Professor William H. Dutton

Director and Professor of Internet Studies

Professor William H. Dutton

William Dutton is the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute. He is currently working on the potential for the emergence of a Fifth Estate enabled by the Internet, Collaborative Network Organizations (CNOs), and social aspects of e-Research.

Email: director@oii.ox.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)1865 287228

Profile

Professor William H. Dutton is Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor of Internet Studies, University of Oxford, and Fellow of Balliol College. Before coming to Oxford in 2002, he was a Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, where he is now an Emeritus Professor. In the UK, he was a Fulbright Scholar 1986-87, and was National Director of the UK's Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT) from 1993 to 1996.

In addition to directing the OII, Professor Dutton is Principal Investigator of the Oxford e-Social Science Project (OeSS), supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, and Principal Investigator of the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), a key resource on the use and impact of the Internet in Britain, that is one component of the World Internet Project, an international collaboration comprising over 20 nations.

His recent publications on the social aspects of information and communication technologies include Society on the Line (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Transforming Enterprise, co-edited (MIT Press, 2005), and World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities, co-edited with P. Jeffreys (MIT Press, 2010 forthcoming). He is currently editing a four volume series of readings on the Internet and Politics for Routledge.

Research interests

Internet and society, digital divides, digital choice, the Fifth Estate, network society, politics and the Internet, collaborative network organizations, research-centred computational networks

Positions held at the OII

  • Director, July 2002 -
  • Professor of Internet Studies, July 2002 -

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Research

Current projects

  • Me, My Spouse and the Internet: Meeting, Dating and Marriage in the Digital Age

    January 2008 -

    The project uses survey data from Australian and UK couples to look at the significance and impact of the Internet on intimate relationships, including how people use ICTs to meet each other and maintain relationships, and how ICTs affect their behaviour.

  • GNS: Global Network of Societies Project

    November 2007 -

    Are the new ICTs being used in ways that reinforce existing structures of power and influence, but on a global scale? How is the diffusion of the Internet related to, and implicated in, other global societal trends?

  • The Fifth Estate

    October 2007 -

    The Fifth Estate is a research project designed to examine critically the Internet's role in enabling new forms of democratic accountability and voice, comparable to the press of an earlier era.

  • OeSS: The Oxford e-Social Science Project

    October 2005 -

    The Oxford e-Social Science project aims to understand how e-Research projects negotiate various social, ethical, legal and organizational forces and constraints, in order to help researchers avoid these problems when building scientific collaborations.

  • Internet governance

    October 2004 -

    A programme of seminars, forums and conferences informing our research on Internet governance.

  • OxIS: Oxford Internet Surveys

    January 2003 -

    Research on access, use and attitudes to the Internet in Britain based on biennial surveys covering (for example) digital and social inclusion and exclusion, social networking, safety and privacy concerns, Internet regulation, and behaviour.

  • WIP: World Internet Project

    January 2003 -

    The World Internet Project (WIP) carries out panel surveys in over twenty countries to help understand how individuals adopt and use the Internet and other technologies, as well as the resulting social, economic, political and everyday-life implications.

  • Cybertrust: The tension between privacy and security in an e-society

    July 2002 -

    Perceptions of trust in online activities are significant factors influencing the kinds and extents of Internet use and interactions: this work draws on Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) data to explore and refine key social determinants of cybertrust.

  • Digital Choices and the Reconfiguring of Access

    July 2002 -

    Research on how the use of the Internet in different, overlapping and interacting arenas is shaped by everyday and strategic choices about the design and use of the technology.

Past projects

  • Digitised Resources: A Usage and Impact Study

    June 2008 - April 2009

    This project combines quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure the impact of online scholarly resources and to develop a best practices toolkit that will allow assessment of the impact of digitisation projects by researchers and funding bodies.

  • World Wide Web of Humanities

    April 2008 - March 2009

    Establishing a framework for e-Humanities research using available open source tools and technologies and archived web content to create novel research interfaces to the first of many, scholarly, e-Humanities web collections.

  • Networks for Web Science

    October 2007 - April 2009

    Establishing networks of researchers from different technical and social science research disciplines to begin to develop a Web Science research agenda through the exchange of PhD students and collaborative workshops.

  • Performance of distributed problem-solving networks

    August 2007 - February 2008

    Addressing the uncertainties that surround the coordination and performance of 'Distributed Problem Solving Networks' (DPSN), as well as the areas in which these new Internet-based forms offer advantages over more familiar modes of problem-solving.

  • Clinical and psychological characteristics of Internet gamblers: web-based survey

    July 2006 - December 2007

    Expanding our understanding of online gambling by undertaking a web-based survey of users of Internet gambling sites, covering areas such as demographic and occupational characteristics, psychological characteristics, and attitudes to risk.

