, and
society. With its continued and rapid diffusion into and out of the dotcom
bubble of 2001, the Internet came to be viewed as a fountain of benign
innovation in democratic governance and everyday life. The Internet, Web,
and social media came to be viewed as the harbingers of worldwide transform-
ation to more distributed, collaborative, governance—the end of hierarchy
and the death of dictators. But within a decade after the millennium, dramatic
events began to challenge positive visions of the Internet’s role. To many,
Wikileaks came to be viewed as a threat to governance, rather than a tool for
accountability. The release of secrets by Edward Snowden fueled visions of
worldwide surveillance rather than distributed intelligence. Social media came
to be viewed as a Trojan Horse to democracies targeted by malevolent and
possibly state-supported actors, a tool for propaganda and misinformation.
Thus, to paraphrase Albert Teich’s summary of perspectives on technology in
general, the Internet has come full circle, from having no particular effect, to
being an unalloyed blessing, to being an unmitigated disaster—all in the
course of a few decades.
Secondly, in contrast to the early years, as we moved into the second decade
of the twenty-first century, the Internet had become an infrastructure of every-
day life and work for much of the world. It is no longer seen as simply a “virtual”
or “cyber”-space beyond the realm of the material world. It is instead an
embedded, augmented layer and infrastructure of contemporary societies. As
such, instead of a Barlow-esque vision of a domain of life in which the old rules
no longer apply, we see ways in which people, organizations, and states with
economic, social, and political power use the Internet to amplify their reach.
The Internet has become so widely diffused and pervasive that we are no
longer simply relegated to debating competing visions of the societal impli-
cations of this technological innovation. We are in a place in which the actual
societal implications of one of the most significant technologies of our life-
times can be seriously studied. In doing so, students of the Internet and
society need not just to stop at understanding the dynamics of our contem-
porary digitally mediated world, but to build on those understandings to

xv
Preface

develop new, fairer, and more just digital utopias. As AI, even bigger data, new
forms of human interaction with computers, and ever-increasing mobility,
enabling access from anywhere to anywhere at any time, change how we
interact with each other, we need to make sure that we always look to not
just where we are heading, but also where we might want to be—on the basis
of normative forecasts. Nascent movements around initiatives like data just-
ice, platform cooperatives, digital unions, and a decolonized Internet are just
some of the ways in which emerging visionaries are trying to forge a better
digital future.
The central mission of this book is to offer a base from which the next
generation of scholarship, policy, and visions can be constructed. It aims to
show you how a multidisciplinary range of scholars seek to empirically and
theoretically understand the social roles of the Internet. It is in this spirit that
this book brings to bear a variety of methodological approaches to the empir-
ical study of the social shaping of the Internet and its implications for society.
Are those developing and using the Internet creating a system that aug-
ments human intelligence, as Englebart envisioned? Will the Internet be
designed and governed to support freedom of information, as Barlow envi-
sioned? Are we using the Internet in ways that undermine social relationships
and the quality and diversity of information resources required for economic,
social, and political development? What difference is the Internet making to
the quality of our lives and how can this role be further enhanced in the future?
What people, places, groups, and institutions have been able to derive the most
benefit from the Internet, and who, what, and where have been left out?
Who gets to control, create, and challenge new flows of information in our
networked lives? And how are those flows of information used to entrench,
amplify, or challenge economic, social, and political power? In the years and
decades to come, the answers to these questions will be driven in part by the
quality of research on the social shaping of the Internet and its implications
for society. We hope this book helps engage you in that enterprise.
For this collection is designed to show how these questions can be
addressed. It presents a stimulating set of readings grounded in theoretical
perspectives and empirical research. It brings together research that examines
some of the most significant cultural, economic, political, and other social
roles of the Internet in the twenty-first century in creative ways. Contributors
and topics were selected to introduce some of the most engaging and ground-
breaking scholarship in the burgeoning multidisciplinary field of Internet
Studies. In this spirit, the chapters are rooted in a variety of disciplines, but all
directly tackle the powerful ways in which the Internet is linked to transform-
ations in contemporary society. We hope this book will be the starting point for
some students, but valuable to anyone with a serious interest in the economic,
social, and political factors shaping the Internet and its impact on society.

xvi
Acknowledgments

This book began as a collaboration across the Oxford Internet Institute (OII),
one of the world’s first multidisciplinary university-based departments of
Internet Studies. Over the years, our collaboration has grown to encompass
a wider range of scholars across the world who are focused on studies of the
Internet and related information and communication technologies.
The founding mission of the OII was to inform and stimulate debate over
the societal implications of the Internet in ways that would shape policy and
practice. As this book engaged more universities and colleagues across the
world, it became a joint endeavor to extend this mission beyond the OII and
engage the growing field of Internet studies more broadly. This broadening of
our contributions was greatly facilitated by Bill Dutton’s directing the Quello
Center at Michigan State University while we were developing this second
edition. Bill has since returned to Oxford, but we wish to thank the Quello
Center for becoming a partner in sharing this mission.
Society and the Internet arose through a lecture series that the editors organ-
ized for the OII as a means to engage undergraduate students at the University
of Oxford.
It was launched with a lecture by Professor Manuel Castells, an OII Distin-
guished Visiting Professor at that time, on the cultures of the Internet. We are
most grateful for his support and his foreword to both editions of this book.
As this series unfolded, we realized that our audience was far broader than
we imagined as the lectures engaged a wide range of students, faculty, and the
general public. From those who attended our lecture series or viewed our
webcasts, it was apparent that there was serious interest in the societal impli-
cations of the Internet. We thank all those who came to these lectures—your
participation led us to edit this collection.
We are particularly grateful to the authors contributing to this second
edition. The success of the first edition led to this new edition, so we also
remain indebted to all of our original contributors. Without the many authors
contributing to these volumes, and their good spirit and enthusiasm in work-
ing with us as editors, this book would not have been possible.
Mark wishes to thank the Leverhulme Prize (PLP-2016-155), ESRC (ES/
S00081X/1), and the European Research Council (ERC-2013-StG335716-GeoNet)
Acknowledgments

for supporting his work. Bill acknowledges the Quello Center at MSU, Oxford’s
Global Centre for Cyber Security Capacity Building (GCSCC), and Google Inc.
for supporting his research and work on this book.
We are also very grateful to several anonymous reviewers, to Barbara Ball for
her brilliant copy-editing, and to Steve Russell for his evocative artwork for the
cover of this and the previous edition. Our editors at Oxford University Press,
including David Musson, Emma Booth, Clare Kennedy, Jenny King, Louise
Larchbourne, project manager Lydia Shinoj, and their many colleagues, were
professional and skilled at every stage of the process of producing this book.
We could not have asked for better support.
Help to bring this book into being came from not just our colleagues and
editors, but also our families. Mark and Bill wish to thank Kat and Diana for
their invaluable support.
Finally, we thank those who read, work with, critique, and build on this work.
Our imagined readers have been the major inspiration for this collection, and
we appreciate your role in making this book a contribution to our field.
The Editors
Oxford
2019

xviii
Contents

List of Figures xxiii

List of Tables XXV

Notes on Contributors xxvii

Introduction 1
William H. Dutton and Mark Graham

Part I. The Internet and Everyday Life

1. The Internet in Daily Life: The Turn to Networked Individualism 27

Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman

2. Internet Memes and the Twofold Articulation of Values 43

Limor Shifman

3. Internet Geographies: Data Shadows and Digital Divisions

of Labor 58
Mark Graham, Sanna Ojanperii, and Martin Dittus

4. Internet Cultures and Digital Inequalities 80

Bianca C. Reisdorf, Grant Blank, and William H. Dutton

5. Older Adults on Digital Media in a Networked Society:

Enhancing and Updating Social Connections 96
Anabel Quan-Haase, Renwen Zhang, Barry Wellman,
and Hua Wang

6. Internet Skills and Why They Matter 109

Eszter Hargittai and Marina Micheli

Part II. Digital Rights, Human Rights

7. Gender and Race in the Gaming World 127

Lisa Nakamura
8. Data Protection in the Clouds 146
Christopher Millard
Contents

9. Building the Cybersecurity Capacity of Nations 165

Sadie Creese, Ruth Shi/lair, Maria Bada, and William H. Dutton

10. Big Data: Marx, Hayek, and Weber in a Data-Driven World 180
Ralph Schroeder

Part Ill. Networked Ideas, Politics, and Governance

11. Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shapes Political

Participation and the Democratic Landscape 197
Helen Margetts, Scott Hale, and Peter John

12. Social Media and Democracy in Crisis 212

Samantha Bradshaw and Philip N. Howard

13. The Internet and Access to Information about Politics: Searching

through Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Disinformation 228
William H. Dutton, Bianca C. Reisdorf, Grant Blank,
Elizabeth Dubois, and Laleah Fernandez

