I'm not even sure what we should infer from a '.edu' address. First and most obviously we cannot and should not infer nationality, ethnicity, etc. Second, we cannot infer residency, either. We regularly have visiting scholars from other countries to whom we give uic.edu addresses while they're with us. Are they residents? Well, sure, while they're here for a few months. In some cases, though, the address can be maintained after they leave. Third, many higher education institutions in the U.S. allow students to keep their e-mail addresses after they've graduated, and in those cases we could have people 'round the world with '.edu' in their e-mail, too. So, to a large degree, a '.edu' tells us that there's some kind of association with a U.S. higher education institution, FWIW. Sj At 4:56 PM -0600 2/9/02, Nancy Baym wrote:
Steve said:
What's been exceptional... is the number of new initiatives...resulting in our suddenly having a surfeit of work to do, help to solicit...
I repeat the above just in case anyone missed that "help to solicit" phrase :) If any of you have been wondering "how can *I* get more involved in AoIR?" just hang on to your hats, opportunities are coming.
I don't know about the "mostly Americans" thing...it would appear there are, as Nancy said, more American residents. I'm not sure it's possible to say more than that, though, without inference.
In saying 'mostly Americans' I didn't mean to say that there are more Americans/US Residents than non-Americans, just that there seem to be more Americans than residents of any other single country. There may be more people who are not Americans than who are.
Given that the genesis, or geneses, of this organization came from the center of the United States, I think we're doing pretty well. When I organized our first conference here in Kansas, I thought we'd be lucky to be a regional midwestern event (thanks again to all of you who came!). I look forward to our first European conference in Maastricht in October and -- REMINDER -- Feb 15 is the submission deadline for that event!
Nancy _________________________________________________________ Nancy Baym nbaym@ku.edu http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas 102 Bailey, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org
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