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Chapter 2:  The Internet as an Object of Study
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2006, June). Thus, the aim was not to discard the theories and findings that have, so far, shaped the way we think about media, but to employ them selectively and where they might be useful. Due to the interconnected nature of the Internet itself, it was regarded as crucial to branch out and include findings from related disciplines in order to grasp the ever-changing nature of this medium-technology-network. To this end, the characteristics of the Internet that determine the interaction of communicator and user online (Bruce, 1999) are discussed, as they impacted theoretical considerations. This discussion of new directions for studying Internet use and attitudes that attempt to redefine various existing approaches is in line with what Weaver (2000) argued in a review of mass communication research:

Methods alone won’t make our research more interesting or insightful. We still need to develop useful new concepts and theoretical approaches to build on those that presently exist. To be sure, many of our existing concepts and theories are still useful in spite of the rapid changes in communication technologies and patterns. Agenda-setting, cultivation, dependency theory, framing, indexing, information processing, knowledge gap, priming, the spiral of silence, the third-person effect, and others can still be useful approaches in our new computerized communication environment, but to remain useful these ideas must be refined and supplemented by other new concepts and theories. (p. 14)

As Weaver suggested, existing concepts and theories were revisited and complemented with approaches from the information sciences, so as to not simply combine them, but to establish a framework that advances communication research on the Internet. Essentially, the aim was to incorporate both users and communicators within the same framework.

The Internet, as well as research about the Internet, has surpassed the early stages where findings and predictions ranged from highly optimistic to dark and gloomy. This can be seen in various studies that provided an overview of research about the Internet, such as the one by Kim and Weaver (2002), which helped to move towards a more realistic picture (see also Neverla, 2000; Truetzschler, 1998). Similarly, for means of