  • The e-Horizons Institute

    October 2005 - April 2009

    The e-Horizons Institute researches the coming technological breakthroughs in e-science that will have cross-sector social and economic implications as they are taken up by business, government and other actors.

  • The World Wide Web of Science: emerging global sources of expertise

    April 2005 - March 2006

    The World Wide Web of Science project assesses whether, and to what extent, the Internet and the Web are transforming access to sources of scientific expertise, and whether these sources are becoming more concentrated or more diversified.

  • Breaking Barriers to e-Government

    December 2004 - December 2007

    Investigating the legal, organisational, technological and other barriers to expanding effective eGovernment services using the Internet and to define possible solutions at a European level to overcome such obstacles.

  • Civil society participation in the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS)

    August 2004 - April 2006

    Achieving a deeper understanding of the nature, extent and potential of civil society groups' participation in the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and ICT policy making by establishing a cross-sector academic / practitioner dialogue.

  • Internet and productivity in public services: innovative pathways for e-government

    August 2004 - January 2005

    Investigating indicators of productivity growth in public sector institutions across eight EU countries, including patterns and impacts of ICT use, organisational perspectives, and implications of the interaction of ICT usage and organisational processes.

  • EICN working group on child protection and mobile phones

    April 2004 - July 2005

    An OII-led working group to gather information and develop policy recommendations about the practices of mobile network operators in Europe in relation to child protection in the era of third-generation (3G) multimedia mobile phones.

  • Spam email: a qualitative study

    January 2000 - October 2004

    A qualitative study of how individuals view and manage unwanted email, particularly spam, based on semi-structured interviews of users.

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Publications

Articles

Books

  • Dutton, W.H. and Jeffreys, P. (eds) (2010) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  • Dutton, W.H., Kahin, B., O'Callaghan, R. and Wyckoff, A.W. (eds) (2005) Transforming Enterprise: The Economic and Social Implications of Information Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Dutton, W.H. (1999) Society on the Line. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapters

  • Dutton, W.H. (forthcoming) The Fifth Estate: Democratic Social Accountability through the Emerging Network of Networks. In: P.G.Nixon et al. (eds) Challenges to E-Government in Europe.
  • Dutton, W.H. and Piper, T. (2010) The Politics of Privacy, Confidentiality and Ethics: Opening Research Methods. In: W.H.Dutton and P.Jeffreys (eds) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  • Dutton, W.H. and Meyer, E. (2010) Enabling or Mediating the Social Sciences: Opportunities and Risks of Bottom-Up Innovation. In: W.H.Dutton and P.Jeffreys (eds) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2010) Reconfiguring Access in Research: Information, Expertise and Experience. In: W.H.Dutton and P.Jeffreys (eds) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  • Schroeder, R., den Besten, M. and David, P. (2010) Open Science and e-Science. In: W.H.Dutton and P.Jeffreys (eds) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 299-316.
  • Schroeder, R. and Fry, J. (2010) Disciplinary Differences in e-Research. In: W.H.Dutton and P.Jeffreys (eds) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 257-271.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2008) Social Movements Shaping the Internet: The Outcome of an Ecology of Games. Chapter 19. In: M.Elliott and K.L.Kraemer (eds) Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc., pp. 499-517.
  • Dutton, W.H. and Peltu, M. (2008) The New Politics of the Internet: Multi-stakeholder Policy-making and the Internet Technocracy. In: A.Chadwick and P.N.Howard (eds) Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. London: Routledge, pp. 384-400.
  • Dutton, W.H., Shepherd, A. and di Gennaro, C. (2007) Digital Divides and Choices Reconfiguring Access. National and cross-national patterns of Internet diffusion and use. In: B.Anderson, M.Brynin, J.Gershuny and Y.Raban (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Society. E-Living in a digital Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 31-45.
  • Rice, R.E., Shepherd, A., Dutton, W.H. and Katz, J.E. (2007) Social interaction and the Internet: A comparative analysis of surveys in the US and Britain. In: A.N.Joinson, K.Y.A.McKenna, T.Postmes and U.-D.Reips (eds) Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 7-30.
  • Dutton, W.H. and Shepherd, A. (2005) Confidence and Risk on the Internet. In: R.Mansell and B.S.Collins (eds) Trust and Crime in Information Societies. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, pp. 207-244.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2005) Foreword. In: R.Kling, H.Rosenbaum and S.Sawyer (eds) Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2005) Afterword. In: S.de Freitas and C.Yapp (eds) Personalizing Learning in the 21st Century. Stafford, UK: Network Education Press, pp. 113-115.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2004) Out of the Dot-com Bubble: A New Opportunity for Internet Research. In: M.Consalvo, N.Baym, J.Hunsinger, K.B.Jensen, J.Logie, M.Murero and L.R.Shade (eds) Internet Research Annual, 2000-2002 (Vol. I). New York, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 46-54.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2004) Continuity or Transformation? Social and Technical Perspectives on Information and Communication Technologies. In: W.H.Dutton, B.Kahin, R.O'Callaghan and A.W.Wyckoff (eds) Transforming Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 13-24.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2004) The Internet and Social Transformation: Reconfiguring Access. In: W.H.Dutton, B.Kahin, R.O'Callaghan and A.W.Wyckoff (eds) Transforming Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 375-397.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2003) Information Society. In: D.H.Johnston (ed.) Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications (Vol. 2). London: Academic Press, pp. 407-418.
  • Dutton, W.H. (2003) The Internet and Society. In: C.E.Barfield, G.Heiduk and P.J.J.Welfens (eds) Internet, Economic Growth and Globalization: Perspectives on the New Economy in Europe, Japan and the US. London: Springer, pp. 311-322.
  • Dutton, W.H. and Nainoa, F. (2003) The Social Dynamics of Wireless on September 11: Reconfiguring Access. In: A.M.Noll (ed.) Crisis Communications: Lessons from September 11. New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 69-81.
  • Dutton, W.H. and Lin, W.-Y. (2002) E-Democracy: A Case Study of Web-Orchestrated Cyberadvocacy. In: J.Armitage and J.Roberts (eds) Living with CyberSpace: Technology and Society in the 21st Century. London: The Athlone Press.

