Drawing together the most current work upon the social, economic, and cultural impact of the emerging properties of the new information and communications technologies, this journal positions itself at the centre of contemporary debates about the information age. Information, Communication & Society (iCS) transcends cultural and geographical boundaries as it explores a diverse range of issues relating to the development and application of information and communications technologies (ICTs), asking such questions as: What are the new and evolving forms of social software? What direction will these forms take? ICTs facilitating globalization and how might this affect conceptions of local identity, ethnic differences, and regional sub-cultures? Are ICTs leading to an age of electronic surveillance and social control? What are the implications for policing criminal activity, citizen privacy and public expression? How are ICTs affecting daily life and social structures such as the family, work and organization, commerce and business, education, health care, and leisure activities? To what extent do the virtual worlds constructed using ICTs impact on the construction of objects, spaces, and entities in the material world? iCS analyses such questions from a global, interdisciplinary perspective in contributions of the very highest quality from scholars and practitioners in the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, communication and media studies, as well as in the information and computer sciences.