Folks -- A number of aoir members have responded to the call for individuals interested in participating in collaborative comparative research on internet-related issues, from a pleasingly wide array of countries. To help move thought about this forward -- and hopefully to stimulate the interest of you more of you -- wanted to report on the clusters of interest appearing. As context for these comments, the goal as I personally imagine it is developing a team or teams engaged in research on a carefully defined common research problem with a methodology also carefully worked out collaboratively among members of the team to meet the highest standards for comparative research. The particular problems of comparative research methodology are addressed in courses at very few universities. Much that flies under the name of comparative research is in fact simply compilations of studies from different places that do not offer genuinely comparative data or insights. These teams will hopefully not fall into that category but, rather -- as is the case with other aoir efforts involving standards for internet-based research methods and the ethics of internet research -- provide a model for rigorous comparative internet research. Individuals who have so far responded have expressed interest in a very wide range of potential research topics, most defined in the most abstract of terms, and with a preference for positions along the entire spectrum of methodological possibilities. Out of all that has been mentioned, however, there do appear to be a few clusters of interest appearing, each of which would require different methodological approaches. For those of you with whom I've been in communication, please read these as what may be translations of the ideas you've expressed into terms that I felt were common across the many individuals involved. And remember that this is just a very tentative first step to defining a common ground, with the expectation of many additional steps in full mutual conversation to determine where we might actually wind up. (1) The internet and community development. (2) The internet and social movements. (3) The rhetoric of internet policy. It could be imagined that the first two of these might be addressed through a combination of survey research, focus groups, and ethnographic work, and would require individuals able to carry out such work on the ground in different countries around the world. The third would rely upon some variety of discourse/content/rhetorical analysis of government documents, and could be carried out by individuals working from anywhere in the world. A number of additional ideas came forward but none has so far yet been mentioned by more than one person, and several are already receiving a fair amount of attention in the economics literature and elsewhere. It is my own bias that aoir members may want to devote their energies to addressing lacunae in the literature as their "highest use," but of course this also is up to the members of the group and I mention this only to stimulate further discussion. If any additional aoir members find these topics and this prospect intriguing, please let me know at my personal e-address: braman@ua.edu. If any aoir member, whether or not personally interested in participating in a collaborative comparative project, has thoughts about how to make such work as valuable as possible, you may want to direct those comments to the entire list. Sandra Braman Reese Phifer Professor Dept. of Telecommunication & Film University of Alabama PO Box 870152 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0152 205-348-8657 * fax 205-348-5162 braman@ua.edu * www.tcf.ua.edu/braman