Nancy wrote:
I haven't seen the evidence of a landrush mentality in which disciplines are pitted against one another in internet studies or the study of social network sites and the WP article didn't provide any to support that claim.
and:
What I generally observed in a decade of working to move internet studies forward as a solid and legitimate field of study is people in every field feeling like internet studies was/is on the margins of their own discipline and therefore seeking connection across borders.
As someone who was heavily involved in popular music studies and belonged to the International Association for the Study of Popular Music for many years and loved those conferences and conversations, I see real parallels between the two interdisciplines (for lack of a better word) of internet studies and popular music studies. (And I think others who have been involved with both areas and even organizations might agree.) Both areas include a variety of interesting people from different fields and backgrounds who feel most comfortable in their interdisciplinary home, where other people "get" what they do, and much interesting and supportive discussion takes place. I have never seen people in these kinds of groups scurrying to be the big important people studying the most sexy topic, although I imagine that happens from time to time. Mostly I find people becoming interested in what people are doing in other areas of the interdiscipline and making connections with those people. Organizations like AoIR and, at least when I was involved, IASPM, strike me as more inclusive and supportive, and not as cutthroat as many disciplinary groups. I like to think that we're a group of semi-outsiders who find great camaraderie in our annual gathering, on our email lists, and so on as we continue to work in our -- we hope -- overlapping, expansive, and academically, socially, and culturally relevant and important areas of interest. Holly -- Holly Kruse Faculty of Communication The University of Tulsa 600 S. College Ave. Tulsa, OK 74104 918-631-3845 holly-kruse@utulsa.edu or holly.kruse@gmail.com (holly@aoir.org for air-l questions or problems http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~holly-kruse