WebUse: Description of Who We Are at WebUse

Funded by The National Science Foundation, the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland is developing a set of resources to further the scientific study of the impact of the Internet on Societies. Central to this is understanding the transformative effect—both positive and negative—that the Internet has on human behavior and how the emerging persistent behaviors enable and constrain activities, understanding, knowledge, and culture.

This research project is headed by Dr. John Robinson, Dr. Alan Neustadtl, and Dr. Meyer Kestnbaum, all at the University of Maryland. Additional support and cooperation has come from the University of California, Berkeley, The University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School, Princeton University, and Stanford University. We also have two advisory boards, one internal and one external to the University of Maryland.

This project is coordinating several efforts to test competing theories and hypotheses about the Internet's impact on society, including functional equivalence and time displacement, declining social capital, classic innovation diffusion, and reconfigured social networks. This work carried out in following ways:

Providing Data and Analysis Tools

Enhancing an interactive statistical website at the University of Maryland (where you are now) that makes the latest national data sets (from both the U.S. and other countries), research articles and research findings related to Internet use and its possible impact, available online.

Summer WebShop for Graduate Students

Hosting up to 50 graduate and undergraduate students from across the country participate in a multi-week Summer WebShop in which they discuss with leading research scholars current theories, hypothesis and expectations concerning the Internet.

Collecting New Data

Undertaking new data collections to address controversies or missing variables in existing data sets. The major vehicle for this purpose is the (GSS), which has been monitoring social change for the past 27 years and for which a new Internet module was included in the year 2000 GSS.