This chapter reviews the diffusion, uses, and impacts of the Internet worldwide and over time. The World Internet Project has been intended to become the vehicle for tracking what happens as households and nations adopt and use the Internet. The study of the connection between the Internet and society presents a window onto contemporary societies. The Internet mediates social changes and social relations. The age of users, the institutional context, and media culture determine the Internet use in a given country. The Internet has been more of a complement to the traditional media than a competitor, and displacement effects are hard to find and are not general or universal across countries. It is important to keep a vital perspective in comparative approaches, being mindful of the theory that differences verified between countries or continenta can lose much of their analytical relevance.

Nas últimas décadas, emergiu um novo ambiente mediático que tem enquadrado as experiências das crianças e dos jovens. Verifica-se uma socialização dos jovens no meio de várias realidades mediáticas, sendo que novas competências parecem ser adquiridas intuitivamente pelos jovens como a exploração da inter-conectividade entre vários media e formas de operar vários media simultaneamente. A estas alterações junta-se uma mudança do público para o privado na vida dos mais jovens, o que se relaciona, por um lado, com o declínio da "cultura de rua" e a retirada para a casa ou o apartamento, em especial, em contextos urbanos, por outro lado, com o declínio do convívio familiar em torno da televisão e a emergência da "cultura do quarto de dormir". Através de dados de dois inquéritos, um efectuado face-a-face e outro realizado na Internet, queremos demonstrar em que moldes essa "cultura do quarto de dormir" tem emergido entre os jovens portugueses. Além disso, pretende-se também ligar as transformações do ambiente mediático com a interacção familiar em torno dos media e com o significado do estatuto de "jovem" e do estatuto da família.

Analysing data from the European Social Survey, in this article we try to capture the main features of European families. Accounting for the changing trends of the last forty years in family arrangements, practices and values we also discuss some theoretical and methodological issues raised by the exercise of comparing countries. General configurations like family size, composition of the household, living arrangements and marital status are identified and analysed by clustering European countries. The insertion of men and women in the labour market, fertility rates and the hours of work of parents are another central focus of discussion. Our results tend to contradict some stereotypes. The majority of Europeans are formally married or living together, conjugal disruption is transitory for the divorced and the separated tend to return to conjugality. With modern ideals family is, for all European countries and with very similar averages, the most valued dimension of personal life.

Scientific journal published by the Department of Journalism, Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the Faculty of Communication.