14. Digital News and the Consumption of Political Information 248

Silvia Maj6-Vazquez and Sandra Gonzalez-Bail6n

Part IV. Networked Businesses,Industries, and Economics

15. The Internet at the Global Economic Margins 265

Mark Graham

16. The Political Economy of Digital Health 281

Gina Neff

17. The Platformization of Labor and Society 293

Antonio A. Casilli and Julian Posada

18. Scarcity of Attention for a Medium of Abundance: An Economic

Perspective 307
Greg Taylor

19. Incentives to Share in the Digital Economy 323

Matthew David

Part V. Technological and Regulatory Histories and Futures

20. Three Phases in the Development of China's Network Society 341

Jack Linchuan Qiu

XX
 Contents

21. The Politics of Children's Internet Use 357

Victoria Nash

22. Looking Ahead at Internet Video and its Societal Impacts 371
Eli Noam

23. The Social-Media Challenge to Internet Governance 389

Laura DeNardis

24. The Unfinished Work of the Internet 403

David Bray and Vinton Cerf

Name and Subject Index 419

xxi
List of Figures

1.1 Technology adoption trends over time 31

2.1 LOLCats 44
2.2 Success Kid 46
2.3 Using the same meme template to express divergent opinions 51
3.1 The location of academic knowledge 61
3.2 Internet penetration 64
3.3 Archipelago of disconnection 66
3.4 Content indexed in Google Maps 68
3.5 Ratio of Flemish to French content in Google Maps 69
3.6 Ratio of Arabic to Hebrew content in Google Maps 70
3.7 A map of Wikipedia 71
3.8 Articles per capita 72
3.9 Edits to Wikipedia 72
3.10 Share of edits to local content on Wikipedia 73
4.1 Cybercultures on the Internet 87
4.2 Internet cultures and countries 88
7.1 “Fat, Ugly or Slutty” front page 139
7.2 Sexism in casual games: user-contributed capture from FatUglyorSlutty
documenting harassment in Words With Friends 141
7.3 “Go back 2 halo pussy, u r a loser pussy faggot nigger spic jew” 142
9.1 Model of factors shaping end-user cybersecurity problems 171
9.2 Model showing loadings and path values of significant relationships 176
11.1 Signatures to petitions to “block” and “don’t ban” Donald Trump
from UK entry; December 2016 203
11.2 Signatures to the petition to rerun the UK’s EU referendum 203
11.3 Mobilizations against policing in the US, on Facebook and Twitter 204
11.4 Distribution of petition data compared with normal distribution 206
13.1 The purposes of search 236
13.2 The reliability of different sources of information 237
List of Figures

13.3 The multiple sources of information about politics 238

13.4 Online sources of information about politics 239
13.5 Practices tied to confirming a story 240
13.6 Relative prevalence of information practices 242
14.1 Illustrative examples of networks of audience overlap 253
14.2 Matrix and graph representation of audience overlap (May–July 2016) 255
14.3 Audience overlap network before and after thresholding 256
15.1 Digital divides in the Thai silk industry 270
15.2 Pak Thong Chai, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand 273
15.3 Silk shop 274
15.4 Spinning platform 275
18.1 (a) Convergence to equilibrium price, p* and quantity in a competitive
market; (b) the effect on equilibrium price and quantity of a
reduction in scarcity of a commodity; (c) equilibrium price when
subject to a scarcity of attention 309

xxiv
List of Tables

1.1 Home broadband subscribers 36

4.1 Likert Scale items used to identify cultures of the Internet 84
4.2 Percentage of cluster who agree with each dimension 86
4.3 Hierarchical regressions on amount of Internet use 89
4.4 Hierarchical regressions on amount of social-media use 90
5.1 Size of East York older adults’ social networks 103
9.1 Variable information 175
10.1 Three perspectives on big data 186
13.1 Frequency of using a search engine (percents) 235
13.2 The reliability of search engine results (percents) 238
19.1 Reciprocal and generalized sharing: definitions and examples 324
24.1 The more technical work that needs to be done for the future Internet 405
24.2 Social work that needs to be done for the future Internet 405
Notes on Contributors

Maria Bada is a Research Associate at the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. She received
her doctorate in psychology from Panteion University, Athens. Her dissertation focused
on media psychology and behavioral change.
Grant Blank is the Survey Research Fellow at the OII, University of Oxford. He has
received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Communication, Technology and
Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.
Samantha Bradshaw is a D.Phil. candidate at the OII, University of Oxford, where she
is also a Researcher on the Computational Propaganda Project, and a Senior Fellow at
the Canadian International Council.
David Bray is the Executive Director for the People-Centered Internet coalition, a 2018
Marshall Memorial Fellow to Europe, and an Eisenhower Fellow to Taiwan and Australia.
He is also a member of the Faculty at Singularity University and a 2016–2021 WEF
Young Global Leader.
Antonio A. Casilli is an Associate Professor, Telecommunication College of the Paris
Institute of Technology (Télécom ParisTech). He is a Research Fellow at the School for
Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris) and at the Nexa Center (Poly-
technic University, Turin).
Manuel Castells is the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and
Society, University of Southern California. Professor Castells was a Distinguished Visit-
ing Professor at the OII, University of Oxford, from 2006 to 2010, and a member of its
Advisory Board.
Vint Cerf is Chief Internet Evangelist for Google and the co-designer of the Internet. He
has served in executive positions at ICANN, ISOC, MCI, CNRI, ACM, DARPA, and also
serves on the National Science Board.
Sadie Creese is Professor of Cybersecurity in the Department of Computer Science at
the University of Oxford, where she is Director of Oxford’s Cyber Security Centre,
Director of the Global Centre for Cyber Security Capacity, and a Co-Director of the
Institute for the Future of Computing, both at the Oxford Martin School.
Matthew David is Associate Professor of Sociology at Durham University. He is author
of Sharing: Crime against Capitalism (2017) and Peer to Peer and the Music Industry (Sage).
Laura DeNardis is an Internet governance scholar and an Associate Professor in the
School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC. She is an
Affiliated Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Notes on Contributors

Martin Dittus is a digital geographer and data scientist at the OII at the University of
Oxford. In his research he applies quantitative methods to analyze and visualize
emerging online practices on a large scale.
Elizabeth Dubois is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa. She completed
her DPhil (PhD) at the OII, University of Oxford, and was an SSHRC Doctoral Fellow,
Clarendon Fellow, and Killam Fellow (Fulbright Canada).
William H. Dutton is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Southern California, a
Senior Fellow at the OII, and Oxford Martin Fellow at the University of Oxford, working
with the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre.
Laleah Fernandez is the Assistant Director of the James H. and Mary B. Quello Center
at Michigan State University, in the Department of Media and Information. Previously,
Dr. Fernandez was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, in
the Department of Information and Computing Science.
Sandra González-Bailón is an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Com-
munication at the University of Pennsylvania and a Research Associate at the OII,
University of Oxford. She obtained her DPhil in Sociology from the University of
Oxford.
Mark Graham is the Professor of Internet Geography at the OII, an Alan Turing
Institute Faculty Fellow, a Visiting Researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center,
and a Research Associate at the University of Cape Town.
Scott Hale is a Senior Data Scientist and Research Fellow at the OII at Oxford Univer-
sity, and a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. At Oxford, he also serves as Director of
the MSc in Social Data Science.
Eszter Hargittai is Professor and Chair of Internet Use & Society at the Institute of
Communication and Media Research (IKMZ), University of Zurich.
Philip N. Howard is Director and Professor of Internet Studies at the OII and a Fellow of
Balliol College at the University of Oxford. He has courtesy appointments as a professor
at the University of Washington’s Department of Communication and as a fellow at
Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.
Peter John is Professor of Public Policy at King’s College London with a focus on how to
involve citizens in public policy. His recent books are Field Experiments in Political Science
and Public Policy (Routledge, 2017) and How Far to Nudge (Edward Elgar, 2018).
Sílvia Majó-Vázquez is a Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism at the University of Oxford. Previously, she worked as a journalist for ten
years. Her research focus is on digital news consumption and audience behavior.
Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet at the University of Oxford,
where she was Director of the Oxford Institute 2011–18, and Programme Director for
Public Policy at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.
Marina Micheli has been a Project Officer at the European Commission’s Joint
Research Centre since July 2018. She wrote her contribution to this volume while she
was a Senior Researcher and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Communication and
Media Research (IKMZ) of the University of Zurich.

