A sociological study of the construction of social norms in the information-network society

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This project have two aims (1) to grasp exactly the status of social norms being constructed in today's information-network society, (2) to construct the principle of policy making for the desirable direction of new social norms in the societyAs for (1), various existing researches on CMC (computer-mediated-communication) are reviewed and analyzed. On the basis of the knowledge acquired in (1), as for (2), the possibility of the construction of public spheres (the space of opinion making by discourses), which can contribute to resolve important problems in the information-network society, is examined. Such problems are taking place along three front lines surrounding the civil society, i.e. : the front line between civil society and political system, between civil society and economic system,. and, between civil society and intimate spheRes. The higher information network society, accelerated by the expansion of CMC-spaces, has two ambivalent orientations. On the one hand, it brings about more extensive control and surveillance of civil society by political and economic systems, and, more exclusive and dispersed private communities. This orientation means the destruction of public spheRes. But, on the, other, they lead to the construction of new public spheres in civil society, which raise alternatives to political and economic systems, and new intimate spheres, which put together problems, raised from private spheres, and canalize them to public spheRes. Such principle of policy malting as could activate the latter orientation is advocated