Web 2.0 – Everyone’s doing it!

“Web 2.0,” as it is known, is the catchword for today’s long internalized participative net. Users create, edit and distribute the content themselves in this network, supported by interactive applications and connected via social software.

In addition to social networking sites such as the German “StudiVZ” and “wkw,” as well as the more universal Facebook, and above all else the video platforms such as YouTube, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and innumerable weblogs (blogs) from just about every conceivable topical area are the embodiment of online participation.

This form of internet usage has also initiated far-reaching changes for the thus far known social world. Social interactions between individual actors within a network are increasingly displaced from the real to the virtual level. Global accessibility via the Internet enables joining totally different, far more divergent contacts than was possible 20 years ago. Simultaneously, individual members of a social network have become significantly more transparent: individual preferences, personal history or own activities – often to a questionable extent with respect to data protection - are divulged and made available to just about everyone.

Activities in the so-called blogosphere have also effected profound changes. Political and socio-political opinion forming is no longer driven by professional specialists; amateurs now also accompany and influence this process. The ambivalence of this kind of participative democracy cannot be denied. For one, there is a more than justified discourse on the quality of user contributions and the relevance of information, especially on account of it threatening the existence of the profession as it is being produced for free. Publishers and print media have become markedly aware of this economic headwind in recent years.

On the other hand, the participative net expands the spectrum of perspectives: since quite some time now, not only those offering and producing commodities have a platform for advertising, sales and marketing, but users and end-users can publish their opinions and their verdict, facilitating a new form of quality control. At the political level as well, citizens now have simple and easily accessible ways to register their own opinions, to organize and to influence the political process.

This edition of Research Special contains references for current publications and research projects focusing on the aspects mentioned related to the participative net represented in the catchword “Web 2.0.” These are divided by topic into six chapters.

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