Developments in DFC in a global society

• Virtual communities: a social network of individuals who create an online community which may/may not reflect their online lives.

  examples: -message boards -online chat rooms -virtual worlds

  -specific services communities
• Key study: Virtual communities: Cybercity, Carter:

  • People in cybercity are investing as much effort in maintaining relationships in cyberspace as in other social spaces
  • People who meet a person online, do continue these online friendships in their offline lives
• Key study: Second life, Boellstorff:

  • Problems with virtual world: little regulation of online behaviour, EG prostitution/pornography has been occuring in Second life
  • Laws and policies are a long way from being able to regulate and punish deviant behaviour
• How does digital communication affect the way that people create and maintain social networks in employment?

  People rely on the internet for creating & maintaining work based relationships, as well as finding and applying for jobs.
• Networked global society refers to the idea that in the postmodern era, the focus is on information as a result of new forms of communication. Those with access to information, create social networks, which results in social capital
• Network Society, Castells


  • We are moving from the industrial age into an age defined by information
  • This significant change has occurred as a result of the evolution of new information technologies, particularly those for communication
• Communications technologies Castells


  • Allow for the removal of the issue of space and distance and for globalisation
  • The potential for rapid, multiple forms of communication also changes the relationship that people have with time: communication is instantaneous
  • Allow for decentralisation of control, increasing the effectiveness of networks and hierarchical structures
• Networks, such as financial capital


  • Some are global in scale, such as that of financial capital
  • They also exist within and between businesses
  • They can also be temporary, project-by project
• Castells - The people at the bottom are those who, with nothing to offer the network, are excluded. These people include labourers and factory workers who are low paid and less able to invest in the development of their skills. They are likely to be poorly educated and have very little chance of social mobility
• Media convergence - the process of combining different media platforms into one. Also refers to the ways in which social media platforms are able to communicate with each other to share contacts. This has led to the convergence of various cultural ideas as well as economic markets becoming global rather than just national.
• Boyle: the process of digitalisation allows media convergence. Boyle explains that these once separate forms of media can now be accessed through one device.
• Big data is data that is so large that it is difficult to process using traditional database management systems.
• Features of big data, different to other forms of data

  volume, velocity (speed), variety, variability (can be inconsistent), complexity
• use of new social media exploding in popularity:

  1. 15m users of twitter in the UK in 2014
  2. 31m users of facebook in the UK in 2014, mainly used by 24-35 year olds