Virtual Institutions

Abstract

The RIs we have looked at in previous chapters have, despite their changing structure and function, remained grounded in physical buildings or settlements. In this chapter, we explore a final type of RI that throws into question even this aspect of institutional life, by showing how identities are shaped by virtual communities in cyberspace. The rise of post-industrial society (Bell 1973) and the information age (Castells 2000) over the past century has transformed social life, with between 53–76% of the population in Europe, Australia and North America now online (World Internet Usage Statistics 2010). Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), once a novel appendage to face-to-face interaction, has rapidly become a normal, routine, even primary means through which everyday life is enacted: in the workplace, the home, and in transit through mobile devices. Critics have bemoaned the social effects of this, with the demand to be constantly online, accessible and accountable (Cascio 2005), for it seems that digital media threaten to realise the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ that Habermas (1981) forecast. Psychologists have also cautioned against the detrimental effects of excessive computer use upon children’s development of social skills, and identify Internet addiction (Young 1998) as a new psychopathology.