ITR: Understanding the Social Impact of the Internet: A Multifaceted Multidisciplinary Approach

该项目将协调多项努力，以测试有关互联网对社会影响的相互竞争的理论和假设，包括功能等效和时间位移，社会资本下降，经典的创新扩散和重新配置的社交网络。这项工作将通过三种方式进行：1）加强马里兰州大学的互动统计网站（www.bsos.umd.edu/webuse），在网上公布最新的国家数据集，（来自美国和其他国家），与互联网使用及其可能影响有关的研究文章和研究结果; 2）来自全国各地的多达50名研究生和本科生参加为期数周的暑期网上商店，与领先的研究学者讨论当前的理论，关于互联网的假设和期望;以及3）进行新的数据收集，以解决现有数据集中的争议或缺失的变量。这方面的主要工具是社会普查，过去27年来一直在监测社会变化，2000年社会普查中为此增加了一个新的因特网模块。该项目将教育信息技术研究的年轻研究人员。它将为论文和其他研究提供新的国家数据集。它还将扩大和完善全球安全系统，以包括有关互联网影响和使用的问题。

This project will coordinate several efforts to test competing theories and hypotheses about the Internet's impact on society, including functional equivalence and time displacement, declining social capital, classic innovation diffusion, and reconfigured social networks. This work will be carried out in three ways:1) Enhancing an interactive statistical website at the University of Maryland (www.bsos.umd.edu/webuse) that would make publicly available on-line the latest national data sets (from both the U.S. and other countries), research articles and research findings related to Internet use and its possible impact; 2) Having up to 50 graduate and undergraduate students from across the country participate in a multi-week Summer Webshop in which they discuss with leading research scholars current theories, hypothesis and expectations concerning the Internet; and3) Undertaking new data collections to address controversies or missing variables in existing data sets. The major vehicle for this purpose is the General Social Survey (GSS), which has been monitoring social change for the past 27 years and for which a new Internet module was included in the year 2000 GSS. This project will educate young researchers in studies of Information Technology. It will make available new national data sets for dissertations and other research studies. And it will extend and refine the GSS to include questions on Internet impact and use.