[Air-L] Graduate programs for "internet studies"?

[live]

Yes, well, we don't all have the good fortune to get into schools such  
as Berkeley after having chats with the advisors, eh? ;)

But I agree - thinking about who you want to work with for a long  
period of time, and how they will let you grow in the academic arena,  
is quite important.

Cheers,
@SharonG


On Sep 29, 2010, at 9:32 PM, danah boyd wrote:

> Who do you admire?  Who do you want to work with?  PhD programs  
> especially (less so for Master's) are all about your advisor and  
> your committee, your ability to connect with your peers, and your  
> ability go get a solid foundation in various intellectual traditions  
> that you can bring to the table when talking about Internet  
> dynamics.  My advice to all potential grad students is to start by  
> making a list of the scholars that you respect.  Go to conferences  
> in fields that you want to engage with (like AOIR) and meet people.   
> Figure out who you think you could get along with.  And then build  
> out from there.  Programs are important but less so than individual  
> mentors that can help you through your intellectual inquiry.
>
> If it helps at all, I wrote this long post for folks interested in  
> going to grad school: http://www.danah.org/GradSchoolAdvice.html
>
> Personally, I didn't know what an information school was when I  
> applied to Berkeley.  (Heck, I still don't.)  But as soon as I met  
> Peter, my beloved advisor, I knew that it was the perfect place for  
> me.  And I never would've imagined that learning about how  
> information is organized by librarians would be at all relevant to  
> my studies, but OMG has it been surprisingly useful.  I should also  
> note that what I admired about Peter had nothing to do with Internet  
> studies.  I admired his ability to think critically and turn any  
> idea upside down to see it from a different direction.  We talked  
> Gramsci and the role of activism in scholarship.  I taught him about  
> the Internet; he taught me how to look at it critically.  And he  
> taught me the value of playing good cop/bad cop in academia.   (May  
> he RIP.)
>
> When I went to grad school, I didn't need someone to teach me about  
> the Internet; I needed someone to give me the room to study the  
> Internet.  It wasn't about the classes or the reading. It was about  
> the critical thinking apparatus.  And it was about having an advisor  
> and a committee who provided the intellectual backbone to do new  
> research.
>
> So while there are great internet studies programs out there - and I  
> encourage you to investigate them - don't limit yourself by topic.   
> Focus on who you want to work with, who you want to learn from.
>
> Good luck!
>
> danah
>
>
> On Sep 29, 2010, at 12:52 PM, Devin Gaffney wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I just finished an exhilarating undergraduate program that gave me  
>> enough flexibility in order to study the impact/efficacy of Twitter  
>> during the Iran Election(http://www.devingaffney.com/-iranelection-quantifying-online-activism 
>> ), but in order to pull it off, I had to really bend some of the  
>> institutions rules, and just barely got the necessary advisorship  
>> in order to study it in a reasonable way. I am looking to jump  
>> right back into school for the following academic year, and am  
>> trying to figure out which schools have which programs - it seems  
>> that the information/websites for all the programs that do exist  
>> are well ensconced within their respective institutions websites,  
>> which tend towards labyrinthine. Does anyone have a good list of  
>> institutions (US/elsewhere) where a Masters/PhD in fields either  
>> directly or otherwise closely related to "internet studies" (or  
>> "web science," or whatever term you use, as this even seems to be  
>> up in the air, as far as I can tell)? Obvious
> ly, there are places like Citizenlab, Berkman, and OII, which all  
> seem to at least offer classes in some capacity, but are there any  
> others i just haven't found?
>>
>> Thanks much,
>>
>> Devin Gaffney
>> http://www.devingaffney.com
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>
> ------
>
> "taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
> http://www.danah.org/
> @zephoria
>
>
>
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