Internet culture

Culture that has emerged from the use of computer networks

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)

This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The talk page may contain suggestions. (October 2024)

|

An editor has determined that sufficient sources exist to establish the subject's notability. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Internet culture" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

(Learn how and when to remove this message)

Internet

An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet

General

* Access
* Activism
* Censorship
* Data activism
* Democracy
* Digital divide
* Digital rights
* Freedom
* Freedom of information
* Internet phenomena
* Net neutrality
* Privacy
* Right to Internet access
* Slacktivism
* Sociology
* Usage
* Vigilantism
* Virtual community
* Virtual volunteering

Governance

* IGF
* NRO
* IANA
* ICANN
* IETF
* ISOC

Information infrastructure

* Domain Name System
* Hypertext Transfer Protocol
* Internet exchange point
* Internet protocol suite
* Internet Protocol
* Transmission Control Protocol
* Internet service provider
* IP address
* Internet Message Access Protocol
* Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Services

* Blogs
* Microblogging
* Email
* Fax
* File sharing
* File transfer
* Games
* Instant messaging
* Podcasts
* Shopping
* Television
* Voice over IP
* World Wide Web
* search

History

* History of the Internet
* Oldest domain names
* Pioneers
* Protocol Wars

Guides

* Index
* Outline

Internet portal

* v
* t
* e

Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology,[1]: 63 specifically the Internet.

Internet culture arises from the frequent interactions between members within various online communities and the use of these communities for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Studied aspects of Internet culture include anonymity/pseudonymity, social media, gaming and specific communities, such as fandoms.[2]

## History

[edit]

Further information: History of the Internet

This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please help improve it by rewriting it in a balanced fashion that contextualises different points of view. (February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled History of Internet culture. (Discuss) (February 2022)

|

The Internet developed in parallel with rapid and sustained technological advances in computing and data communication. Widespread access to the Internet emerged as the cost of infrastructure dropped by several orders of magnitude with consecutive technological improvements.

Though Internet culture originated during the creation and development of early online communities – such as those found on bulletin board systems before the Internet reached mainstream adoption in developed countries – many cultural elements have roots in other previously existing offline cultures and subcultures which predate the Internet. Specifically, Internet culture includes many elements of telegraphy culture (especially amateur radio culture), gaming culture and hacker culture.

Initially, digital culture tilted toward the Anglosphere. As a consequence of computer technology's early reliance on textual coding systems that were mainly adapted to the English language, Anglophone societies—followed by other societies with languages based on Latin script—enjoyed privileged access to digital culture. However, other languages have gradually increased in prominence. In specific, the proportion of content on the Internet that is in English has dropped from roughly 80% in the 1990s to around 52.9% in 2018.[3][4]

As technology advances, Internet Culture continues to change. The introduction of smartphones and tablet computers and the growing computer network infrastructure around the world have increased the number of Internet users and have likewise resulted in the proliferation and expansion of online communities. While Internet culture continues to evolve among active and frequent Internet users, it remains distinct from other previously offline cultures and subcultures which now have a presence online, even those cultures and subcultures from which Internet Culture borrows many elements.

One cultural antecedent of Internet culture was amateur radio (commonly known as ham radio). By connecting over great distances, ham operators were able to form a distinct cultural community with a strong technocratic foundation, as the radio gear involved was finicky and prone to failure. The area that later became Silicon Valley, where much of modern Internet technology originates, had been an early locus of radio engineering.[5] Alongside the original mandate for robustness and resiliency, the renegade spirit of the early ham radio community later infused the cultural value of decentralization and near-total rejection of regulation and political control that characterized the Internet's original growth era, with strong undercurrents of the Wild West spirit of the American frontier.

At its inception in the early 1970s as part of ARPANET, digital networks were small, institutional, arcane, and slow, which confined the majority of use to the exchange of textual information, such as interpersonal messages and source code. Access to these networks was largely limited to a technological elite based at a small number of prestigious universities; the original American network connected one computer in Utah with three in California.[6]

Text on these digital networks usually encoded in the ASCII character set, which was minimalistic even for established English typography, barely suited to other European languages sharing a Latin script (but with an additional requirement to support accented characters), and entirely unsuitable to any language not based on a Latin script, such as Mandarin, Arabic, or Hindi.

Interactive use was discouraged except for high value activities. Hence a store and forward architecture was employed for many message systems, functioning more like a post office than modern instant messaging; however, by the standards of postal mail, the system (when it worked) was stunningly fast and cheap. Among the heaviest users were those actively involved in advancing the technology, most of whom implicitly shared much the same base of arcane knowledge, effectively forming a technological priesthood.