xxviii
 Notes on Contributors

Christopher Millard is Professor of Privacy and Information Law at Queen Mary

University of London, where he leads the Cloud Legal Project. He is also a Research
Associate at the OII, University of Oxford, and is Senior Counsel at the law firm
Bristows.
Lisa Nakamura is Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor of American Culture
and Digital Studies and Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of
Michigan. She is the author of four books on race, gender, and digital media.
Victoria Nash is Deputy Director and Senior Policy Fellow at the OII at the University
of Oxford.
Gina Neff is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the OII and the
Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. She is co-author (with Dawn
Nafus) of Self-Tracking (MIT Press, 2016) and author of Venture Labor (MIT Press, 2012).
Eli Noam has been Professor of Economics and Finance at the Columbia Business
School since 1976 and more recently its Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business
Responsibility. He has been the Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-
Information, and one of the key advisers to the OII at the University of Oxford, having
served on its Advisory Board since its founding in 2001 through the Institute’s first
decade.
Sanna Ojanperä is a DPhil student at the OII, University of Oxford, and also a doctoral
student at the Alan Turing Institute, where she helps lead the Data and Inequality
Interest Group. Her doctoral research investigates the nature of work conducted
through online platforms.
Julian Posada is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information
and a Junior Fellow of Massey College. Previously, he studied sociology at the School for
Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, France.
Anabel Quan-Haase is Professor of Sociology and Information and Media Studies, and
Director of the SocioDigital Media Lab, Western University. She is the coeditor of the
Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (Sage, 2017) and author of Technology and
Society (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Jack Linchuan Qiu is a Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he
directs the Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research (C-
Centre). He has written numerous books, including Goodbye iSlave (University of
Illinois Press) and Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press).
Lee Rainie is Director of Internet and Technology research at the Pew Research Center,
Washington DC.
Bianca C. Reisdorf is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research focuses on cross-national studies of
digital inequalities, specifically among marginalized populations.
Ralph Schroeder is Professor at the OII at the University of Oxford and Director of its
Master’s degree in Social Science of the Internet. His publications include Rethinking
Science, Technology and Social Change (Stanford University Press, 2007).

xxix
Notes on Contributors

Limor Shifman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and

Journalism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the intersec-
tion between digital media and popular culture.
Ruth Shillair , PhD, is an assistant professor in the Media and Information Department
at Michigan State University and a research assistant at MSU’s Quello Center.
Greg Taylor is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the OII, University of
Oxford, where he is also the director of graduate studies. He holds a PhD in economics
from the University of Southampton.
Hua Wang is Associate Professor of Communication at the University at Buffalo, The
State University of New York. She is the editor of Communication and “The Good Life,” on
technology and well-being in contemporary society (Peter Lang, 2015).
Barry Wellman is the Director of the NetLab Network and a Visiting Scholar at Ryerson
University’s Social Media Lab. He’s the co-author of Networked: The New Social Operating
System (MIT Press), as well as the co-author of more than 500 articles.
Renwen Zhang is a doctoral candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program
at Northwestern University, where she studies the social implications of digital
technologies.

xxx
Introduction
William H. Dutton and Mark Graham

This chapter provides an introduction to this edited collection for all those
interested in critical social aspects of the Internet and related digital media
and technologies. The chapter explains the significance of multidisciplinary
perspectives on the implications of the Internet in contexts ranging from
everyday life to governance, and provides an overview of how the subsequent
chapters address some of the big questions for study of society and the
Internet.
How is society being shaped by the diffusion and increasing centrality of
Internet use in government, politics, business and industry, and everyday life?
This collection addresses this question through a stimulating set of readings
grounded in theoretical perspectives and empirical research. It brings together
research that examines significant cultural, economic, political, and other
social roles of the Internet in the twenty-first century.
Contributors and topics were selected to introduce students to some of the
most engaging and groundbreaking scholarship in the field. The chapters are
rooted in a variety of disciplines, but all directly tackle the powerful ways in
which the Internet is linked to transformations in contemporary society. This
book will be the starting point for some students, but valuable to anyone with
a serious interest in the economic, social, and political factors shaping the
Internet and its impact on society.
Much has changed since the first edition of this book was published in 2014
(Graham and Dutton, 2014). Over a billion new Internet users have joined
the global network in that time. Nevertheless, nearly half of the world’s
population continues to remain disconnected. Access to information and
communication technologies is considered so important in some parts of the
world (Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, and Spain) that laws
have been adopted limiting the power of the state to unreasonably restrict
Dutton and Graham

an individual’s access. At the same time, numerous countries (such as China,

Egypt, and Cameroon) have been doing the opposite: restricting access to
citizens in recognition of the perceived damage that unfettered access to
information and communication technologies could have on established
social, economic, or political order.
These contrasting reactions are united by a recognition that the Internet
matters more than ever to social, economic, and political life. For many people
and organizations, day-to-day life and work without the Internet are unthink-
able. Yet the Internet, the Web, and social media are relatively recent innov-
ations, as illustrated by the frontispiece to this book. It was impossible to use
Google, Baidu, or Wikipedia in order to look up information until the turn of
the century. Most people couldn’t use social media to connect with friends
until later in the first decade of the 2000s. And it was only in the second
decade of the millennium that a sense of ubiquitous connectivity became
possible owing to the ready availability of smartphones. If the next two
decades of Internet time are as transformative as the previous two, it is likely
that many of us will be living in a very different technologically, information-
ally, and algorithmically mediated world.
In this future, there will be an increased need for critical and sustained
inquiry into questions about the interrelationships of the Internet and
society. To echo Kranzberg’s (1986) First Law of Technology, the Internet
is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. It makes some futures more viable
than others, and provides affordances to help some groups more than others
in struggles for resources and power. Thus, in recognition of the social,
economic, and political transformations wrought on the Internet, through
the Internet, and by the Internet, this second edition of Society & the Internet
brings together leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines in order
to think through how the Internet and society are co-developing and
co-transforming.
As you introduce yourself to this book, you might find it useful to consider
some significant questions related to access, communication, and control over
the digital domain.

• How do you create, get, use, and distribute digital information? The
Internet allows many people to access a world of knowledge (compared
to, for instance, working at a library). However, even the wealth of con-
tent on the Internet has its own biases. Information is partial, and the
algorithms that mediate our access to, and use of it necessarily mediate
some choices over others. The Internet, and the data and media that it
mediates, therefore shape how we move around cities, how we access
news, how we interact with our friends, and how the economy is organ-
ized. Who controls what you see and don’t see? How much do you know

2
 Introduction

about the agendas of the people, organizations, algorithms, and machines

that filter your informational diet?
• How does the Internet help introduce you to new people, as well as
helping you keep in touch with old friends and associates? Are social
media platforms bringing you together with friends or making it more
challenging to connect with different friends in different spaces? Use of
the Internet shapes who you know as well as how you communicate. How
do the designs of the platforms that afford all of this communication
shape what you do, where you go, and how you interact?
• How do you obtain services, from banking and shopping to entertain-
ment, games, and public services? What is your money supporting, and
how much do you know about the products and people enrolled in your
digital economic transactions? Are concerns over security online chan-
ging what you do online and how you do it?
• What technologies link you to the Internet, from wired and wireless
infrastructures to devices you carry with you or wear? This will not only
shape what technologies you require, but also what knowhow you require
to live and work in a world of digital media, and communication and
information technologies?
• How is the Internet changing your workplace and your ability to get a job?
Is the fact that many more jobs can be outsourced through the Internet
impacting your profession? And what strategies can enhance the effect-
iveness of distributed collaboration, but also how are groups of workers
able to collectively engage in them to prevent a race to the bottom in
wages and working conditions?

Just as importantly, think of how people use the Internet to get information
about you, to communicate with you, to provide you with services, and
perhaps even to observe your Internet-mediated behavior. The Internet is
shaping access to you, just as you employ the Internet to shape access to the
world (Dutton, 1999: 4–17). Has the Internet made you feel more isolated, or
more connected? More private, or more public? Empowered, or more
dependent on and controlled by others?

