Charlie Hendricksen wrote:
Paying members of AoIR are unlikely to do their research near the boundaries of the discipline of Internet Research. They represent the mainstream.
I question this characterization of paying members. My experience from talking to people at our conferences and throughout the formation and growth of this association has been that members: feel marginalized within their institutional disciplines because of their interest in the internet think that their particular angle on internet studies -- be it literary, economic, artistic, you name it -- is not adequately represented within aoir also do research that is not just about the internet and which is more closely aligned with our more traditional disciplines, and we also have to think about framing the net research that we do in ways that speak to those disciplines. In short, I think this association works because we are all at boundaries, the field of internet research is comprised of intersecting boundaries. Though there may be some strong themes that characterize contemporary net research, I don't think there is a "mainstream" nor even a "discipline." Nancy ________________________________________________________ Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas 102 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org