The editors of this pivotal text, Edward Murguia, Melissa Tackett-Gibson, and Ann Lessem, elevate the debate about drug use and the Internet from a polemic discourse to a social scientific investigation. The essays confront issues related to the study of drug communication online, including the causal factors of abuse as discussed in online forums, the relationship between music and drug use in virtual communities, and the ways in which individuals assess the accuracy of online drug information. This book highlights the variety of ways to examine drug use as a social problem and presents several theoretical perspectives valuable to online research. Real Drugs in a Virtual World is an enlightening and thought-provoking read that will appeal to sociology students and those interested in virtual communities. Book jacket.

This book examines the history of popular drug cultures and mediated drug education, and the ways in which new media - including social networking and video file-sharing sites - transform the symbolic framework in which drugs and drug culture are represented. Tracing the emergence of formal drug regulation in both the US and the United Kingdom from the late nineteenth century, it argues that mass communication technologies were intimately connected to these "control regimes" from the very beginning. Manning includes original archive research revealing official fears about the use of such mass communication technologies in Britain. The second half of the book assesses on-line popular drug culture, considering the impact, the problematic attempts by drug agencies in the US and the United Kingdom to harness new media, and the implications of the emergence of many thousands of unofficial drug-related sites.

Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Fourth Edition is Volume III of the three-volume paperback versions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. This portion of the handbook considers the tasks of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting empirical materials, and comprises the complete handbook′s "Part IV: Methods of Collecting and Analyzing Empirical Materials" and "Part V: The Art and Practices of Interpretation, Evaluation, and Presentation." Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Fourth Edition introduces the researcher to basic methods of gathering, analyzing and interpreting qualitative empirical materials. Part 1 moves from narrative inquiry, to critical arts-based inquiry, to oral history, observations, visual methodologies, and autoethnographic methods. It then takes up analysis methods, including computer-assisted methodologies, focus groups, as well as strategies for analyzing talk and text. The chapters in Part II discuss evidence, interpretive adequacy, forms of representation, post-qualitative inquiry, the new information technologies and research, the politics of evidence, writing, and evaluation practices.

This book examines the forces that shape psychoactive drug use. The approach, informed by poststructuralist semiotics, culture, phenomenology and contemporary theories of affect, illuminates the connections between drugs, bodies, space, economy and crime.

This book explores the ways language is used by the professional legal community for the communication of its main business - the negotiation of justice - in today’s globalized world. The volume addresses three main aspects of language use in the negotiation of justice. Beginning with the legal contexts of litigation, arbitration and mediation, the book moves on to discuss the main issues identified in those contexts and finally it explores the applications of legal linguistics. These three aspects are studied across the themes of analyses of legal discourse and genres, issues of power and ideology in the use of legal language, cross-cultural legal communication, questions of recontextualization, accessibility and plain language, law and disciplinary identity, and pedagogy of legal language. With chapters set across a variety of jurisdictions, the contributions offer analytical insights into the interface between law and language. The book is a valuable resource for those in the legal community wishing to increase their understanding of the use of language for the negotiation of justice.

Spanning two volumes of approximately 450 entries in an A-to-Z format, this encyclopedia explores the controversial drug war through the lens of varied disciplines. A full spectrum of articles explains topics from Colombian cartels and Mexican kingpins to television reportage; from "just say no" advertising to heroin production; and from narco-terrorism to more than $500 billion in U.S. government expenditures. Key Themes- Cases- Conferences and Conventions- Countries (Affecting U.S. Drug Policy)- Drug Trade and Trafficking- Laws and Policies- Organizations and Agencies- People-Presidential Administrations- Treatment and Addiction- Types of Drugs

This volume presents the reader with an interesting and, at times, provocative selection of contemporary thinking about cybercrimes and their regulation. The contributions cover the years 2002-2007, during which period internet service delivery speeds increased a thousand-fold from 56kb to 56mb per second. When combined with advances in networked technology, these faster internet speeds not only made new digital environments more easily accessible, but they also helped give birth to a completely new generation of purely internet-related cybercrimes ranging from spamming, phishing and other automated frauds to automated crimes against the integrity of the systems and their content. In order to understand these developments, the volume introduces new cybercrime viewpoints and issues, but also a critical edge supported by some of the new research that is beginning to challenge and surpass the hitherto journalistically-driven news stories that were once the sole source of information about cybercrimes.