Conference papers

OII working papers

Presentations

Reports

Working papers

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Teaching

Courses taught at the OII

  • Social Research Methods and the Internet (Parts I and II)

    Examining issues concerning application of traditional social research methods to the study of emerging ICTs, as well as the use of new methods, enabled by the Internet and ICTs, in the study of an array of social research problems.

DPhil students supervised at the OII

Current students

  • Nesrine Abdel-Sattar

    Attention to News Online: Newsroom Conceptions and User Realities in the Arabic World

  • Maja Andjelkovic

    Thesis title to be confirmed.

  • Jennifer A. De Beer

    Thesis title to be confirmed.

  • Michael Hills

    Young People and Participation in a Cultural Public Sphere: Examining Internet Literacies in the Classroom as the Building Blocks for Engaged Citizenship

  • Christine Madsen

    Communities, Innovation, and Critical Mass: Understanding the Impact of Digitization on Scholarship in the Humanities Through the Case of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies

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Webcasts

  • Relationships and the Internet (Public Panel)

    Recorded on: 4 December 2009 Duration: 01:22:22

    This forum looks at the state of the art of academic research on relationships and the Internet and how this research informs research on the social aspects of the Internet in general, such as issues of trust and identity.

  • After the digital switchover ...

    Recorded on: 26 November 2009 Duration: 00:00:00

    At the launch of the International Journal of Digital Television, the speakers ask: After digital switchover will we still have television as such? Will it still need special regulation? Will we have gained or lost, socially and culturally?

  • Studying at the Oxford Internet Institute

    Recorded on: 27 October 2008 Duration: 00:00:00

    Thinking about applying for our DPhil or MSc courses? Want to know more about what it's like to study at the OII? In this ten minute video, faculty and students talk about the OII's DPhil and MSc programmes.

  • Social Networking Conference. Session 1: Online Social Networks

    Recorded on: 7 April 2008 Duration: 01:25:35

    A discussion of online social networks, covering online Social networks: 'Social Networks: Reconfiguring Access to People', 'Cyber tribes and information warfare' and 'Youth Work and Social Networking'.

  • Social Networking Conference. Session 2: Intimate Relationships and Online Social Networks

    Recorded on: 7 April 2008 Duration: 00:38:11

    A discussion of intimate relationships and online social networks, covering intimate relationships and online social networks: 'Netiquette within Married Couples' and 'Stalking 2.0. Social Networking and Privacy: Incompatible Ideas?'.

  • Social Networking Conference. Session 3: Businesses and Online Social Networks

    Recorded on: 7 April 2008 Duration: 01:06:40

    A discussion of businesses and online social networks, covering businesses and online social networks: 'Social networking and business practice: telecoms industry case study' and 'Social software in a hard world' and 'Wikipedia'.

  • Through the Network (of Networks): The Fifth Estate

    Recorded on: 15 October 2007 Duration: 00:48:27

    The Internet and web are creating a new space for networking people, information and other resources: this has the potential to become an important 'fifth estate' to support greater accountability in politics, the media and other institutional arenas.