A screenshot of a bulletin board system

The origins of social media predate the Internet proper. The first bulletin board system was created in 1978,[7] GEnie was created by General Electric in 1985[8][unreliable source?], the mailing list Listserv appeared in 1986[8][unreliable source?], and Internet Relay Chat was created in 1988.[8][unreliable source?] The first official[dubious - discuss] social media sites, SixDegrees and Classmates.com launched in 1997.[9]

In the 1980s, the network grew to encompass most universities and many corporations, especially those involved with technology, including heavy but segregated participation within the American military–industrial complex. Use of interactivity grew, and the user base became less dominated by programmers, computer scientists and hawkish industrialists, but it remained largely an academic culture centered around institutions of higher learning. It was observed that each September, with an intake of new students, standards of productive discourse would plummet until the established user base brought the influx up to speed on cultural etiquette.

Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia, opening the door for public participation. Soon the network was no longer dominated by academic culture, and the term eternal September, initially referring to September 1993, was coined as Internet slang for the endless intake of cultural newbies.

Commercial use became established alongside academic and professional use, beginning with a sharp rise in unsolicited commercial e-mail commonly called spam. Around this same time, the network transitioned to support the burgeoning World Wide Web. Multimedia formats such as audio, graphics, and video become commonplace and began to displace plain text, but multimedia remained painfully slow for dial-up users. Also around this time the Internet also began to internationalize, supporting most of the world's major languages, but support for many languages remained patchy and incomplete into the 2010s.

On the arrival of broadband access, file sharing services grew rapidly, especially of digital audio (with a prevalence of bootlegged commercial music) with the arrival of Napster in 1999 and similar projects which effectively catered to music enthusiasts, especially teenagers and young adults, soon becoming established as a prototype for rapid evolution into modern social media. Alongside ongoing challenges to traditional norms of intellectual property, business models of many of the largest Internet corporations evolved into what Shoshana Zuboff terms surveillance capitalism. Not only is social media a novel form of social culture, but also a novel form of economic culture where sharing is frictionless, but personal privacy has become a scarcity. In 1998, there was Hampster Dance, the first[dubious - discuss] successful Internet meme.[10]

## Identity

[edit]

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2024)

|

One early study, conducted from 1998 to 1999, found that the participants view information obtained online as slightly more credible than information from magazines, radio, and television, information obtained from newspapers was the most credible.[11] Credibility online is established in much the same way that it is established in the offline world. Lawrence Lessig claimed that the architecture of a given online community may be the most important factor in establishing credibility. Factors include: anonymity, connection to physical identity, comment rating system, feedback type (positive vs positive/negative), moderation.[12]

### Anonymity

[edit]

See also: Anonymous post

Many sites allow anonymous commentary, where the user-id attached to the comment may be labelled as a "guest" or any other sort of automatic name. In an architecture that allows anonymous commentary, credibility attaches only to the object of the comment. Sites that require some link to an identity may require only a nickname that is sufficient to allow comment readers to rate the commenter, either explicitly, or by informal reputation. However with the rise of oftentimes "careless" spreading of personal data with the integration of the internet into society, and the rise of concepts like the digital footprint, anonymity, while still possible, has decreased,[13]

### Connection to physical identity

[edit]

Architectures can require that physical identity be associated with commentary, as in Lessig's example of Counsel Connect.[12]: 94–97 However, to require linkage to a physical identity, sensitive information about a user must be collected and safeguards for that collected information must be established – users must place sufficient trust in the site. Irrespective of safeguards, as with Counsel Connect,[12]: 94–97 use of physical identities links credibility across the frames of the Internet and real space, influencing the behaviors of those who contribute in those spaces. However, even purely online identities can establish credibility. Even though nothing inherently links a person or group to their Internet-based persona, credibility can be earned, because of the time required.[12]: 113

### Comment rating system

[edit]

In some architectures, commenters can, in turn, be rated by other users, potentially encouraging more responsible commentary, although the profusion of popular shitposters belies this.

### Feedback type

[edit]

Architectures can be oriented around positive feedback or allow both positive and negative feedback. This feedback can take form through likes or upvotes, dislikes or downvotes, emoji reactions, rating systems, and written responses like comments or reviews. While a particular user may be able to equate certain responses with a "negative" evaluation, the actual meaning may be contextual.[14]

### Moderation

[edit]

Architectures can give editorial control to a group or individual not employed by the site (e.g., Reddit), termed moderators. Moderation may take be either proactive (previewing contents) or reactive (punishing violators).

