ABSTRACT
Labels associated with the Internet evoke futuristic images (e.g., virtuality, novelty, and new frontier). However, the term “virtual” often cloaks varying or even contradictory cultural practices on the Internet; furthermore, some of its central characteristics are not drastically different from those of other technologies. In addition, deeply ingrained media habits prevented people from changing their uses of media and even new media like the Internet may repeat similar issues such as digital divide, fragmentation, and polarization based on their incomes, ideologies, languages, and gender (Croteau and Hoynes 1997; Wilson and Peterson 2002). However, the Internet readily supplies the sense of virtual space and the ways that people use online spaces indicate a recursive relationship between online and offline. Nowadays, so many people (particularly the young) “live” both offline and online so that even the phrase “real life” can seem questionable.
