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The notion of silver surfers has been recurring in research for two decades. It often refers to elderly skilled and affluent users of digital media. Departing from domestication theory, and drawing on the concept of online repertoires, this article sets out to offer critical insights into what it actually takes, sociologically speaking, to become a silver surfer. The analysis starts from a set of interviews with 19 respondents (66–82 years) covering appropriation and incorporation of digital media and online repertoires. Based on insights from interview data, we turn to a quantitative analysis of a national postal survey (Swedish). In these data (N = 1,264), we first filter out the silver surfers and then perform a logistic regression analysis in order to investigate the factors that promote the status of being a silver surfer. Our analysis shows that only 19% of the sample could be categorised as silver surfers. It further reveals the important influence of factors such as age, income, interest and self-efficacy in particular. Silver surfers are a privileged group. However, contemporary ICT policy tends to assume that they are representative of senior users in general. Thus, there is a significant risk that current policy objectives will be misdirected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is contemporary media ecology an ecology that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators, the "prod-users", or could it also be understood as an ecology in which various forms of user participation are in fact conditioned, or manufactured, by professional producers? Considering the increasing research attention paid to various notions of user participation, these questions become important. This article critically discusses the theorising of mediated participation by illustrating and analysing ways in which users' participatory practices in fact can be both conditioned and formatted by producers making strategic use of participatory opportunities. By drawing on an ethnographically inspired case study of a web company, Moderskeppet, this analysis reveals how the actual possibilities for participation thoroughly are conditioned by producers. The paper also analyses strategies and techniques applied by the producers to create a sense of participation among users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within research as well as policy debates, much effort has been put into analysing the Internet's significance for democracy these discussions have certainly contributed to progress in the area by, for instance, statistically pointing out the differentiated access to the new ICT among various social groups and mainly theoretically suggesting in what ways the Internet can become a tool for democracy However, these analyses also hold a few blind spots, of which this article discusses two. Firstly, they have paid only minimal attention to the everyday users' experience of new ICT. Secondly, they have usually focused quite exclusively on the Internet rather than looking at it as part of an already-established media environment. This article is an initial effort to compensate for these shortcomings. It departs from the concept 'civic identity' and analyses qualitative data on Swedish working class users' use and perception of the Internet as well as 'traditional media.' For those who believe the Internet to be an inclusive medium and as such a tool for democracy, the article's empirical results are somewhat discouraging. For instance, the empirical and analytical discussions reveal that the traditional media TV, newspapers and radio--are far mole important than the Internet to the working class users' civic identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]