Reconfiguring Access and the Societal Implications

of the Internet

This book seeks to bring to life some of the basic ways in which digital media
and technologies reconfigure your access to the world, and the world’s access
to you. Moreover, the chapters show how these shifting patterns of access

3
Dutton and Graham

translate into outcomes of significance to politics, governance, work, and the

quality of your life and the lives of people and communities across the globe.
For nearly half a century, academics, pundits, and policymakers have specu-
lated on the coming societal implications of the widespread diffusion of
computing and telecommunications, which we have come to identify with
the Internet and related digital communication and information technolo-
gies. Computer and social scientists alike have raised social issues of comput-
ing from the 1960s into the present day (Gotlieb and Borodin, 1973). Early
experiments with computer-based communication and conferencing systems,
such as by Starr Roxanne Hiltz (Hiltz and Turoff, 1978), and Sara Kiesler and
her colleagues (Kiesler et al., 1984) began to raise key social psychological
issues of computer-mediated communication in the 1970s. Broad theoretical
perspectives on the societal implications of the information age were provided
by Daniel Bell’s (1973) concept of a post-industrial “information society,” Fred
Williams’ (1982) “communications revolution,” and later by Manuel Castells’
(1996) trilogy focused on the “network society” and his later work on “com-
munication power” (2009). These are only a few of many scholars who have
speculated about the social implications of the convergence of computing and
telecommunications that has since networked people through the Internet,
World Wide Web, and a growing number of devices, from smartphones to
wearable computing and the Internet of Things (Lanier 2013).
However, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become
increasingly possible to move beyond speculation and to study the actual
implications of the Internet across a wide range of social, economic, and
political contexts of use (Katz and Rice, 2002; Howard and Jones, 2004;
Lievrouw, 2011; Nichols, 2017). Instead of anchoring research on early trials
of emerging technologies, researchers can study the factors that are presently
shaping the development and use of the wide range of technologies that form
the Internet, how they are used, and with what effect in everyday life and
work, in the creation and consumption of a wide range of cultural products, in
politics and government, and in business and industries, as well as in science
and the wider economy (Wellman and Haythornwaite, 2002; Hunsinger et al.,
2010; and Rainie and Wellman, 2011). It is also possible to look back at the
history of the technologies that define this new infrastructure of society, and
the policies and regulations that have shaped its development and use
(DeNardis, 2013; Hazlett, 2017).
Business and industry, governments, and academia will continue to specu-
late on the future of the Internet, since the range of innovations that define it
will continue to fuel discussion of where the technology is headed. Topics
such as artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, machine learning, the gig
economy, the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data, for example, are emerging
developments that have spawned much speculation about their eventual

4
 Introduction

uses and implications (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Carr, 2015). Early
trials and experiments will remain important. However, increasingly,
researchers and students can draw from studies over years of actual use
across many social contexts to make more empirically informed judgments
about the societal implications of these technologies. The Internet has been
shaping societies around the world, with over four billion people connected,
and will continue to do so with billions likely to come online in the near
future (Graham et al., 2018).
In short, the technology and the research communities concerned with the
Internet are in a position never before possible to address how information
and social networks are changing our lives. This book draws from theoretically
informed analyses and empirical research to address this issue across many
technologies, in many social and cultural contexts across the globe, within
major arenas of use and application, and from issues of everyday life to those
concerning public policy and regulation.

Don’t Take the Internet for Granted

If you are in a college or university then you are likely to take the Internet for
granted as a normal part of life from the living room to the classroom and
workplace. In fact, you may find it difficult to escape using the Internet in a
wide variety of areas, particularly as a student, such as when preparing an
assignment for a course. However, as illustrated by a selected chronological
timeline of Internet innovation, the history of this technology has been one
of continuing rapid innovation that is likely to continue well into the coming
decades (frontispiece). Get used to this change. What you know as the Internet
is likely to be transformed dramatically in the course of your lifetime.
As of 2018, more than four billion out of the world’s 7.6 billion people were
using the Internet, leaving about half of the world without access. Are those
without access disadvantaged? You might think for a moment that they will
be free from the hassles of responding to messages and updating their profiles
or being overloaded with advertising, and confused by disinformation. On
further reflection, you are likely to conclude that those without access to the
tools and skills required to access the Internet are truly disadvantaged in a
variety of ways—often unable to effectively compete in many arenas of a
digitally networked world, from completing homework to getting a job and
accessing healthcare.
At the turn of the century—around the year 2000, the Internet was only
emerging from what was called the dotcom bubble, named after the flop of
the commercial (dotcom) rush to exploit the Web, which led to many new
companies losing huge amounts of money in a very short time (Smith, 2012).

5
Dutton and Graham

The Internet had emerged from the academic realm to enter the world stage,
only to crash after the dotcom bubble burst. This led many commentators and
even social scientists to view the Internet as a fad that would soon fade away
(Wyatt et al., 2002). Clifford Stoll, an astronomer and author of Silicon Snake
Oil (1995), is famously quoted in a 1995 interview as saying that the Internet
was simply

. . . not that important.1

But as the significance of the Internet became widely recognized, and

people, businesses, governments, organizations, machines, computers, plants,
animals, databases, and networks have become networked, others have won-
dered if we can any longer discern the difference it makes in our lives. It no
longer makes sense to think of connectivity as simply affording access to some
sort of “online world” or virtual community (Graham, 2013). But as the
Internet is becoming more inseparably integrated into our lives, can we still
unravel its implications? Could social scientists and other Internet researchers
inform us about the actual implications of the Internet and also be more
prescient about the future? We know that contemporary debates continue to
surround the future of the Internet, but can multidisciplinary research that
engages the social sciences inform our views of the future of this information
and communication infrastructure and its role in societies across the globe?
In the next twenty years, many new and many enduring issues will arise
around the future of the Internet. Will it fade away as new information and
communication technologies (ICTs) are invented and put to use? Alterna-
tively, will the Internet—defined broadly as a network of networks—become
even more pervasive and more critical to everyday life and work? There are
almost eight billion people on the planet in 2018, but the designs of digital
industries for a network of sensors—an Internet of Things—anticipate net-
works with many billions if not nearly a trillion “things” like sensors and
actuators. With the Internet of people and things generating mountains of
data from searches, postings, messages, likes, and just moving through life,
governments and corporations are hoping to harness these big data sources to
learn more about our behavior, attitudes, and values—for better or worse?
Questions such as these about the present, past, and future illustrate the
importance of understanding the role of the Internet in society, and how
society is in turn shaping the Internet. That is why study of the Internet is
increasing rapidly and has become a more central aspect of the curriculum of
courses about communication, information, politics, and society (Dutton,
2013; Ess and Dutton, 2013; Peng et al., 2013).

1
A transcript of the interview is available at http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/02/the_
Internet_futurist_who_thou/(accessed on August 16, 2013).

6
 Introduction

Lessons Learned for Study of the Internet

There are a number of important lessons that have been learned from decades
of research on the societal implications of communication and information
technologies—increasingly subsumed under broadening conceptions of an
expanding Internet. The chapters in this book avoid the common faults
identified by these issues, but they are valuable to keep in mind as you
critically assess the contributions to research in this field.

Moving Beyond Conventional Perspectives on Technology and Society

Journalistic and much public debate about technology in general, and the
Internet more specifically, revolve around three almost classic positions that
remain true to this day: they are perspectives on technology as an “unalloyed
blessing,” or an “unmitigated curse,” or “not worthy of special notice”
(Mesthene, 1969). These utopian, dystopian, and dismissive views seldom, if
ever, survive careful empirical scrutiny. Of course, they are basic cultural
responses to the idea of technology that are real and infect everyday discus-
sions and public policy, but they often fail to hold up to careful observation
about the actual implications of technologies in real social settings—the
implications are seldom so simple. It is necessary to move beyond such
extreme generalizations and define exactly what expectations are tied to
particular theoretical and critical perspectives on any given technology.

Challenging Taken-for-Granted Assumptions about Technology

Discussion of the Internet and related digital technologies, such as social
media, is filled with taken-for-granted assumptions. Will the Internet lead to
social isolation? Will it undermine higher-quality information, and replace
experts with amateurs (Nichols, 2017)? Will it democratize nations or be a
technology of control and surveillance (Wu, 2016)? Will it lead to new and
rewarding jobs, or deskilling and an erosion in job quality coming from the
pitting of workers from around the world against one another? Such conven-
tional wisdom can often be a guide to answering important questions, but it
should be challenged rather than taken for granted (Keen, 2015).
When you hear people that you know talking about the impact of digital
technologies, you will find it of value to look closely at what these accounts
claim and imply. What do they assume about the role of technologies in
causing these impacts? What evidence do they provide, or what evidence
might illuminate the actual implications of particular technologies in the spe-
cific social settings being discussed, ranging from households to boardrooms?

7
Dutton and Graham

Throughout this book you will see excellent examples of how research can
challenge expectations about the role of the Internet in society.

