To those who may be interested, Please let me be clear that personally, I am not trying to establish or join in an argument about who is right or wrong about whether Internet research is a discipline, but I am searching for an operational definition of the concept/construct of "academic discipline." I am curious as to the type of criteria that generally defines a "discipline". It strikes me that Internet Research may qualify as a "Studies" area, which at least to my way of thinking may represent some intersection of more traditional disciplinary approaches, by interested parties wanting to study similar content areas. There is a long history to the notion of a discipline and to the philosophical and ideological "Wars" that have erupted over 2500 years to qualify the knowledge production of a specific "discipline" as a legitimate means to gain academic, critical and/or scientific understanding. It would seem to me that a discipline operates within a conceptual framework that represents a set of paradigmatic structures which are commonly subscribed to by members of that discipline-- meaning a somewhat shared philosophic or methodological sets of approaches which give validity to the work that is produced within that framework. How else could we legitimize the notion of a "juried journal" or "juried anything" for that matter? The basic mission and functionality of a University itself, and the social/ institutional role that the University fulfills is to some degree based on the idea that we somehow maintain credentialing authority (knowledge capital) which is based on our ability to somehow assess "legitimate academic knowledge." And that this knowledge is some way is unique in it's production and is of high value to the society relative to other types of knowledge production. We tenure the professorate against performance within the discipline, we credential students through degrees that certify knowledge and the whole notion of liberal education is based on the concept that we educate students in "Ways of knowing" that are somehow critical to their fundamental ability to solve problems requiring development of critical thought processes. Anybody that would like to share his or her thoughts on this question, I would appreciate the input. If you want to use Internet Research as a practical example this would be quite interesting as well. If you would like to compare and contrast to say English or Engineering, or Biochemistry or Informatics (blended disciplines), even better. Thanks for your help, Irene Berkowitz Irene Berkowitz DARS Coordinator Office of the Vice Provost Temple University tel. 215-204-7596 fax. 215-204 3175 berkowitz@mail.temple.edu
veritas@u.washington.edu 11/05/2002 12:41:17 PM >>> Friends,
Nancy's comments make my case that Internet Research is a discipline, or failing that, at least is rapidly becoming one. There are dedicated journals, a flagship organization, a listserver supporting the community, a code of ethics, and people who call themselves Internet Researchers. More comments below. Nancy Baym wrote:
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
Certainly! That is the reason new disciplines are formed. I am sure that many members feel, or even have been told, that their 'out of the mainstream' research is hurting their career in the home discipline.
think that their particular angle on internet studies -- be it literary, economic, artistic, you name it -- is not adequately represented within aoir
That will come in time. I welcome any dialog with colleagues who would like to study research teams who operate ON the Internet. Certainly distributed research teams are worthy of becoming subjects of Internet Research.
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.
Until there are recognized departments of Internet Studies, the home disciplines must be served. To ignore the hand that feeds you is not recommended. Of course we all owe our research interests to established disciplines as well as to Internet Research. The value we add to Internet Studies as representatives of our current home disciplines is that our research is tied to an established body of knowledge.
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."
Yes, this week.
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
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-- Charlie Hendricksen, Ph.D. veritas@u.washington.edu "Information technology structures human relationships." "Models relate concepts." _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l