  • Trust in the Internet as an Experience Technology

    Recorded on: 6 November 2006 Duration: 00:51:50

    Bill Dutton summarizes and discusses his paper 'Trust in the Internet as an experience technology' published in the journal Information, Communication and Society (iCS 9:433-451).

  • Learning from Experience in eGovernment: Concluding comments

    Recorded on: 26 June 2006 Duration: 00:45:08

    Concluding comments from the 'Breaking Barriers to e-Goverment' project workshop: 'Breaking Barriers to eGovernment: Overcoming Obstacles to improving European Public Services'.

  • Information, Communication and New Media Studies: Networking a Multidisciplinary Field

    Recorded on: 3 February 2006 Duration: 01:00:07

    Identifying the most promising approaches for connecting multidisciplinary research efforts focused on the growing social importance of ICTs in structuring diverse aspects of public life.

  • Information, Communication and New Media Studies: Good for What?

    Recorded on: 2 February 2006 Duration: 01:40:01

    What do constituencies outside the research field expect from information, communication and media studies? Can it meet these expectations? Under what conditions? Perspectives are provided on the intersection between research and more applied agendas.

  • CyberSafety Conference: Close / Ways Forward

    Recorded on: 9 September 2005 Duration: 01:34:10

    Closing notes from the 2005 Cybersafety Conference focusing on the complex web of issues, assumptions and trade-offs involved in improving online safety and security at a personal, national and international level.

  • CyberSafety Conference: Introductions

    Recorded on: 9 September 2005 Duration: 00:27:03

    Introductions to the 2005 Cybersafety Conference, focusing on the complex web of issues, assumptions and trade-offs involved in improving online safety and security at a personal, national and international level.

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News

  • Ofcom appoints nine new board members

    10 February 2009 mobile news

    Professor William Dutton, Director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at Oxford University, is appointed as Chair of Ofcom's Advisory Committee for England and Member of the Advisory Committee for the South East region

  • Professor of Internet Studies appointed Chair of Ofcom Advisory Committee

    5 February 2009 University of Oxford

    Professor William Dutton, Director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at Oxford University, is appointed as Chair of Ofcom's Advisory Committee for England and Member of the Advisory Committee for the South East region

  • Director's Letter December 2008

    11 December 2008 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses the new MSc in Social Science of the Internet, the launch of the OII journal 'Policy and Internet', welcomes new students and visitors, and talks about the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS) and the OII Summer Doctoral Programme 2009

  • Director's Letter July 2008

    30 July 2008 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses recent news from the Oxford Internet Institute

  • Director's Letter February 2008

    20 February 2008 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses recent news from the Oxford Internet Institute

  • OII News: William Dutton's Inaugural Lecture (Webcast)

    17 October 2007 Oxford Internet Institute

    William Dutton: 'In my Inaugural Lecture on Monday at the University Examination Schools I discussed 'the Rise of a Fifth Estate in Internet Time and Space'. See the webcast, lecture text and photographs

  • The Fifth Estate - through the network of networks

    16 October 2007 University of Oxford

    The impact of the Internet as a new form of social accountability and why it should be defined as 'the Fifth Estate' is the subject of an inaugural lecture by William Dutton, the Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University, on 15 October 2007

  • Director's Letter July 2007

    3 July 2007 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses recent news from the Oxford Internet Institute

  • New Virtual Research Seminar Series: Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Information Society

    22 January 2007 Oxford Internet Institute

    The OII has partnered with the Open University of Catalonia to offer a fully virtual doctoral seminar series over a period of six months. The collaboration will explore new teaching methods for the information age

  • Director's Letter December 2006

    1 December 2006 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses recent news from the Oxford Internet Institute

  • Director's Letter July 2006

    21 July 2006 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses recent news from the Oxford Internet Institute

  • Director's Letter November 2005

    22 November 2005 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director announces the new DPhil programme, Oxford e-Social Science Project, and OII-Berkman collaborative partnership, and discusses the cybersafety conference (webcasts available) and other recent events, and news about faculty and visitors

  • Director's Letter June 2005

    15 June 2005 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses the appointment of Professor Jonathan Zittrain to the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation, the completion of the second Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS), and a seminar series focusing on civil society participation in the WSIS

  • Director's Letter August 2004

    6 August 2004 Oxford Internet Institute

    The Director discusses the Summer Doctoral Programme (SDP), and other early OII activities such as participation in the European Internet Coregulation Network, launch of the Oxfrod Internet Surveys (OxIS), and the Cisco Visiting Professor of e-Democracy

  • Director appointed for the Oxford Internet Institute

    18 April 2002 Oxford Internet Institute

    Professor William Dutton is appointed as the first Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, also becoming the University of Oxford's first Professor of Internet Studies and a Fellow of Balliol College

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Events

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Last updated on: 6 September 2010