The Flaws of Deterministic Thinking about “Impacts”: Social-Shaping

Perspectives
Traditional perspectives on technology, whether utopian or dystopian, and
conventional wisdom often embody technologically or socially deterministic
logics. Technological determinism—at its extreme—maintains that a given
technology is on a predetermined trajectory toward the one particular best
way of doing something, and that this one best way will have a rationally
predictable set of social consequences. For example, because the Internet can
support more horizontally networked communication rather than only
reinforce more traditional hierarchical systems of communication, it has
been viewed as a “technology of freedom” (de Sola Pool, 1983). However,
the very design of the Internet is a matter of national and international debate,
for instance when governments want intermediaries like service providers to
exercise greater control over certain “choke points” to resurrect more hier-
archical controls over content, even as far as having a so-called “kill-switch.”
In addition, the ways in which technologies evolve are seldom well-described
along a single path, but more often through multiple paths where selections
are made based on non-technical criteria, such as the momentum behind
previous choices. Furthermore, how we experience something like freedom
is shaped not only by the technology, but also by such factors as where we
access that technology, how we access it, and the sociocultural contexts and
places from which we access the Internet (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011). As such,
the impacts are never as straightforward as deterministic thinking would have
us believe.
The idea that technologies, and their uses, are on an inevitable path of
development and that their impacts are predictable—easily extrapolated
from features designed into the technology—has been challenged so often
that social scientists rarely use the term “impact,” for fear of being branded
technological determinists. At the opposite extreme are the social determinists
who dismiss the technology as not having any impact at all since people
design and respond to technologies in such open and flexible ways. As some
of the leading sociologists challenging technological perspectives have
argued, it is equally flawed to move into a position in which the roles of
technology are not considered seriously (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985).
All technologies—the Internet included—are socio-technical systems in
that they are designed by people and in turn shape social choices and behav-
ior. As technologies are accepted, for example, they do contribute to defining
the best way to do something, such as moving people away from pen and

8
 Introduction

paper. Technological change will make some activities more difficult than
before, or other activities easier to do. Think of how the speed bump in a
street can regulate the speed of a car (Latour, 1999), or social media, and how it
can make it easier to communicate with some people, and more difficult to
communicate with others (for instance, if they have no access to the Internet,
or simply refuse to use social media). Myriad examples of the biases of differ-
ent communication and information technologies can be called up to illus-
trate that technologies do indeed matter.

Anchoring Research in Social and Institutional Contexts

In order to move beyond overly simplistic perspectives, and challenge taken-
for-granted assumptions from multidisciplinary perspectives, it is critical that
research is focused on particular aspects of the Internet, such as using search or
social media in specific social and institutional settings. You can see that the
role of the Internet in a household is altogether different from its role in a
government. A household or government department in the US is likely to be
significantly different than in China. As the Internet potentially affects every-
thing, enabling so many different activities in so many contexts, the field
requires ways to arrive at some cumulative set of overarching themes and
conclusions. Some have approached this through metatheoretical perspec-
tives, such as Manuel Castells’ (1996) concept of the “network society” that
could be extended to many social and institutional contexts. This book will
not embrace any single theoretical approach, but bring a set of scholars
together who are addressing key questions across a range of fields. By focusing
on a number of big questions for Internet studies within and across many
different contexts of use, we seek to convey the excitement and open-ended
nature of this emerging field.

The Value of Multidisciplinary Perspectives

One lesson that the editors have sought to follow in compiling this volume is
that study of the Internet requires a multidisciplinary perspective. Much
disciplinary research seeks to develop and refine a particular theoretical per-
spective. In contrast, most research within Internet studies is focused on a
problem, such as understanding the role of the Internet in a particular social
context. Put simply, the most important issues tied to the Internet cannot be
addressed from any single theoretical or disciplinary perspective. Take online
voting as one example. Research on Internet voting would need to draw
from political science, but would also need to understand the security issues
that could undermine its credibility, so computer scientists and security
researchers would have a critical input as well. Problem-driven research is

9
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 Se oli herra Rossin ääni, ja Elenan pää rupesi menemään vallan
sekaisin. Kenelle hän puhui? Kuka puhui hänelle? Hän oli mennyt
yksin huoneeseen ja istui siellä pimeässä, ja kumminkin sieltä kuului
kaksi ääntä.

Sillä hetkellä pikku Giuseppe huudahti unissaan, ja käännettyhän

pojan toiselle kyljelle ja tyynnytettyään häntä Elena kuunteli taas,
mutta kaikki oli hiljaa. Hän rupesi jo uskomaan, että hän oli
nukahtanut ja uneksinut, kun sama painajainen taas rupesi häntä
vaivaamaan. Hän kuuli Davido Rossin pitkät, hitaat askeleet ohuella
matolla, joka oli levitetty tiilipermannolle, ja sitten omituista
suhisevaa ääntä. Sitten seurasi taas tuo vieras puhe.

Nyt alkoi asia selvitä Elenalle, ja hän naurahti. Tuo yliluonnollinen

ääni, joka oli kauhistuttanut häntä, oli ainoastaan fonografi! Mutta
hetken kuluttua uusi pelko valtasi hänet, kun hän kuuli Davido
Rossin tuskalliset huudahdukset, joilla hän tuontuostakin keskeytti
fonografin äänen. Elena ei voinut kuulla sanoja, mutta ääni ilmaisi
suurta tuskaa. Tuskin tietäen mitä teki Elena hiipi ovelle ja kuunteli.
Silloinkin hän vain silloin tällöin saattoi kuulla vieraan äänen
lausumat sanat, joita fonografin surina yhä keskeytti.

»Davido», sanoi ääni, »kun tämä joutuu käsiisi… suuressa

tuskassani… älä pidä pyyntöäni mitättömänä … mutta mitä
päättänetkin tehdä… ole hellä lapselle… muista että… hyvästi
poikani… loppu on lähellä… ellei kuolema tee tyhjäksi… ne, jotka
jäävät maan päälle auttaja ja puoltaja taivaassa… Hyvästi!» Ja näitä
katkonaisia sanoja keskeyttivät Davido Rossin huokaukset ja
tukahdutetut nyyhkytykset. Ja yhä uudelleen hän vakuutti: »Sen
tahdon. Vannon Jumalan edessä, että tahdon!»
 Elena ei voinut kestää enää. Kooten rohkeutensa hän koputti
ovelle. Se oli heikko koputus, eikä vastausta kuulunut. Hän koputti
kovemmin, ja sitten suuttunut ääni sanoi:

»Kuka siellä?»

»Minä vain — Elena», kuului kaino vastaus. »Onko jotain

tapahtunut?
Ettekö ole terve?»

»Olen», kuului tyynempi ääni, ja sitten avattiin ja suljettiin jotain

laatikoita. Vihdoin Davido Rossi avasi oven ja astui ulos.

Kun hän astui kynnyksen yli, katsahti hän taakseen pimeään

huoneeseen aivan kuin hän olisi pelännyt näkymättömän käden
koskettavan hänen olkapäähänsä. Hänen kasvonsa olivat kalpeat ja
otsa hiessä, mutta hän hymyili ja virkkoi äänellä, joka oli hiukan
käheä, mutta kumminkin tyyni.

»Pelkään pelästyttäneeni teitä, Elena.»

»Ettekö ole terve, herra? Saanko noutaa hiukan konjakkia?»

»Ei! Ei mitään! Mutta…»

»Ottakaa tämä lasillinen vettä.»

»No hyvä. Voin paremmin nyt, ja olen kovin häpeissäni. Elena, te

ette saa ajatella tätä sen enempää, ja vaikka tulisinkin
tulevaisuudessa tekemään jotain, joka tuntuu teistä omituiselta, niin
ette saa mainita tätä. Lupaattehan sen?»

»Minun ei tarvitse luvata sitä, herra», sanoi Elena.

 »Bruno on iloinen, kunnon poika, Elena, mutta joskus —»

»Kyllä tiedän — enkä koskaan mainitse tätä kenellekään. Mutta te

vilustuitte illalla katolla, kun katselitte ilotulitusta — siinä kaikki! Yöt
ovat kylmiä nyt, ja minä olin ajattelematon, kun en tuonut teille
päällystakkianne.»

Ja Elena ajatteli: »Annan kaksi suurta kynttilää St. Augustinon

Madonnalle, jotta hän varjelisi hänet kuumeelta.»

Sitten hän koetti olla iloinen ja sanoi kääntyen nukkuvaan poikaan:

»Katsokaa! Hän oli paha taas eikä tahtonut mennä maata

ennenkuin te tulisitte kantamaan hänet.»

»Pikku mies!» sanoi Davido Rossi. Hän astui sohvan luo, mutta
hänen kalpeat kasvonsa näyttivät hajamielisiltä, ja katsoen Elenaan
hän kysyi:

»Missä Donna Roma asuu?»

»Trinità dei Monti — kahdeksantoista», sanoi Elena.

»Onko nyt myöhä?»

»Kello on ainakin puoli yhdeksän.»

»Hm — viedään nyt Giuseppe levolle.»

Hän oli nostamaisillaan pojan syliinsä, kun laahustavia askeleita

kuului portaissa ja sitten hätäinen koputus ovelle.

»Isä!» huusi Elena.

 »Se on hän. Hän tulee ylös.»

Seuraavassa silmänräpäyksessä iltapukuun puettu nainen seisoi

eteisessä. Se oli Donna Roma. Hän oli avannut kärpännahkaisen
viittansa, ja hänen rintansa kohosi nopean astunnan aiheuttamasta
hengästyksestä.

