Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The globalization, the “digital revolution” and the wide spread growth of the internet (cyberspace) are extremely modifying the way of world-wide social interactions and communications.
As from a special sociological point of view societies are basically constructed by communications (Luhmann), we have been experiencing in the last two decades the genesis of a new global cyber-society. In this respect there is a growing demand for “transnational rules”, which will adjust and regulate the interactions and the phenomena of delinquency and crime in cyberspace. These rules may come into conflict with existing cultural values and criminal norms in different countries and societies.
In this regard there is a need first of all for substantial empirical and transcultural comparative research. The cyber-society needs more relevant socio-legal studies. The internet can be used as a subject matter as well as a methodical basis of this new kind of sociological research.
By using the example of special issues in the context of constructing and defining global cybercrimes this paper will make a contribution to the necessary scientific socio-legal discussions, which have to be transnational as well as interdisciplinary.
It is intended to present new empirical data from the author`s own and actual online-survey conducted among a representative population of more than 2000 internet-users in Germany compared with assimilable data from the US and Australia. The presentation of these results may encourage other interested socio-legal researchers in other countries to start a reproductive and forward-looking collaboration to analyze global aspects of cyber-crime via cyberspace.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The interactions based around the taping, trading, and collecting of live music performances has evolved into a phenomenon that can aptly be referred to as a community. What is most remarkable about this is that the vast majority of these activities now take place over the Internet. This social phenomenon exhibits all the characteristics found in other, more traditional, communities that are maintained through regular face-to-face interaction. This paper is a participant observation that specifically addresses how trading is indeed a community, and demonstrates how this is facilitated through the proliferation of the Internet and other technologies. More generally, the social dynamics of the Internet has ramifications that may go far beyond the practice of trading live recordings and is affecting society on a more pervasive level. The emergence of cyber-structure is aptly addressed by sociological theories that predate the popular emergence of the Internet, particularly Georg Simmel and Anthony Giddens.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), the Internet more precisely, and its effects on social interaction have sparked much debate. Most recently, within the last few years, the evolving internet has brought forth a new medium of communication: weblogs. Blogging, the act of composing a weblog, has influenced computer mediated communication by redefining the methodological settings that provide convenient accessibility to low-tech web-based content management systems (CMS) for cyber publishing. My focus is to investigate the meaning and significance of the blogging phenomenon on social interaction and its role as a communication medium within cyber-communities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study examines the prospects and problems of Internet use and access in Africa, focusing on a profile of Internet café users in Uganda. The results from a survey of 188 Internet café users in the country’s capital city, Kampala, suggest that while initiatives such as cyber cafés have brought the Internet and ICT closer to more people in developing countries, the bad news is that these initiatives, especially when they are commercially based, may serve to increase the digital divide within poor countries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines different Internet regulations in four Chinese societies, especially the gay website regulation. China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, have different political systems, ideologies and views toward the role of law in society, although Confucianism exists in all four societies. These differences are reflected their differences as in their Internet regulations. While Singapore and China use law more to protect and serve government needs or protect the public interests than to provide services for individual interests. Hong Kong and Taiwan take an opposite approach. Moreover, Hong Kong and Taiwan allow commercial service providers to flourish, letting market forces decide the level and quality of Internet services, instead of putting implementing censorship on the Internet. Conversely, China and Singapore have made no secret of trying to control the Internet and to filter what their citizens can see. Compared to prosperity of gay websites in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the gay websites in Singapore and China continue the fragile but steady march out of the closet encumbered by outmoded ideas of social control. Furthermore, we can see that it is a crucial difference for the Asian model of the gay movement—more Confucian, more moderate, and less rebellious. Even it is very strictly-regulated in Singapore and China, the two governments are pragmatic and they succeed in their policies because they impose strictures on gay users who then develop their own self-censorship. However, the effectiveness of attempts to control the Internet is questionable. The self-regulation approach is practical and effective and might be the only solution. It might also be the case that for China and Singapore, the future trend of the Internet regulation should focus placing more responsibilities on ISPs, regardless of public interests or economic development.