The moderator's credibility can be damaged by overly aggressive behavior.[1]

## See also

[edit]

* Internet portal
* Society portal

* Anonymous
* Cicada 3301
* Creepypasta
* Cyber law
* Cyberdelic
* Cyberpunk
* Digitalism
* Information ethics
* Infosphere
* Internet trolls
* Meme
* Netnography
* Postliterate society
* Rules of the Internet
* r/wallstreetbets
* Technology and society
* Techno-progressivism
* Technocriticism
* Technolibertarianism
* Technorealism

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b Rheingold, Howard (1993). "Daily Life in Cyberspace". The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-097641-1.
2. ^ Silver, David (February 2004). "Internet/Cyberculture/ Digital Culture/New Media/ Fill-in-the-Blank Studies". New Media & Society. 6 (1): 55–64\. doi:10.1177/1461444804039915. ISSN 1461-4448. S2CID 32041186. Archived from the original on 2020-09-03. Retrieved 2020-11-27.
3. ^ "The digital language divide". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2022-05-27. Retrieved 2022-05-11.
4. ^ "Chart of the day: The Internet has a language diversity problem". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on 2022-05-11. Retrieved 2022-05-11.
5. ^ Abate, Tom (29 September 2007). "High-tech culture of Silicon Valley originally formed around radio". SF Gate. Archived from the original on 18 January 2022. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
6. ^ Markoff, John (1999-12-20). "An Internet Pioneer Ponders the Next Revolution". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2008-09-22. Retrieved 2023-03-08.https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/122099outlook-bobb.html
7. ^ Edwards, Benj (2016-11-04). "The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2021-12-06. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
8. ^ a b c Allebach, Nathan (2020-07-31). "A Brief History of Internet Culture and How Everything Became Absurd". The Startup. Archived from the original on 2022-02-04. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
9. ^ "Social media | Definition, History, Examples, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2025-06-13. Retrieved 2025-06-15.
10. ^ Friedman, Linda Weiser; Friedman, Hershey H. (2015-07-09). "Connectivity and Convergence: A Whimsical History of Internet Culture". Rochester, NY. SSRN 2628901. `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `|journal=` (help)
11. ^ Flanagin, Andrew J.; Metzger, Miriam J. (September 2000). "Perceptions of Internet Information Credibility". Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. 77 (3): 515–540\. doi:10.1177/107769900007700304. ISSN 1077-6990. S2CID 15996706. Archived from the original on 2021-02-25. Retrieved 2020-11-27.
12. ^ a b c d Lessig, Lawrence (2006). Code 2.0: Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03914-2.
13. ^ "The reasons you can't be anonymous anymore". www.bbc.com. 2017-05-29. Retrieved 2025-06-15.
14. ^ Marin, Lavinia (2021). "Three contextual dimensions of information on social media: lessons learned from the COVID-19 infodemic". Ethics and Information Technology. 23 (Suppl 1): 79–86\. doi:10.1007/s10676-020-09550-2. ISSN 1388-1957. PMC 7449515. PMID 32868972.

## Further reading

[edit]

* David Gunkel (2001) Hacking Cyberspace, Westview Press, ISBN 0-8133-3669-4
* Lévy, Pierre (2001). Cyberculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816636105.
* Clemens Apprich (2017) Technotopia: A Media Genealogy of Net Cultures, Rowman & Littlefield International, London ISBN 978-1786603142
* Sandrine Baranski (2010) La musique en réseau, une musique de la complexité ?, Éditions universitaires européennes La musique en réseau
* David J. Bell, Brian D Loader, Nicholas Pleace, Douglas Schuler (2004) Cyberculture: The Key Concepts, Routledge: London.
* Donna Haraway (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York, NY
* Donna Haraway (1997) Modest Witness Second Millennium FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse, Routledge, New York, NY
* N. Katherine Hayles (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL
* Jarzombek, Mark (2016) Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
* Paasonen, Susanna (2005). Figures of fantasy: Internet, women, and cyberdiscourse. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-7607-0.
* Sherry Turkle (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, NY
* Marwick, Alice E. (2008). "Becoming Elite: Social Status in Web 2.0 Cultures" (PDF). Dissertation. Department of Media, Culture, and Communication New York University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 January 2012. Retrieved 14 June 2011.
* Haraway, Donna (1991). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". Archived from the original on 2012-02-14. Retrieved February 4, 2009. `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `|journal=` (help)
* Hayles, N. Katherine (Fall 1993). "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers". Archived from the original on 2009-03-17. Retrieved February 4, 2009. `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `|journal=` (help)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Internet culture.

