Digital Borderlands

The Internet crosses established boundaries of previously separate fields of communication and research. In its wake, new borderlands are opened up - characterized by mixes of private and public, production and consumption, and play and politics. This book explores those borderlands and overviews key issues in the study of Internet culture. Digital Borderlands investigates four ways in which identities are shaped through interactive uses of the Internet - love relations, gendered bodies, girl webzines, and cosmopolitan sites all exemplify how new media transforms older forms of popular entertainment and political culture.
About the Author: The Authors: Johan Fornäs is Professor and head of research on cultural production and cultural work at the National Institute for Working Life Program for Work and Culture in Norrköping, Sweden. His background was first in musicology in Göteborg, Sweden and then in media and communication studies at Stockholm University, where he conducted research on youth, media, and popular culture. He initiated Digital Borderlands, inspired by an interest in karaoke and other forms of musical interactivity in digital media. His english publications include Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (1995), Youth Culture in Late Modernity (1995) and In Garageland: Rock, Youth and Modernity (1995).
Kajsa Klein is a doctoral student of media and communication studies in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at Stockholm University, Sweden. In the fall of 1998, she was a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York. Her dissertation, which studies the world citizen as an Internet construct, has received funding from the Swedish Transport and Communications Research Board.
Martina Ladendorf is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication, Journalism and Computer Science at Roskilde University Centre in Denmark, having transferred from Media and Communication Studies at Stockholm University. Her dissertation deals with female and feminist webzines in the United States, Australia, and Sweden.
Jenny Sundén is a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary Department of Communication Studies at Linköping University in Sweden. She was a visiting scholar in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley in 1998-1999, and is now teaching in the field of media and cultural studies. Her dissertation focuses on various aspects of embodiment and textuality in MUDs (text-based online worlds).
Malin Sveningsson is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies at Linköping University in Sweden. Her dissertation, published fall 2001, is an ethnographic study of Web chat, which specifically focuses on how the regular users create a sense of community and belonging. Together with Jenny Sundén, Maria Matthus, and Professor Yvonne Waern, she is also a member of another project that deals with Internet research methods.