The Internet: Research and Civic Work

I have worked directly with young people building online public spaces and have written about the Internet and public issues since the 1990s.

A major current project is to build a website that presents a map of the relationships among civic organizations in a metropolitan area, for the use of community organizers and other active citizens. Our map (still very much in development) of the Boston area is B-Link.

I blog frequently on issues concerning the Internet.

My publications on the Internet and public life include the following:

"A Public Voice for Youth: The Audience Problem in Digital Media and Civic Education," in W. Lance Bennett (ed.), Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 119-138.

"Collective Action, Civic Engagement, and the Knowledge Commons," chapter in Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, eds., Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice (MIT Press, 2006). This is a revised version of "Youth-Led Research, the Internet, and Civic Engagement" (Digital Library of the Commons, 2004).

"The Problem of Online Misinformation and the Role of Schools," Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education, volume 5, issue 1 (February 2005)

"Creative Use of the New Media" in Lonnie R. Sherrod, Ron Kassimir, and Connie Flanagan (eds.), Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005)

"What is the Role of Government Supported Medical Websites?" Library and Information Science Electronic Journal (LIBRES), vol. 14, issue 2, September 2004

"The Internet and Civil Society," in Verna V. Gehring, ed., The Internet in Public Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 79-98. This is a revised and updated version of "The Internet and Civil Society," Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2000. This article originated as a talk on the same subject at the University of Tilburg (in the Netherlands). A long version has been published in a volume entitled Ethics and the Internet, edited by Anton Vedder (Oxford: Intersentia, 2001), pp. 177-193. In other versions it has been republished as "The Internet and Civil Society: Dangers and Opportunities" in iMP Magazine (May 2001) and by the Institute for Global Ethics' Public Policy Program. A Hungarian translation by the Information Society Research Institute (Budapest) is forthcoming

"A Movement for the Commons?" The Responsive Community, vol. 13, no. 4 (Fall 2003), pp. 28-39

"Building the E-Commons," The Good Society, vol. 11, no. 3 (2003), pp. 1-9. This is a shorter version of a document entitled ""Building the E-Commons:  A Project of the Democracy Collaborative," which is available from The Democracy Collaborative

"Information Technology and the Social Construction of Information Privacy: Comment," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Volume 22, Issue 3, May-June 2003, pages 281-285

"Campaign Web Pages and the Public Interest," in David M. Anderson and Michael Cornfield, eds., The Civic Web: Online Politics and Democratic Values (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

"Civic Renewal and the Commons of Cyberspace," The National Civic Review, vol. 90, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 205-211

“Can the Internet Rescue Democracy? Toward an On-line Commons” in Ronald Hayduk and and Kevin Mattson (eds.), Democracy’s Moment: Reforming the American: Political System for the 21st Century (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 121-137