INTERNET

WHAT IS THE INTERNET?

Internet: a global network of interconnected computers that
communicate freely and share and exchange information.

HISTORY
1969

ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December,

connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research,
education, and government organizations, it provides a
communications network linking the country in the event that a military
attack destroys conventional communications systems.
1972
Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass.,
computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's
name and network name in the email address.
1982
The word Internet is used for the first time

HISTORY
1985

Quantum Computer Services, which later changes its name to America

Online, debuts. It offers email, electronic bulletin boards, news, and
other information.
1989

First provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers debuts.

Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics)
develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet.
He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext,
which permits the user to connect from one document to another at
different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed
words, phrases, buttons, or graphics).

HISTORY
1996

Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30

million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9
million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.).
43.2 million (44%)
1998
Google opens its first office, in California.
1999

Invention of Napster, a computer application that allows users to swap

music over the Internet.
The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the
beginning of 1999.
E-commerce becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly
spreads. MySpace.com is launched.

HISTORY
2001

Napster is dealt a potentially fatal blow when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco rules that the company is violating copyright
laws and orders it to stop distributing copyrighted music.
About 9.8 billion electronic messages are sent daily.
Wikipedia is created.
2005

YouTube.com is launched.
2006
There are more than 92 million websites online.

HOW THE INTERNET WORKS?

There is no particular organization that controls the Internet.

Different networks of private companies, government agencies,
research organizations, universities etc. are interconnected
together.
You can say that the Internet is a huge collection of millions of
computers, all linked together on a computer network.
The network allows all of the computers to communicate with
one another.
A home computer may be linked to the Internet using a phoneline modem, DSL or cable modem that communicates to an
Internet Service Provider (ISP): companies that offer Internet
connections at monthly rates.
A computer in a business or university connects to a Local
Area Network (LAN).

WWW

Stands for "World Wide Web."

Not a synonym for the Internet.

The World Wide Web is a subset of the Internet.

The Web consists of pages that can be accessed using a Web

browser.

The Internet is the actual network of networks where all the

information resides.
The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the method used to
transfer Web pages to your computer. With hypertext, a word or
phrase can contain a link to another Web site. All Web pages
are written in the hyper-text markup language (HTML), which
works in conjunction with HTTP

Internet Resources
World wide web

The World Wide Web consists of billions of pages within hundreds of

millions of web sites.
The web presents information in text, graphic, audio, and video
formats, making it unique from other Internet resources.
Email, electronic mailing lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, blogs, and
social network sites (SNS) are mostly accessed through the web.
The web has changed and is still changing the way information and
entertainment are received and sent.
Messages ranging from personal news to national and international
headlines make their way to the audience via the web.
The web is also altering existing media use habits and the lifestyles of
millions of users who have grown to rely on it as a source of

Electronic mail

Electronic mail, or email, is one of the earliest Internet resources and

until recently one of the most widely used application
In 2009, reports were indicating that social network site use was
surpassing email.
The popularity of social network sites could be signaling a shift in
how consumers are using the Internet.

Podcasting

A podcast is a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar

programme, made available on the Internet for downloading to a
personal audio player (Van Orden, 2008).
Podcasts are produced by radio and television stations and networks,
talk show hosts, celebrities, professors, and anyone who thinks he or
she has something of interest to say about topics such as movies,
music, popular culture, cooking, sports, and any others imaginable.

YouTube

YouTube differs from other interactive web sites in that it is

specifically used for sharing video.
Created in 2005, and acquired by Google in October 2006, YouTube
is now one of the most widely used sites, with millions of users
watching millions of videos and short clips that range from
professionally produced movie and television shows and musical
performances to amateur content such as homemade videos of cats
playing, people doing stupid things, and car crashes.

Almost anyone can upload and watch videos.

BLOGS

Blogs are free-flowing journals of self-expression in which bloggers

post news items, spout their opinions, criticize and laud public policy,
opine about whats happening in the online and offline worlds, and
connect visitors to essential readings.

A blogger may be a journalist, someone with expertise in a specific

area such as law or politics, or any everyday person who enjoys an
exchange of opinions.
Blog readers (those who access a blog) post their comments about a
current event, issue, political candidate, or whatever they want to the
blogger.
These comments are often accompanied by links to more information
and analysis and to related items.
The blogger posts the blog readers comments and links and adds his

Electronic mailing lists

Electronic mailing lists are similar to email, in that messages are sent to
electronic mailboxes for later retrieval.
The difference is that email messages are addressed to individual
recipients, whereas electronic mailing list messages are addressed to
the electronic mailing lists address and then forwarded only to the
electronic mailboxes of the lists subscribers.
Electronic mailing lists connect people with similar interests. Most such
lists are topic-specific, which means subscribers trade information
about specific subjects, like college football, gardening, computers,
dog breeding, and television shows.
Many clubs, organizations, special interest groups, classes, and media use
electronic mailing lists as a means of communicating among their
members.

Social network sit es

Millions of online users are drawn to SNS as a means of keeping in
touch with existing friends and family and building a network of
new friends based on shared interests and other
commonalities, such as politics, religion, hobbies, and activities.
Although social network sites hit their stride in the late-2000s, they
have been in existence since the late 1990s.
Popular SNS Facebook, Twitter

Twitt er
Twitter is the newest social network rage.
Restricted to 140 character text messages known as tweets,
senders
have the choice of limiting recipients to their network of
friends or allowing open access.
Millions of users are drawn to the convenience and ease of
sending and receiving message either through the Twitter web
site or via other devices, such as cell phones and Blackberrys.
Critics claim that most tweets, also known as micro-blogging, are
nothing but useless babble that just clog up in-boxes and waste

CHANGES IN THE
MASS COMMUNICATION PROCESS
Gutenberg made us all readers. Radio and television
made us all first hand observers. Xerox made us all
publishers. The internet makes us all journalists,
broadcasters, columnists, commentators and critics
Lawrence Grossman former NBC and PBS president

CHANGES IN THE
MASS COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Mass Communication refers to the process by which a complex

organization with the aid of one or more machines produces
and transmits public messages that are directed at large
scattered audiences.
On the net a single individual can communicate with as large an
audience as can the giant, multinational corporation that
produces a network television program.
That corporation fits our earlier definition of a mass
communication source a large hierarchically structured
organization but the internet user does not.

CHANGES IN THE
MASS COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Audience member has more control of the process ...it is

possible for the receiver to choose the time and manner of the
interaction
Messages that flow to each receiver are not identical.
Traditional Mass Communication follows a push model (the
sender pushes the information to the receiver)
Internet Mass Communication is a pull model (the receiver pulls
only the information that he or she wants)
Feedback in mass communication is traditionally described as
inferential and delayed, but online feedback is immediate and
direct.

IMPLICATIONS

Lack of gatekeepers

Information overload

Privacy concerns:

1. Protecting the privacy of communication we wish to keep

private (email)

2. Use and misuse of private personal information willingly

given online every online act leaves a digital trail...

IMPLICATIONS

Information we give to one entity is easily given to countless unknown

others.
Dataveillance is the electronic tracking of the choices we make when
we are on the Web, called our click stream.
This tracking is made easy by cookies....an identifying code added to
a computers hard drive by a visited web site.
Normally only the site that has sent the cookie can read it the next
time you visit that site it remembers you.
But some sites bring third party cookies to your computer.
Maintained by big internet advertising networks these cookies can be
read by any of the thousands of web sites also belonging to that
network whether you have visited them or not and without your
knowledge.