[Air-l] Re: Archive and membership

[Nancy Baym]

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

think that their particular angle on internet studies -- be it 
literary, economic, artistic, you name it -- is not adequately 
represented within aoir

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.

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."

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