[Air-L] snide, cute, ignorant, surprising

Nicole B Ellison nellison at msu.edu
Sun Dec 16 16:24:12 PST 2007


Hi, 

Having spoken with Monica I was also very disappointed by the snarky tone of 
the article. I was actually excited by the topic -  social network studies 
as an academic discipline - but the points that were pulled out of our 
interview were nowhere near the most interesting ones (in my mind at least). 
Namely, that this field is one that is particularly important to study from 
a variety of different disciplinary lenses and methodologies. My point about 
AOIR (which  didn't make it into the article) was that it was particularly 
vital for this reason - that it helps to prevent situations where scholars 
in different disciplines are saying the same thing but not citing one 
another. That's what I value about this organization.

I guess the juicy "young scholar resented by sheeplike professors who cite 
one another and use big words unnecessarily" angle was too juicy to resist. 
But it is a shame that this vibrant area of research is presented as just 
the flavor of the month. 

Nicole 





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