[Air-l] How is the Internet bad for us?

[David Brake]

Sorry - yet another collective picking of brains... As part of a  
literature review for a report I mentioned earlier (led by Sonia  
Livingstone and Andrea Millwood Hargrave) I am trying to pull  
together an overview of academic literature on the harms associated  
with Internet use. I am looking primarily for effects-centred  
literature and individual-level effects - things regulators might be  
reasonably expected to tackle - so macro-level theories are not what  
I am after.

Here is a list of concerns I have come across in the literature so  
far. Can anyone suggest further areas where there has been research?  
Can anyone suggest concerns that haven't been researched but which  
need researching so we can recommend it? I would also be interested  
to receive further citations for any of the categories where I have  
indicated I haven't found much so far. I am aware this is a huge  
topic so I feel bound to have missed something...

Note: this review will be freely downloadable online when it is  
finished and we hope will be a useful aid to both academics and  
regulators so please help if you can!

Here are the categories of harm and offense I have found so far:

Reinforcement of undesirable attitudes:
* Anorexia
* Hate group membership
* suicide clubs

Enabler of undesirable behavior:
* Bullying (would like more lit)
* Sexual harassment (would like more lit)
* stalking (would like more lit)
* Grooming of children by paedophiles (would like lit that provides  
quantitative evidence)

Providing access to unsuitable/undesirable content
* Porn
* gambling (would like more lit)
* alcohol/smoking and other anti-social advertising (would like more  
lit)

To this I would add my personal favourite potential problem with the  
Information society:

* The surveillance society'for your convenience and  
safety' (increased government and commercial surveillance and data  
mining related to your "public face")
* The slow death of the privacy of your "private face" through  
increased public self-documentation and the self-documentation of  
others you interact with. What happens when significant numbers of us  
are cyborgs like Steve Mann http://wearcam.org/ and we're under  
continuous 'sousveillance'?

My favourite book on the former issue is Garfinkel, S. (2000)  
Database Nation, O'Reilly, Cambridge but it is not an academic text.  
I would love to be able to say something in my lit review about  
either of these privacy issues but it is hard to measure the extent  
or the effects of such intrusion. Has anyone found any effects-based  
papers on either of these points?

Or failing that could you recommend what you consider the key  
academic texts about the online privacy issue in general so I can  
cite them and add, "clearly more research is needed"?

---
David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London  
School of Economics & Political Science
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ 
mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm>
Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/  
(personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog)
Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ 
dealingwithemail/>
callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)



---
David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London  
School of Economics & Political Science
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ 
mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm>
Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/  
(personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog)
Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ 
dealingwithemail/>
callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)