Mark, I've just done a recent survey of some of the literature on IM.
A great starting point is Nina Wakeford and Nalini Kotamraju's web site on Mobile Phone, SMS and Instant messaging research at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~nalinik/mobile.html

Otherwise, here's excerpts from my current reading list on Instant messaging:

Grinter, Rebecca E. and Eldridge, Margery A. ?y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg?? in W. Prinz, M. Jarke, Y. Rogers, K. Schmidt and V. Wulf (eds.): Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW ?01), Bonn, Germany. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, (2001) pp. 219-238. http://www2.parc.com/csl/members/grinter/ecscw.pdf

Grinter, Rebecca E., and Palen, Leysia. (2002) ?Instant Messaging in Teen Life.? In Proceedings from Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2002. New York: ACM Publishers.

Herbsleb, James D., et al. (2002) ?Introducing Instant Messaging and Chat in the Workplace.? ACM, CHI 2002, Minneapolis, MN. pp 171-178. Available from http://www.crew.umich.edu/Technical%20reports/Herbsleb_Atkins_Boyer_Handel_Finholt_Introducing_instant_messaging_12_10_01.pdf

Leung, Louis. (2001) ?College Student Motives for Chatting on ICQ,? New Media and Society, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. (2001) pp. 483-500.

Leung, Louis. (2002) ?Loneliness, Self-Disclosure and ICQ (?I Seek You?) Use,? Cyber Psychology & Behavior, vol. 5, no 3, pp. 241-251.

Nardi, B. A., Whittaker, S. & Bradner, E. (2000) ?Interaction and Outeraction: Instant messaging in action.? In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. New York, ACM Press, pp. 79-88. http://www.research.att.com/~stevew/outeraction_cscw2000.pdf

Quinn, Amy, et al. ?Teenage Communications in the Instant Messaging Era.? Paper submitted to CHI 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, scheduled for April 2003. Currently Unpublished--
{try contacting Amy or Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction group for a copy of this one...}

Reynolds, Holly Lynn. (2002) IM What I Am: Teen Talk and Gender Identity in Online Instant Messaging. MA thesis, Georgetown University.

Rheingold, Howard. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution: Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA.
{more about SMS, but interesting none the less}

Schiano, Diane J. et al. (2002) ?Teen Use of Messaging Media.? Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI 2002. Extended Abstracts. NY: ACM. http://hci.stanford.edu/cs377/nardi-schiano/CHI2002.Schiano.pdf

Good luck with your research!

Best,

Amanda Lenhart
Pew Internet & American Life Project
alenhart@pewinternet.org

At 04:23 PM 11/12/2002, you wrote:

Hi Folks,
For a student working on a research project I'm trying to track down some academic research on Instant Messenging. In addition to the Pew reports, does anyone have some good cites of recent work on any area of IM use?
Thanks,
Mark