Internet Culture [Paperback]

The internet has recently grown from a fringe cultural phenomenon to a significant site of cultural production and transformation. Internet Culturemaps this new domain of language, politics and identity, locating it within the histories of communication and the public sphere. Internet Cultureoffers a critical interrogation of the sustaining myths of the virtual world and of the implications of the current mass migration onto the electronic frontier. Among the topics discussed in Internet Cultureare the virtual spaces and places created by the citizens of the Net and their claims to the hotly contested notion of virtual community ; the virtual bodies that occupy such spaces; and the desires that animate these bodies. The contributors also examine the communication medium behind theworlds of the Net, analyzing the rhetorical conventions governing online discussion, literary antecedents,and potential pedagogical applications.David Porterteaches in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the editor of Between Men and Feminism,also published by Routledge.