DOI: 10.5064/f6cinitu
title: Data for: Critical Review of Digital Family Scholarship and the Internet as an Institution

description: &lt;p&gt;This study employs a critical literature review of multi-disciplinary scholarship on the Internet, the family, and adjacent institutions to Patricia Yancey Martin’s (2004) fourteen criteria of social institution. Initially, I conducted an online literature search in two following databases: Web of Science and Google Scholar. Web of Science (WoS) provides access to multiple databases that provide references and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedings, and other documents across 256 sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities (Clarivate, 2022). A rigorous selection process based on impact, influence, peer review, timeliness, and geographic representation determines inclusion of content (Clarivate, 2022).
Google Scholar is a web search engine that indexes scholarly literatures across many disciplines and publishing formats, including peer-reviewed academic journals, books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstract, technical reports, court opinions, and patents (Google Scholar, 2022). During February 2022, I searched both databases using the following keyword searches: (Internet AND family; Internet AND family OR institutio* ; social network* OR online OR cyber* AND family; social network* OR online OR cyber* AND institutio*). I limited the search to exclude any work prior to 2005, since the Web 2.0 period begins in 2004. Further, I limited the search to cover disciplinary subjects in the humanities, social sciences, education, and social work.&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;After reading the titles and abstracts for relevance, I excluded results that did not center Internet use by human beings or that theorized about the Internet’s relationship to other social institutions or social groups as a prominent part of the study. Therefore, if a study accessed newspaper articles from a digital database, and the Internet was solely a means to collect data, then it was not included. But, studies that conducted in-depth interviews about individuals’ online gaming experiences were. I further conducted some citation snowballing to capture additional relevant resources. I downloaded the full-text of each item either through Web of Science or the university’s inter-library loan.&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;The final selection included 85 pieces for review. Using Martin’s (2005) descriptions of the fourteen characteristics of a social institution, I carefully reviewed each article for themes that indicated the presence of each criterion. I created a binary variable with values of 0 for absent and 1 for present. Cases that had fewer than ten criteria were considered evidence against the argument of Internet as a social institution, whereas ten or more were categorized as evidence for the argument. Fifty-seven cases had all fourteen criteria, while nineteen cases had thirteen. There were six cases with twelve characteristics and only three with eleven criteria. There were no cases that were below the threshold. There was no instance where one criterion was consistently missing across all cases.&lt;/p&gt;
description: The researcher defined each criterion found within the column using the definitions provided in the following publication: Martin, P. Y. (2004). "Gender as social institution." <i>Social Forces</i>, 82(4), 1249–1273. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2004.0081t