Social and Existential Threats to Personal Security in Virtual Communities: “Groups of Death” and “Columbine Communities”

Literature Review

In the methodological aspect, two considerable groups of sources that relate to this research should be considered: theories related to issues of the information era and e-culture and research findings concerning the Internet impact and cyber threats to a person in the information environment.

Research centers in a number of countries have been studying the influence of IT penetration into social and cultural processes closely. In particular, issues of electronic culture development are studied by researchers of the University of Milan (A. Ronchi, 2009) and McLuhan Institute (Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute (VMMI)), the Netherlands (K. Veltman, 2004). Ethical and anthropological issues of the information era are considered by researchers of the International Centre for Innovation in Education (ICIE), Karlsruhe, Germany (R. Capurro, 2006); London School of Economics, Department of Media and Communication (Great Britain) (L. Haddon, 2004); Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (De Montfort University, Great Britain) (S. Rogerson, 1998); Center for the Study of the Information Society of the University of Haifa, Israel (D.R. Raban, 2009). Ethical, political, and legal aspects of IT penetration have been analyzed by L. Rocci (2012); B. J. Kallenberg (2001), C.L. Chang (2011), et al.