»Saisinko puhutella herra Rossia?» alkoi hän, ja kun hän sitten

katsoi Elenan ohi ja huomasi Davido Rossin nojautuneena lapsen yli,
näytti häntä pyörryttävän ja hän sulki silmänsä hetkeksi.

Davido Rossin kasvot lensivät tulipunaisiksi, mutta hän astui esiin,

kumarsi syvään ja saattaen vieraan sisähuoneeseen sanoi hiukan
epävarmasti:

»Astukaa sisään! Elena noutaa lampun. Tulen takaisin heti

paikalla.»

Sitten hän nosti Giuseppen syliinsä, kantoi hänet ylös

makuuhuoneeseen, kääri peitteen hänen ympärilleen, silitti
päänaluista ja teki ristinmerkin pojan otsalle sekä palasi takaisin
sisähuoneeseen unissaan kulkevan miehen tavoin.
VIII.

Kun Roma astui ylös portaita Davido Rossin huoneeseen, kiusasivat

häntä nuo samat ristiriitaiset ajatukset, jotka egyptiläisten
kyykäärmeiden lailla olivat kiemurrelleet hänen aivoissaan silloin kun
hän sanoi paronille: »Voisin tappaa hänet.» Mutta kun hän saapui
ovelle ja näki itse miehen seisovan nukkuvan lapsen vieressä, tuntui
hänestä aivan samalta kuin ensi kerran Davido Rossin äänen
kuullessa — hän tunsi nähneensä tuon kuvan ennen jossakin, ehkä
jossakin toisessa elämässä — ja tuo muistin nimettömän komeron
avaaminen melkein pyörrytti häntä.

Sitten saapui Davido Rossi puhuen ja käyttäytyen omituisen

hämillään, ja häntä seurasi ujo vaimo (arvattavasti Brunon vaimo)
kantaen lamppua. Mutta samana hetkenä, jolloin Roma astui
vastaanottohuoneeseen, hän oli taas tyyni.

Jäätyään yksin Donna Roma katseli ympärilleen ja huomasi

yhdellä silmäyksellä kaikki — ohuen maton, yksinkertaisen
karttuunin, kuvat, erinäköiset huonekalut. Hän näki fonografin
pianolla vielä auki, ja lieriökin oli näkyvissä — odottaessa hänen
melkein teki mieli koskettaa vieteriä. Hän näki itsensä peilissä uunin
yläpuolella, kiiltävän mustan tukkansa, joka oli työnnetty pois otsalta,
niin että yksi ainoa kihara pääsi valumaan alas, hän näki
kärpännahkaisen viittansa olkapäillään ja sen alla valkoisen
silkkimusliinipukunsa, joka sulautui yhteen hänen kauniin vartalonsa
kanssa.

Sitten hän kuuli Davido Rossin askelten palaavan, ja vaikka hän

nyt oli aivan tyyni, tunsi hän omituista pelkoa, semmoista, jota
näyttelijä tuntee pukuhuoneessaan kuullessaan orkesterin alkavan
soiton. Hän oli selin oveen, ja hänen hameensa kahahti, kun Davido
Rossi astui huoneeseen, ja samassa mies seisoi hänen edessään ja
he olivat kahden kesken.

Davido Rossi katsoi Donna Romaan suurilla, syvämietteisillä,

ihmeellisillä silmillään, ja tyttö näki hänen kohottavan kätensä
otsalleen ja sitten kumartavan syvään ja tarjoavan istuinta Donna
Romalle, itse mennen uunin luo ja nojautuen siihen. Donna Roma
värisi ja tunsi punastuvansa, mutta puhuessaan hän oli taas oma
herransa, ja hänen äänensä oli pehmeä ja luonnollinen.

»Tiedän menetteleväni kovin omituisesti tullessani tänne teitä

tapaamaan», sanoi hän, »mutta te olette pakottanut minut siihen,
enkä voi mitään muuta.»

Davido Rossi äänsi heikosti, ja Donna Roma huomasi hänen

kumartuvan eteenpäin nähdäkseen vieraan kasvot, ja hän loi
katseensa alas osittain antaakseen hänen katsoa, osittain
välttääkseen hänen katsettaan.

»Minä kuulin teidän puheenne tänään piazzalla. On turhaa sen

laveammalta keskustella siitä, että muutamat kohdat puheesta
tarkoittivat minua.»
 Davido Rossi ei puhunut mitään, ja Roma leikki sylissään olevalla
hansikkaalla ja jatkoi sitten samalla vienolla äänellä:

»Jos olisin mies, pitäisi minun kaiketi vaatia teidät

kaksintaisteluun, mutta naisena en voi muuta kuin sanoa teille, että
olette väärässä.»

»Väärässä?»

»Julmasti, häpeällisesti väärässä.»

»Sanotteko minulle, että…»

Hän änkytti hätäisesti, mutta Roma vastasi aivan tyynesti:

»Uskokaa, että kaikki, mitä sanoitte ja mihin viittasitte, on

perätöntä.»

Tytön silmissä oli vihan ja inhon kiilto, jota hän koetti peittää, sillä
hän tiesi Davido Rossin katsovan häneen.

»Jos… jos…» Davido Rossin ääni oli paksu ja epäselvä, »jos te

sanotte, että olen tehnyt vääryyttä teille…»

»Te olette — julmaa vääryyttä.»

Roma kuuli hänen hengityksensä, mutta ei uskaltanut nostaa

katsettaan, peläten näkevänsä jotain hänen kasvoissaan.

»Ehkä pidätte sitä omituisena», lisäsi tyttö, »että pyydän teitä

luottamaan ainoastaan vakuutukseeni. Mutta vaikka olette tehnyt
minulle väärin, uskon teidän luottavan siihen. Teidän vihollisennekin
sanovat teitä oikeutta rakastavaksi mieheksi. Kaikkialla tunnetaan
teidät naisen puolustajaksi. Kaikkialla, missä julmat ja itsekkäät
miehet ovat tehneet väärin naista kohtaan, siellä teidän nimenne on
kaikunut sorretun ystävänä ja puoltajana. Pitääkö teistä nyt
sanottaman, että te itse olette saattanut viattoman naisen
kärsimään?»

»Jos… jos te vakuutatte kunniasanallanne, että se, mitä sanoin —

mihin viittasin, on perätöntä, että väärä huhu on teitä panetellut, että
se on kaikki viheliäistä, perätöntä ilkeyttä —»

Tyttö kohotti päänsä ja katsoi Davido Rossia suoraan silmiin

sanoen äänellä, joka ei värissyt:

»Sen vakuutan.»

»Silloin uskon teitä», sanoi mies. »Koko sydämestäni ja sielustani

uskon teitä.»

Hän oli ajatellut: »Se on hän! Lapsuuden sulo on hiukan kadonnut,

hiukan turmeltunut, hiukan muuttunut, mutta se on hän!»

»Tuo mies on lapsi», ajatteli Roma. »Hän uskoo vaikka mitä, mitä
kerron hänelle.» Ja sitten hän loi katseensa alas ja leikkien
sormessaan olevalla opaalisormuksella hän alkoi käyttää imartelua,
joka aina ennen oli tehokkaasti vaikuttanut kaikkiin miehiin.

»En sano olevani aivan moitteeton», alkoi hän. »Ehkä olen elänyt
ajattelematonta elämää keskellä kurjuutta ja surua. Jos niin on, on
se osittain niiden miesten syy, jotka ovat ympäröineet minua.
Milloinka nainen on muuta kuin miksi häntä ympäröivät miehet ovat
hänet tehneet!»

Hän heikensi äänensä melkein kuiskaukseksi lisäten: »Te olitte

ensimmäinen mies, joka ei ole kiittänyt ja imarrellut minua.»
 »En ajatellut teitä», sanoi Davido Rossi. »Ajattelin erästä toista ja
ehkä myöskin köyhää työnaista, jonka täytyy loiston ja rikkauden
keskellä nääntyä nälkään.»

Tyttö nosti katseensa ja puolittainen hymy levisi hänen huulilleen.

Se oli kuin linnunpyytäjän hymy, kun lintu puusta vastaa hänen
houkutuksiinsa.

»Kunnioitan teitä siitä syystä», sanoi hän. »Ja jos olisin ennen
tavannut teidän kaltaisenne miehen, olisi elämäni ehkä ollut
toisenlainen. Ennen muinoin toivoin, että mies, jolla on jalot pyrinnöt,
korkea päämäärä, kohtaisi minut elämän ovella. Ehkä te olette
tuntenut samaa — että nainen, joka olisi voimakas ja uskollinen,
seisoisi vierellänne myötä- ja vastoinkäymisissä, vaaroissa ja
iloissa.»

