fyi Barry ___________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman@chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 ___________________________________________________________________ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 11:38:05 -0400 From: Tom Spooner <tspooner@pewinternet.org> To: wellman@chass.utoronto.ca Subject: Pew Internet Report: Web use post 9-11 one year later One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet More than two-thirds of Americans (69%) say the government should do everything it can to keep information out of terrorists’ hands, even if that means the public will be deprived of information it needs or wants. Similar percentages of Americans approve of officials’ steps to remove information from government Web sites that could be useful to terrorists. Even people who favor wide disclosure of information online generally support government policies to remove that information if officials argue it could aid terrorists. For instance, 60% of those who believe the government should post information about chemical plants and the chemicals they produce say that material should be removed from the Internet if the government said it could help terrorists. Though they demonstrate a willingness to cede power to officials over what to disclose online, a plurality of Americans believe that taking government information off the Internet will not make a difference in battling terrorists. In addition, citizens are sharply divided on the question of whether the government should be able to monitor people’s email and online activities. The division is this: 47% of Americans believe the government should not have the right to monitor people’s Internet use and 45% say the government should have that right. A majority of Internet users oppose government monitoring of people’s email and Web activities. These are among the findings in a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project taken between June 26 and July 26 of 2,501 American adults. The results are published in a report entitled “One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet.” It is a wide-ranging examination of what people feel government disclosure policies should be, how Americans’ online behavior has changed since 9/11, and how the Web itself changed as producers responded to the crisis. The Pew Internet Project report contains the first scholarly studies built around analysis of hundreds of Web sites that have been cached in the September 11 Web Archives (http://september11.archive.org/). In all, close to 30,000 sites were archived between September 11 and December 1 last year, providing the unique opportunity to document what Web producers did in response to 9/11. A copy of the report can be viewed and downloaded at http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=69. "Please feel free to forward this email alert to colleagues, friends, or family members who might be interested in it. If you have received this message from a subscriber, you can sign up to receive your own alerts at: http://www.pewinternet.org/signup.asp" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To subscribe, send a blank message to pewinternet-on@pewinternet.org To unsubscribe, send a blank message to pewinternet-off@pewinternet.org To change your email address, send a message to pewinternet-change@pewinternet.org with your old address in the Subject: line To contact the list owner, send your message to pewinternet-list-owner@pewinternet.org http://www.pewinternet.org/ To unsubscribe, click on the following web page. http://cgi.mail-list.com/unsub.pl?ln=pewinternet&nm=wellman@chass.utoronto.c... This message was launched into cyberspace to wellman@chass.utoronto.ca