Digital Life Research Group

The Digital Life Research Group (DLRG) explores how information and communication technologies and new media have changed the way we connect to communities, live, inform ourselves and relate to others.

The DLRG provides a forum for discussion on digital life broadly defined, from spiritual support to online safety and security issues, from gaming to political activism, from blogging to digital storytelling. Common to all these issues is the recognition that they can’t be effectively answered by traditional scholarly approaches, but rather require interdisciplinary research. As a group composed of educators, communication researchers, sociologists, criminologists, legal scholars and historians, we engage in cross-disciplinary exchange to identify new sites of critique and to fully understand and meaningfully intervene in issues related to life online.

Research areas

Legal and policy matters
- cyberterrorism
- impact of information and communication technologies on legal concepts and distinctions (i.e. public/private, speech/action)
- online safety and security
- risk and crime prevention
Social and cultural issues
- children's virtual worlds and digital storytelling
- Internet subcultures and social control
- online spirituality and support groups
- women's use of new media
Political aspects
- blogging and social networking as forms of political action
- global politics online
- new forms of political activism