Evidence suggests that purchasing products for ethical or political reasons−also known as political consumerism−may be gaining in importance. With (young) people’s declining voting rates and a general disinterest in political institutions, scholars and political elites alike are speculating on the evolution of citizenship. Research shows that citizens in countries like the UK see issue and life-style-based politics as increasingly relevant. These developments point to an interest in understanding political consumerism and its relationship to citizenship. Through analysis of a survey conducted among 1215 respondents in the UK, this article presents evidence in particular for youth’s notable presence online and their affinity for a particular strain of political consumerism identified as socially conscious consumption. It explores the relationship between this consumption and online and offline political participation. It discusses the potential for political consumerism to play a larger role in traditional political realms and particularly through the utilization of technology.

The internet – specifically its graphic interface, the world wide web – has had a major impact on all levels of (information) societies throughout the world. Specifically for journalism as it is practiced online, we can now identify the effect that this has had on the profession and its culture(s). This article defines four particular types of online journalism and discusses them in terms of key characteristics of online publishing – hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality – and considers the current and potential impacts that these online journalisms can have on the ways in which one can define journalism as it functions in elective democracies worldwide. It is
argued that the application of particular online characteristics not only has consequences for the type of journalism produced on the web, but that these characteristics and online journalism indeed connect to broader and more profound changes and redefinitions of professional journalism and its (news) culture as a whole.

With the development of global networking, invention of WWW, and proliferation of Internet-enabled computer hardware and software into homes and pockets, a huge customer base has been created for electronic commerce. It is rapidly expanding in USA and Europe and Japan are following the trend. So far, the development of E-commerce has happened in a rather unregulated way especially in USA, whereas in Europe the European Commission has been developing a regulatory basis mainly in form of directives. Currently (12/1999) they have not yet all been accepted and a major restructuring of the regulatory framework has also been planned. Another technological development is the rapid growth of mobile computing, especially through WAP technology, which makes also mobile E-commerce possible.

In this article we review the need of a transaction model and the corresponding transactional mechanism and its usefulness for E-commerce in general and for mobile E-commerce in particular. We tackle the issue both theoretically and empirically. In the theoretical part we review some of the earlier work, and discuss especially money atomicity, goods atomicity and certified delivery. The empirical part consists of trials at three E-commerce sites, two in Finland and one in USA and reveal important differences in the structure of E-commerce transactions in different cases. These must be taken into consideration when transactional support is developed further.

Using the emerging technology both customer and merchant can now become mobile, although it is more probable that a customer is mobile but a merchant stationary. Communication autonomy and other autonomy aspects and miniature size of the terminals aggravate the problems of achieving the various levels of atomicity. Security, privacy, authentication, and authorization are of paramount importance in an open network environment. One important conclusion is that the transactional mechanism must be closely related with these aspects and that the main goal of using the transactional mechanism is actually to support security, privacy, authentication and authorization -- and vice versa.

This study explores the structure and content of the Arabic blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs. We identified a base network of approximately 35,000 Arabic-language blogs, mapped the 6000 most-connected blogs, and hand coded over 3000. The study is a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arabic-speaking world, which mainly clusters nationally. We found the most politically active areas of the network to be clusters of bloggers in Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, and the Levant, as well as an ‘English Bridge’ group. Differences among these indicate variability in how online practices are embedded in local political contexts. Bloggers are focused mainly on domestic political issues; concern for Palestine is the one issue that unites the entire network. Bloggers link preferentially to the top Web 2.0 sites (e.g. YouTube and Wikipedia), followed by pan-Arab mainstream media sources, such as Al Jazeera.

Little academic and policy attention has addressed the `digital divide' among children and young people. This article analyses findings from a national survey of UK 9—19-year-olds that reveal inequalities by age, gender and socioeconomic status in relation to their quality of access to and use of the internet. Since both the extent of use and the reasons for low- and non-use of the internet vary by age, a different explanation for the digital divide is required for children compared with adults. Looking beyond the idea of a binary divide, we propose instead a continuum of digital inclusion. Gradations in frequency of internet use (from non and low users through to weekly and daily users) are found to map onto a progression in the take-up of online opportunities among young people (from basic through moderate to broad and then all-round users), thus beginning to explain why differences in internet use matter, contributing to inclusion and exclusion. Demographic, use and expertise variables are all shown to play a role in accounting for variations in the breadth and depth of internet use.

Internet has made it easier for firms to collect consumer information. However, consumers are reluctant to provide personal information or tend to provide false information online because of their concern of the privacy violation risks. Researchers have proposed several instruments to assuage consumers’ privacy concern, and to induce them to provide personal information. However, the effectiveness and applicability of these instruments regarding firm’s reputation have yet been sufficiently assessed. This study employed a 2*2*2 experimental design to examine the effects of reputation, fair information practices, and reward on the online consumer behavior of volunteering two types of personal information - demographic and personal identifiable information - on the Internet. Theoretical and practical Implications of findings were drawn.

This article examines the motivation behind bounded groups’ creation of digital enclaves online. Through in-depth interviews with 19 webmasters and staff of selected Israeli Orthodox websites three critical areas of negotiation are explored: (1) social control; (2) sources of authority; and (3) community boundaries. Examining these tensions illuminates a detailed process of self-evaluation which leads religious stakeholders and internet entrepreneurs to form these digital enclaves in order to negotiate the core beliefs and constraints of their offline communities online. These offer spaces of safety for members within the risk-laden tracts of the internet. Examining the tensions accompanying the emergence of these religious websites elucidates community affordances as well as the challenges to the authority that integration of new media poses to closed groups and societies.

The article analyzes how community members who were evacuated from their homes use various media, and especially the internet, to keep in touch, receive and disseminate information and express their opinions. Of particular interest are the differences between members of various groups, who differ in their decision whether to relocate in Israel with the rest of the original community or not, in media usage patterns and sense of community. The findings demonstrate that evacuees use diversity and multiplicity of media, where various media are used for different purposes according to need. Small media, with a rather limited and local reach (such as pamphlets, SMS, niche websites and small-scale meetings) are predominantly used for most of the needs, overshadowing mass media usage. Correlations were found amongst various media usages, and between the usage of various media and users’ sense of community. The study demonstrates how contemporary media users use a variety of media depending on their circumstances and needs, and how media usage assists in establishing and maintaining a sense of community after the forced transition from the communities of origin.