Critical cyberpolicy: network technologies, massless citizens, virtual rights
- 1 August 2000
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Critical Social Policy
- Vol. 20 (3) , 375-407
- https://doi.org/10.1177/026101830002000301
Abstract
This article suggests that those interested in both welfare theory and welfare policy cannot afford to overlook the emerging interactions between online and offline environments. It explores the main parameters of the debate relating to cyberspace, in particular, and Information and Communication Technologies more generally. It argues that the pervasiveness of free market capitalism means that the negative consequences of the Internet for society and social welfare reform are those most likely to prevail at present. The task of the social policy community, then, is to contribute to a ‘cybercriticalism’. The article outlines a concept of ‘virtual rights’, the purpose of which is to reinvigorate the traditional categories of rights in an information society to which they often appear unsuited.Keywords
This publication has 22 references indexed in Scilit:
- The politics of the modernisation of the UK welfare statePublished by Taylor & Francis ,2010
- Information society visions in the Nordic countriesTelematics and Informatics, 2000
- Social Policy for CyborgsBody & Society, 1999
- Researching and Creating Community NetworksPublished by SAGE Publications ,1999
- There is a there there: Notes Toward a Definition of CybercommunityPublished by SAGE Publications ,1999
- The implications of ecological thought for social welfareCritical Social Policy, 1998
- Virtual Ethnicity: Tribal Identity in an Age of Global CommunicationsPublished by SAGE Publications ,1998
- Text as Mask: Gender, Play, and Performance on the InternetPublished by SAGE Publications ,1998
- Panacea or Panopticon?Communication Research, 1994
- Emergent institutions of the `intelligent network': toward a theoretical understandingMedia, Culture & Society, 1992