New information and communication technologies have excited considerable
popular and expert attention over the last decades of the twentieth century.
Predictions about their social effects range along a continuum from visions of
heaven; where people slip the surly bonds of time and space, to glimpses of hell;
where such slippage enables new manifestations of dominance and control. Along
the continuum there is a basic determinist premise evident, that the technologies
have developed in a marginal sphere, and will now bring a new way of life, or at
least provide materials for a new way of life, whether this be for good or evil. The
notion of cyberspace as a new communicative domain has in particular engaged
this kind of attention.
This thesis is concerned with the ways in which the rhetoric of cyberspace sheds
light on deeper social preoccupations and relations. It is an attempt to move
beyond discussion of particular technologies and their possible effects to examine
the ways in which habitual social intercourse is reconstructed in and around
cyberspace. As a feminist scholar of communication I am particularly interested
in the ways in which existing gender relations are maintained in discursive
constructions of women in cyberspace, and the ways in which feminist theorists
may respond to the new domain.
Because I seek to elude simple determinism, I have sought to contextualise the
space by some focus on the known social needs, purposes and practices to which
the development of cyberspace technologies has been central. Although I
acknowledge the power of discourse to maintain extant social relations, I seek to
elude discursive determinism by some focus on the ways in which women have
creatively appropriated new technologies; on the disjunctions of discourse and
practice.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218759 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Beckenham, Annabel, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Information Management &Tourism |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Annabel Beckenham |
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