Hänen äänensä oli hiukan epävarma — hän ei ymmärtänyt miksi.

»Unelma! Kaikillahan meillä on unelmamme», sanoi Davido Rossi.

»Niin — unelma! Miehiä tuli — hän ei ollut niiden joukossa. He

kiirehtivät täyttämään pienimmänkin toivomukseni, kiihoittivat kaikkia
mielettömyyksiäni, ympäröivät minut loistolla, mutta unelmani oli
särkynyt. Harvoja heistä kunnioitin, en ainoatakaan ihaillut. He olivat
minulle ajanviettona, leikkikaluina. Ja he kostivat minulle sanomalla
salassa… samaa, mitä te sanoitte julkisesti tänä aamuna.»

Davido Rossi katseli yhtämittaa Donna Romaa suurilla,

syvämietteisillä silmillään, jotka olivat kuin lapsen silmät, ja kesken
iloaan onnistumisestaan tyttö tunsi tuskaa nähdessään hänen
kasvojensa surumielisen ilmeen ja kuullessaan hänen värähtelevän
äänensä.
 »Miehet ansaitsevat paljon moitetta», sanoi Davido Rossi.
»Taistelussa mies miestä vastaan me jaamme iskuja kaikkialle ja
luulemme käyvämme rehellistä taistelua, mutta unohdamme, että
vihollisemme takana usein on nainen — vaimo, äiti, sisar, ystävä —
ja, Jumala sen meille antakoon anteeksi, kun iskemme, käy
iskumme myöskin häneen.»

Puolinainen hymy Roman huulilta hävisi, ja omituinen liikutus, jota

hän ei voinut käsittää, valtasi hänet.

»Te puhuitte köyhistä naisista, jotka taistelevat ja näkevät nälkää»,

sanoi tyttö. »Hämmästyisittekö, jos kertoisin, että minä tiedän, mitä
se merkitsee? Niin, ja mitä merkitsee olla ilman ystäviä ja yksin —
aivan, aivan yksin julmassa, pahassa kaupungissa.»

Hän oli kadottanut tyyneytensä hetkeksi, ja silmien kuiva kiilto oli

muuttunut kosteaksi, vakavaksi loistoksi. Mutta seuraavana
silmänräpäyksenä hän oli taas oma herransa ja alkoi puhua
välttääkseen kiusallista vaitioloa.

»En ole koskaan puhunut tästä kenellekään toiselle miehelle»,

sanoi hän, »enkä ymmärrä miksi tulin sen maininneeksi teille — juuri
teille.»

Davido Rossi ei huomannut mitään vilppiä tytön mielistelyssä. Hän

näki vain oman pikku Romansa, lapsen, tuon viattoman siskonsa,
joka vieläkin, vaikka nukkuvana, oli tytössä.

Donna Roma oli noussut seisomaan, ja Davido Rossi astui hänen

luokseen ja katsoen häntä suoraan silmiin sanoi:

»Oletteko koskaan ennen nähnyt minua?»

 »En koskaan», vastasi tyttö.

»Istukaa», pyysi Davido Rossi. »Minulla on jotain sanottavaa

teille.»

Tyttö istui ja hänen kasvoihinsa tuli omituinen, melkein kavala

ilme.

»Te olette kertonut minulle hiukan elämästänne», sanoi mies,

»sallikaa minun nyt kertoa teille hiukan omasta elämästäni.»

Tyttö hymyili taas, ja hänen oli vaikea peittää kasvojensa

voittoisaa ilmettä. Nuo suuret lapset, joita sanotaan miehiksi, ovat
melkein säälittäviä. Hän oli odottanut taistelua, mutta mies oli jo
alussa heittänyt pois aseensa ja nyt hän aikoi kokonaan antautua
tytön käsiin. Ellei tuolla miehellä olisi ollut noin tunteellinen katse ja
noin hellä ääni, olisi tyttö melkein nauranut sydämessään.

Donna Roma antoi vaipan valua pois hartioiltaan saattaen näkyviin

pyöreän vartalonsa ja valkoiset käsivartensa ja heittäen toisen jalan
toisen yli, niin että hänen valkoisen pitsialushameensa lieve ja pieni
punainen kengän kärki pisti esiin. Sitten hän yskähti hiukan
tuoksuavaan nenäliinaansa ja asettui kuuntelemaan.

»Te olette vanhan suvun lapsi», alkoi Davido Rossi, »suvun, joka
on vanhempi kuin se linna, jossa se eli ja ylpeämpi kuin
kuningassuku. Ja vaikka olisitte kärsinyt suuriakin suruja, olette
kokenut äidin ja isän rakkautta ja teillä on ollut oma koti.
Ymmärrättekö mitä on, kun ei ole nähnyt isäänsä eikä äitiään, kun ei
ole kotia eikä ole nimeä, vaan täytyy olla yksin?»
 Tyttö nosti katseensa — syvä poimu oli Davido Rossin otsassa.
Sitä ei
Roma ollut huomannut ennen.

»Onnellinen on se lapsi», sanoi Davido Rossi, »jolle yksikin sydän

sykkäilee tässä armottomassa maailmassa, vaikka häpeä olisi hänen
kehtonsa ääressä seisonut. Minulla ei ollut ketään. En ole koskaan
nähnyt äitiäni.»

Ilkkuva ilme Roman kasvoista hävisi, ja hän veti pois toisen

jalkansa toisen päältä.

»Äitini oli sydämettömän miehen ja armottoman lain uhri. Hän sitoi

lapsensa ranteeseen lipun, johon hän oli kirjoittanut lapsen isän
nimen, asetti poikansa Santo Spiriton löytölasten kodin seimeen ja
heittäytyi itse Tiberiin.»

Roma veti viitan hartioilleen.

»Hän makaa köyhien nimettömässä haudassa Campo

Veranossa.»

»Teidän äitinne?»

»Niin. Aikaisin muistoni on se, että minut annettiin hoidettavaksi

erääseen maataloon Campagnaan. Se oli vallankumouksen
aikakautta, eikä kuninkaan aarreaitta vielä ollut maksanut takaisin
paavin aarreaitalle sen rahoja. Santo Spiriton nunnilla ei ollut varaa
maksaa hoidokeistaan, ja minä olin kuin hyljätty linnunpoikanen
vieraassa pesässä.»

»Oh!»
 »Niihin aikoihin jotkut konnat harjoittivat orjakauppaa valkoisilla
italialaisilla poikaraukoilla. He vaelsivat ympäri maata, kokosivat
pieniä poikia, sulkivat heidät karjan tavoin rautatievaunuihin ja
lähettivät heidät vieraille maille. Minun kasvatusvanhempani möivät
minut rahasta, ja minut lähetettiin Lontooseen.»

Roman rinta kohosi, ja kyyneleet kiilsivät hänen silmissään.

»Sitten muistan eläneeni laajassa, puoleksi autiossa talossa

Sohossa — viisikymmentä vierasta poikaa yhteensullottuina.
Suurimmat pojat lähetettiin kaduille posetiiveineen, nuoremmille
pojille annettiin käteen häkki, jossa oli orava tai valkoinen hiiri. Me
saimme kupin teetä ja leipäpalan aamiaiseksi emmekä saaneet
palata illalla kotiin, ennenkuin olimme ansainneet iltasemme. Sitten
— — talvipäivät ja yöt ovat kylmät siellä pohjoisessa, ja pienet etelän
pojat posetiiveineen ja oravineen värisevät kylmästä ja näkevät
nälkää siellä pimeän ja lumen keskellä.»

Roman silmät kostuivat nopeasti, ja kyyneleet vierähtivät hänen

poskilleen.

»Luojan kiitos, minulla on toinenkin muisto», jatkoi Davido Rossi.

»Muistan jalon miehen — hän oli suorastaan pyhimys — italialaisen
maanpakolaisen, joka uhrasi elämänsä köyhille, varsinkin oman
maansa köyhille.»

Roma näytti pidättävän hengitystään.

»Usein hän saattoi poikasten isännät oikeuden eteen Englannissa,

kunnes nämä, huomatessaan, että heitä tarkastettiin, muuttuivat
vähemmän julmiksi. Hän avasi kotinsa noille pikku raukoille, ja he
tulivat lämpimään, valoisaan kotiin kello yhdeksän ja kymmenen
välillä illalla tuoden posetiivit mukanaan. Hän opetti heitä lukemaan,
ja sunnuntai-iltoina hän kertoi heille suurten italialaisten elämästä.
Hän on kuollut, mutta hänen henkensä elää — elää niiden sielussa,
jotka hän teki eläviksi.»

Roman silmät olivat sokeina kyynelistä, ja sanat tarttuivat hänen

kurkkuunsa, kun hän kysyi:

»Mikä hän oli?»

»Tohtori.»

