[Air-L] Landrushes and Interdisciplinarity

[Sam Ladner]

I would disagree that the WP journalist's view was entirely unjustified.
Unlike Nancy, I believe it wasn't a story about disciplines competing for
"ownership" over online social networking (I think only an academic might
think like that ;-).

No I believe the journalist was writing from her perspective, likely shaped
in the past, that academics are a petty lot who often  grind down the very
people who are to take their craft to the next generation. As a former
journalist and current academic, I know that journalists tend not to see
academics as ego-driven and self-indulgent. They also truly do not know what
constitutes "good research," but then, why would they?

What they do know is what constitutes a "good story." This involves drama,
tension, a peak, and a denoument. It is possible this journalist had
previous but subconscious knowledge about a a very real phenomenon in
academia, that is, the closing out of emerging research and researchers,
which is driven in part by power struggles. Sounds like a good story to me!
Even if it's wrong...

Of course this does not justify the inaccurate representation of the
researchers. Nor does it excuse this journalist's very quick and surface
review of the subject. Like Bill, however, I would choose to apply a
political economy of journalism to this. The "landrush" mentality is partly
the journalist's herself! Everyone wants to be the expert of the big thing,
whether it be Bre-X, Dot-Com, or Asset-backed Commercial Paper. All of these
take years to understand well but journalists do not have that luxury. It is
the constraints of their jobs that force them to be superficial and stake
their claims quickly.