The Internet as a social institution: Rethinking concepts for family scholarship

Abstract

I argue that scholars study the Internet as a social institution. This study employs a critical literature review of multi-disciplinary scholarship on the Internet, the family, and adjacent institutions comparing it to Patricia Yancy Martin's (2005) fourteen criteria of social institution to demonstrate how the Internet represents a new social institution, worthy of inquiry through its fourteen defining characteristics of endurance (persistence over time), social practices, conflicts, power struggles, identity formation, and change, among other criteria (Martin 2004; 1256). I, then, I discuss the potential starting points of digital data research methods for newcomers to the field, such as data acquisition, coding potential, and approaches to analysis. Conceptualizing the Internet as a social institution will ultimately improve the evaluation of peer-reviewed digital research, expand social theory more broadly, elevate our awareness of the Internet's sociality, and subject the interconnections of the social institution of the Internet and other social institutions to more critical investigations.

Doing family online: (In)formal knowledge circulation, information‐seeking practices, and support communities

“…ICTs and Web 2.0 blurred this configuration even more. As Longo (2023) affirms in this issue, the Internet—via ICTs—should be comprehended as a social institution that produces new normativity. It has the power to regulate social relations by spreading ideologies that have an impact on individuals and families.…”

“…Online groups may also produce forms of social pressure and social control on their members that push them to conform to normative ideologies. As several articles in this special issue show, parenting is deeply affected by these new vectors of normative ideologies (see Lavoie & Côté, 2023; Lee, 2023; Longo, 2023; Scheibling & Milkie, 2023; Vivion & Malo, 2023). Online blogs addressed to fathers, mothers, or both parents reproduce and spread certain ideologies around “good” ways to behave as parents (Das, 2017), which are gendered and tied to “intensive mothering” (Hays, 1996).…”

“Listen to me!” The role of family supervision and parental phubbing in youth cyberbullying

“…The Internet functions as a social institution that influences and is influenced by the family, leading to overlapping social dynamics (Longo, 2023). In this study, we examine the role of family supervision (i.e., lack of supervision of Internet use on the part of a parent or legal guardian) as related to likelihood of adolescents being either bullied or aggressors on social media.…”