* v
* t
* e

Culture

Outline

Sciences|

* Cultural anthropology
* Cultural astronomy
* Cultural ecology
* Cultural geography
* Cultural neuroscience
* Cultural studies
* Culturology
* Culture theory

Subfields|

* Bioculture
* Cross-cultural studies
* Cross-cultural communication
* Cross-cultural leadership
* Cross-cultural psychiatry
* Cross-cultural psychology
* Cultural analytics
* Cultural economics
* Cultural entomology
* Cultural history
* Cultural mapping
* Cultural mediation
* Cultural psychology
* Cultural values
* Culturomics
* Intercultural learning
* Intercultural relations
* Philosophy of culture
* Popular culture studies
* Postcritique
* Semiotics of culture
* Sociology of culture
* Sound culture
* Theology of culture
* Transcultural nursing

Types|

* Constructed culture
* Dominant culture
* Folk culture
* High culture
* Individualistic culture
* Legal culture
* Microculture
* Official culture
* Political culture
* Civic
* Popular culture
* Low culture
* Media culture
* Recombinant culture
* Remix culture
* Trash culture
* Urban
* Primitive culture
* Resistance through culture
* Subculture
* Alternative culture
* Counterculture
* Fandom
* Far-right subcultures
* Underground culture
* Youth subculture
* list
* Super culture
* Vernacular culture
* Culture by location

Aspects|

* Acculturation
* Cultural appreciation
* Cultural appropriation
* Cultural area
* Cultural artifact
* Cultural baggage
* Cultural bias
* Cultural capital
* Cross-cultural
* Cultural communication
* Cultural conflict
* Cultural cringe
* Cultural dissonance
* Cultural emphasis
* Cultural framework
* Cultural heritage
* Destroyed
* Cultural icon
* Cultural identity
* Cultural industry
* Cultural invention
* Cultural landscape
* Cultural learning
* Cultural leveling
* Cultural memory
* Cultural pluralism
* Cultural practice
* Cultural property
* Cultural reproduction
* Cultural system
* Cultural technology
* Cultural universal
* Cultureme
* Enculturation
* High- and low-context cultures
* Interculturality
* Internet culture
* Manuscript culture
* Material culture
* Non-material culture
* Organizational culture
* Assessment culture
* Design culture
* Journalism culture
* Print culture
* Protoculture
* Relational mobility
* Safety culture
* Symbolic culture
* Technoculture
* Trans-cultural diffusion
* Transculturation
* Visual culture

Politics|

* Colonial mentality
* Consumer capitalism
* Cross cultural sensitivity
* Cultural assimilation
* Cultural attaché
* Cultural backwardness
* Cultural Bolshevism
* Cultural conservatism
* Cultural contracts
* Cultural deprivation
* Cultural diplomacy
* Cultural environmentalism
* Cultural exception
* Cultural feminism
* Cultural genocide
* Cultural globalization
* Cultural hegemony
* Cultural imperialism
* Cultural intelligence
* Cultural liberalism
* Cultural nationalism
* Cultural pessimism
* Cultural policy
* Cultural racism
* Cultural radicalism
* Cultural retention
* Cultural Revolution
* Cultural rights
* Cultural safety
* Cultural silence
* Cultural subsidy
* Cultural Zionism
* Culture change
* Culture minister
* Culture of fear
* Culture war
* Deculturalization
* Dominator culture
* Interculturalism
* Monoculturalism
* Multiculturalism
* Biculturalism
* Multiracial democracy
* Pluriculturalism
* Polyculturalism
* Transculturism

Religions|

* Buddhism
* Christianity
* Catholicism
* Cultural Christians
* Protestantism
* Role of Christianity in civilization
* Eastern Orthodoxy
* Mormonism
* Cultural Hindus
* Islam
* Cultural Muslims
* Judaism
* Sikhism

Related|

* Algorithmic culture
* Animal culture
* Archaeological culture
* Bennett scale
* Cannabis culture
* Circuit of culture
* Civilization
* Coffee culture
* Cringe culture
* Cross-cultural
* Cultural center
* Cultural competence
* Cultural critic
* Cultural determinism
* Cultural diversity
* Cultural evolutionism
* Cultural homogenization
* Cultural institution
* Cultural jet lag
* Cultural lag
* Cultural literacy
* Cultural mosaic
* Cultural movement
* Cultural mulatto
* Cultural probe
* Cultural relativism
* Cultural tourism
* Pop-culture
* Cultural translation
* Cultural turn
* Cultural sensibility
* Culture and menstruation
* Culture and positive psychology
* Culture and social cognition
* Culture gap
* Culture hero
* Culture industry
* Culture shock
* Culturgen
* Children's culture
* Culturalism
* Cyberculture
* Death and culture
* Disability culture
* Deaf culture
* Drinking culture
* Drug culture
* Eastern culture
* Emotions and culture
* Historical culture
* Intercultural communication
* Intercultural competence
* Languaculture
* Living things in culture
* Media culture
* Oppositional culture
* Participatory culture
* Permission culture
* Rape culture
* Remix culture
* Tea culture
* Transformation of culture
* Urban culture
* Welfare culture
* Western culture
* Youth culture

* Category

Authority control databases: National |

* Czech Republic

|

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template