Surfing the Internet - as an academic

Late-night Facebook perusing may soon be more than a procrastination device - it might be a legitimate homework assignment.

The way that online social networks like Facebook.com affect our lives and relationships is just one part of an emerging academic field called Web science.

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton in England launched the Web Science Research Initiative earlier this month to pioneer the formal study of Web science.

The researchers - including Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web - coined the term "Web science" several years ago, to refer to the study of "modeling the Web, engineering its future and understanding its social impacts," according to Jim Hendler, associate director of the WSRI and a computer science professor at the University of Maryland.

And while Penn does not use this term, Fernando Pereira, chairman of the University's Computer and Information Science department, said the University is part of the trend, with a number of Computer Science courses focusing on the Internet.

Larry Peterson, head of the computer science department at Princeton University, said in an e-mail that his school has both a graduate and undergraduate course on networking, with a major focus on the Internet.

That is in line with the aims of the MIT initiative, one of which is to create a curriculum in Web science so that colleges around the world can begin offering classes in the field, Hendler said.

In such classes, students would study issues such as how Web sites violate privacy policies and how the rise of chat rooms allows people to have friends they've never met in person, he added.

Pereira said his department has offered classes related to the Internet for several years.

In particular, a course called "Networked Life" discusses Facebook and the online auction site eBay, he said, adding that a new course to be offered next semester - called "Technology and Policy" - will deal with issues of privacy and legality relating to the Internet.

"These problems affect our daily lives - the way we work, the way we play, the way we conduct our social and economic lives," Pereira said.

Nevertheless, he said he disagreed with the use of the term "Web science," as the Web is not a unique subject matter, but rather a topic that raises questions in traditional disciplines, such as sociology, law and ethics.

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