TY - JOUR AU - Wittel, Andreas PY - 2011/09/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Qualities of Sharing and their Transformations in the Digital Age JF - The International Review of Information Ethics JA - IRIE VL - 15 IS - 0 SE - Article DO - 10.29173/irie218 UR - https://informationethics.ca/index.php/irie/article/view/218 SP - 3-8 AB - This article examines the social side of sharing. It is an attempt to work towards a sociological concept of sharing in the digital age. This is the hypothesis: different forms of sharing have different qualities with respect to the social. Digital technologies bring about new forms of sharing. In order to support this claim I will analyse the social qualities of sharing by focusing on the object, on what is being shared. Using an object-centred analysis it will be argued that digital forms of sharing introduce a new function of sharing. Whereas pre-digital sharing was about exchange, sharing with digital technologies is about exchange and about distribution. ER -