[Air-l] searching and religion

Tue May 8 07:56:56 PDT 2007

The 2-part title of this post refers to the 2 themes of the new issue of
JCMC. One part is on social aspects of search engines (edited by Eszter
Hargittai) and the ohter is on online religious stuff (edited by Charles
Ess, et al).

The table of contents is below my sig.

Jen Kayahara and I have an article in the Searching section that is
relevant to the "lurking" discussion this list has been having. Two
points:

1. I want to repeat the obvious, but oft-forgotten, truism: people have
lives off-line too. (even me.) Many readers/lurkers carry the info back to
their off-line contacts, or send email comments about what they have read
to their friends.

2. Jen & I found (using "Connected Lives" data) that there is a dialectic
between getting info offline and checking it online, then discussing it
offline, then discussing it online, etc. Indeed, we make a giant leap
from our small Toronto sample and hazard a guess/supposition that the
two-step flow of communication idea is much less viable in the Internet
age. It's so easy to gather info and to communicate that there is often a
multi-step flow of communication.

 Barry Wellman
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
        for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
 _____________________________________________________________________

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue3/

Special Theme I: The Social, Political, Economic, and Cultural Dimensions
of Search Engines

Eszter Hargittai, Guest editor

   1. The Social, Political, Economic, and Cultural Dimensions of Search
Engines: An Introduction
      Eszter Hargittai
      This collection explores how search engines are embedded in social
processes and institutions that influence how they function and how they
are used.
   2. Heuristic and Systematic Use of Search Engines
      Werner Wirth, Tabea Böcking, Veronika Karnowski, and Thilo von Pape
      Different types of cognitive processing of search results may occur,
depending on situational demands and the Web experience and
domain-specific involvement of the user.
   3. In Google We Trust: Users' Decisions on Rank, Position, and
Relevance
      Bing Pan, Helene Hembrooke, Thorsten Joachims, Lori Lorigo, Geri
Gay, and Laura Granka
      Users have substantial trust in Google's ability to rank search
results by their true relevance, even when abstracts are manipulated to be
less relevant.
   4. Searching for Culture—High and Low
      Jennifer Kayahara and Barry Wellman
      Torontonians first obtain cultural information from interpersonal
ties or other offline sources and then turn to the Web for efficiency and
up-to-date information.
   5. Learning to Search and Searching to Learn: Income, Education, and
Experience Online
      Philip N. Howard and Adrienne Massanari
      Years of online experience, frequency of use, and sophistication
with multiple search engines can overcome socio-economic status in
predicting how active a person is in searching across different topics.
   6. Is Relevance Relevant? Market, Science, and War: Discourses of
Search Engine Quality
      Elizabeth Van Couvering
      Fairness and representativeness are not key determiners of search
engine quality in the minds of search engine producers. Rather, they
invoke alternative standards of quality, such as customer satisfaction and
relevance.
   7. Equal Representation by Search Engines? A Comparison of Websites
across Countries and Domains
      Liwen Vaughan and Yanjun Zhang
      A study of search engine coverage of websites in four domains from
four countries finds that U.S. sites received higher coverage rates than
their counterparts in other countries.
   8. Google Bombing from a Time Perspective
      Judit Bar-Ilan
      The behavior of Google bombs over time seems to be dependent on the
type of Google bomb (humor, ego, or ideological) and on the community
promoting the bombed page.

Special Theme II: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Religion and
Computer-Mediated Communication

Charles Ess, Guest editor (with Akira Kawabata and Hiroyuki Kurosaki)

   9. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Religion and Computer-Mediated
Communication
      Charles Ess (with Akira Kawabata and Hiroyuki Kurosaki)
      Individually and collectively, the articles in this collection
highlight characteristics that foster or hinder religions' migration
online.
  10. Diaspora on the Electronic Frontier: Developing Virtual Connections
with Sacred Homelands
      Christopher Helland
      Diaspora religious groups use the Internet for long-distance ritual
practice and cyber pilgrimage to connect to their homelands.
  11. Internet Use among Religious Followers: Religious Postmodernism in
Japanese Buddhism
      Kenshin Fukamizu
      Japanese Buddhists who participate in online interaction have a more
critical attitude toward their faith systems than their non-Internet using
counterparts.
  12. Online-Religion in Japan: Websites and Religious Counseling from a
Comparative Cross-Cultural Perspective
      Akira Kawabata and Takanori Tamura
      The new Shinto-derived religions Konko-kyo- and Tenrikyo- provide
successful Internet-based religious counseling services.
  13. Conflict and Intolerance in a Web Community: Effects of a System
Integrating Dialogues and Monologues
      Mitsuharu M. Watanabe
      Users less tolerant of different views post more often to the BBS
than to the weblogs of the Spiritual Navigator system, which is designed
to balance conflict with stability.
  14. Who's Got the Power? Religious Authority on the Internet
      Heidi Campbell
      There is a need to distinguish layers of authority in online
religious contexts in terms of hierarchy, structure, ideology, and text.
  15. Islam, Jihad, and Terrorism in Post 9/11 Arabic Discussion Boards
      Rasha A. Abdulla
      Message exchanges on three Internet discussion boards in the Arab
and Muslim world shed light on how Muslims viewed the attacks from a
religious point of view.
  16. Islam and Online Imagery on Malaysian Tourist Destination Websites
      Noor Hazarina Hashim, Jamie Murphy, and Nazlida Muhamad Hashim
      Malaysian tourism destination organizations display few Muslim
images on their websites.
  17. Virtually Sacred: The Performance of Asynchronous Cyber Rituals in
Online Spaces
      Stephen Jacobs
      Designers envisage the Christian Virtual Church and Hindu Virtual
Temple websites in terms of conventional notions of sacred space and
ritual performance.
  18. Technological Modernization, the Internet, and Religion in Singapore
      Randolph Kluver and Pauline H. Cheong
      Technological modernization and religion co-exist and mutually
reinforce one another within the Singaporean context, according to
religious leaders.