»Mikä hänen nimensä oli?»

Davido Rossi pyyhkäisi otsaansa kädellään vastatessaan:

»Häntä nimitettiin Giuseppe Roselliksi.»

Roma kohottautui puoleksi istuimeltaan, mutta vaipui sitten

takaisin, ja pitsinenäliina putosi hänen kädestään.

»Mutta minä kuulin sitten — kauan jälestäpäin — että hän oli

roomalainen ylimys, yksi noita pelottomia, jotka olivat valinneet
köyhyyden ja maanpaon ja tuntemattoman nimen vapauden ja
oikeuden tähden.»

Roman käsi oli vaipunut rinnalle, joka kohoili mielenliikutuksesta,

mitä hän ei koettanutkaan salata.

»Eräänä päivänä tuli kirje Italiasta, ja siinä sanottiin, että tuhat

miestä odotti häntä johtajakseen pannakseen toimeen
vallankumouksen ja syöstäkseen valtaistuimelta väärän kuninkaan.
Se oli petosta, erään konnan työtä, jolle miehelle sittemmin
maksettiin hyvä hinta sankarin verestä. Minä kuulin siitä myöhään —
vasta tänä iltana.»

Tuli hetken hiljaisuus. Davido Rossi kohotti toisen käden silmilleen.

»Entä sitten?»

»Hänet houkuteltiin takaisin Englannista Italiaan. Eräs

englantilainen ministeri avasi hänen kirjeensä, jotka olivat kirjoitetut
eräälle ystävälle, ja ilmoitti niiden sisällyksen Italian hallitukselle.
Hänet jätettiin poliisin haltuun ja ajettiin maanpakoon ilman
kuulustelua.»

Roma puristi rintaansa aivan kuin estääkseen itkua puhkeamasta

esiin.

»Eikö hänestä koskaan kuulunut mitään?»

»Kerran — kerran vain — se ystävä, josta puhuin, sai kuulla

hänestä.»

Romaa pyörrytti aivan kuin hän olisi seisonut äkkijyrkänteen

partaalla, mutta hän ei voinut seisahtua, hänen täytyi jatkaa.

»Kuka oli se ystävä?»

»Yksi noita köyhiä orpoparkoja — poika, joka oli kiitollisuuden

velassa hänelle kaikesta ja joka rakasti ja kunnioitti häntä kuin
isäänsä — ja yhä vieläkin rakastaa ja kunnioittaa häntä ja koettaa
seurata hänen jälkiään.»

»Mikä — oli hänen nimensä?»

»Davido Leone.»
 Roma katsoi häneen hetken ääneti. Sitten hän sanoi: »Kuinka
hänelle kävi?»

»Italian tuomioistuin tuomitsi hänet kuolemaan, ja Englannin poliisi

karkoitti hänet Englannista.»

»Eikö hän koskaan voinut palata omaan maahansa?»

»Hän ei ole koskaan voinut käydä äitinsä haudalla, paitsi yöllä

salassa aivan kuin rikoksentekijä.»

»Minne hän joutui?»

»Hän läksi Amerikkaan.»

»Eikö hän koskaan palannut?»'

»Palasi! Koti-ikävä hänessä, kuten kaikissa kodittomissa, oli

valtavin tunne. Hän palasi Italiaan.»

»Missä hän on — nyt?»

Davido Rossi astui hänen luokseen ja sanoi:

»Tässä huoneessa.»

Tyttö nousi —

»Te olette Davido Leone?»

Davido Rossi kohotti toisen kätensä:

»Davido Leone on kuollut!»

 Oli hetken äänettömyys. Tyttö saattoi kuulla sydämensä lyönnin.
Sitten hän sanoi melkein kuulumattomasti kuiskaten:

»Ymmärrän. Davido Leone on kuollut, mutta Davido Rossi elää.»

Davido Rossi ei vastannut, mutta hänen päänsä oli pystyssä ja

hänen silmänsä säikkyivät.

»Ettekö pelkää kertoa tuota minulle?»

»En.»

Tytön silmät loistivat ja huulet värähtelivät.

»Te loukkasitte ja nöyryytitte minua julkisesti tänä aamuna ja

kumminkin luulette minun säilyttävän salaisuutenne.»

»Tiedän sen.»

Tytöstä tuntui kuin hänen rintansa laajenisi, ja hitain, hermostunein

liikkein hän ojensi kätensä.

»Saanko… saanko puristaa kättänne?» sanoi hän.

Hetken epäröinti. Sitten heidän kätensä yhtyivät puristukseen, joka

oli täynnä tulta.

Seuraavassa silmänräpäyksessä Davido Rossi oli kohottanut

Roman käden huulilleen ja suuteli sitä yhä uudelleen ja uudelleen.

Voittoisa riemun tunne välähti tytön sydämessä, mutta sammui

samassa.
Hänen teki mieli itkeä, tunnustaa, sanoa jotain, hän ei tiennyt mitä.
Mutta Davido Leone on kuollut kaikui hänen korvissaan, ja samassa
hän
muisti, mikä asia hänet oli tuonut tähän taloon.

Sitten kyyneleet alkoivat tulvia hänen silmiinsä, hänen

rohkeutensa lannistui ja hän tahtoi paeta, paeta pois sanomatta
sanaakaan. Roma ei voinut puhua, Davido Rossi ei voinut puhua. He
seisoivat äkkijyrkänteen reunalla, ja ainoastaan äänettömyys pelasti
heidät syöksymästä kuiluun.

»Antakaa minun mennä kotiin», sanoi Roma murtuneella äänellä,

ja pää alas vaipuneena ja huulet värähdellen hän astui ovelle.
IX.

Tähän hetkeen asti Davido Rossi oli ajatellut Romaa ainoastaan

tuona lapsena, jonka hän tunsi seitsemäntoista vuotta sitten, tohtori
Rosellin tyttärenä, ystävänään ja kasvatussisarenaan. Mutta hän
katsoi tyttöään nyt taas tämän kulkiessa hänen ohitseen ovelle, ja
nyt, ensimmäisen kerran, hän näki Roman ei niinkuin poika näkee
tytön, vaan niinkuin mies näkee naisen. Kuinka kauniiksi hän oli
kasvanut! Ja hän oli Roma! Hänen Romansa, olkoonpa heidän
välillään mitkä esteet tahansa! Jotain lämmintä värähti hänen
sydämessään sitä ajatellessa, ja katsoen tyttöön uusin silmin hän
tunsi ruumiillista riemua, jommoista hän ei ollut koskaan ennen
tuntenut.

Saavuttuaan ovelle Roma seisahtui aivan kuin epäröiden lähteä ja

sanoi äänellä, joka vielä oli vieno, mutta syvempi:

»Minä tahdoin nähdä teidät silmästä silmään, mutta nyt, kun olen
nähnyt teidät, ette olekaan se mies, joksi teitä luulin.»

»Ettekä te», vastasi Davido Rossi, »se nainen, joksi teitä

kuvittelin.»
 Tytön silmät välähtivät, ja hän nosti katseensa kysyen: »Ette siis
koskaan ennen ole nähnyt minua?» Ja Davido Rossi vastasi hetken
kuluttua:

»En ole koskaan nähnyt Donna Roma Volonnaa ennenkuin

tänään.»

»Anteeksi, että tulin luoksenne», sanoi Roma.

»Kiitos, että sen teitte», vastasi Davido Rossi, »ja jos olen
loukannut teitä, olen tästä hetkestä alkaen teidän ystävänne ja
puoltajanne. Sallikaa minun koettaa parantaa, mitä olen rikkonut.
Olen valmis sen tekemään, jos voin, tuottakoon se minulle mitä
nöyryytystä tahansa. Kiiruhdan tekemään sen, enkä voi antaa
itselleni anteeksi, ennenkuin se on tehty. Se, mitä sanoin teistä, on
valhetta, — ääretön valhe — antakaa minun pyytää teiltä anteeksi.»

»Tarkoitatteko julkisesti?»

»Tarkoitan. Kello kymmenen tullaan hakemaan minulta kirjoitusta

aamulehteen. Huomisaamuna pyydän julkisesti anteeksi julkisesti
lausumaani loukkausta teitä kohtaan.

»Te olette hyvin hyvä ja uljas», sanoi Roma, »mutta kumminkin

pyydän, ettette tee sitä…»

»Ah — kyllä ymmärrän! Tiedän, että on mahdoton voittaa valhetta.

Kun se kerran on lausuttu, vyöryy se kuin kivi alas kallion rinnettä,
eikä edes sekään, joka työnsi sen vyörymään, voi enää seisahduttua
sitä. Sanokaa, mitä voin tehdä — sanokaa.»

Roman pää oli vielä kumarassa, mutta nyt hänen kasvoissaan oli
ilon ilme.
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