[Air-l] working definition of Internet Studies & Research

Denise N. Rall denrall at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 6 23:10:19 PDT 2004


It is with great interest that I read David Silver's
paper about Internet Studies, after sitting on the
panel at Toronto meeting. Excellent work, David!

Silver, D. (2004). "Internet/cyberculture/digital
culture/new media/fill-in-the-blank studies." New
Media & Society 6(1): 55-64.

I wanted to (unpublished scholar as yet) offer my
definition of the field, Internet Studies & Research,
(I built my own fill-in-the-blank) for free:

A preliminary definition of Internet Studies &
Research states:

Internet Studies & Research, as it develops within
programs of study or research projects at
universities, research centers or institutes, is
elaborated by scholars who work across disciplines and
take the internet, *its use and users* as their
objects/subjects of study and research (Rall, 2003).
-------------------------------------------------------
It's a bit awkward there with the subjects/objects
hybrid there - but sometimes internet interactions are
objects (infometrics, webmetrics, measuring links - I
wouldn't call them subjects) and sometimes they are
subjects or rather, participants, but the
objects/partcipants seemed even dicier than
objects/subjects.

Sometimes internet reseach measures things, and
sometimes it considers people . . . not to open the
QUANT/QUAL discussion again!

It's a free definition, so feel free to comment! (and
I will *seek permission* from you invididually before
using any email responses for my research!!!!)

Cheers, Denise





=====
Denise N. Rall, PhD student, Env. Science & Mgmt, Southern Cross Uni,  
Marker for Protected Area Management, BIO00244
Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia 
Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 
Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html




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