Portraits of American Internet Use / John B. Horrigan

This Chapter summaries Pew surveys about American internet use. At first the author describes the mount of internet using and how it decline over the years. the surveys try to understand and describe the relationships between internet using and personality, social capabilities and social order. The author divides the findings to 4 issues: 1. Social connectedness – try to decide which one of the theses is right: using internet damaging social relationships or the thesis that it makes them stronger. 2. Online health care information - how people search for medical information and how it effects their health care, the medical treatment, and the way they feel about the medical service. 3. Community and civic engagement – a) how the internet users attaches and what the uniqueness of online communities vs. not virtual communities. b) Political involvement – how accessibility to news, to public people, and to political manifests effect the actual political involvement – voting in election as an example. c) Using the net in governmental organizations – how this effect the relationship with the citizens and whether it make the institute more efficient. 4. How users shape the internet – searching for the interactive aspects of the medium. What kind of users inside content to the web, what the rate of 'content involvement', and how it shapes the internet. The summery of all the surveys dealing the subject above, come-up with several conclusions: 1. The Internet decrease uncertainties concerning important matters 2. The internet makes the government institutes, political persons, and information more accessible to the public, so on the net there is a political involvement. On the other hand, the numbers show no different rate of political involvement in 'real-life' (like voting). 3. The internet is functioning as a 'connector' between people in time of crisis. 4. The internet users shape it and being active in entering content to the net. The record shows that the most creative and artistic one are the more active.