[Air-L] RIP Barry Wellman

[Caroline Haythornthwaite]

As many of you know, Barry Wellman was my doctoral advisor, mentor, co-author, co-editor and great friend. To others he was the founder of the International Network for Social Network Analysis and brought the social network method and perspective to the study of the online interaction at a time when it was called computer-mediated communication and had yet to become Internet research. He was a keynote in the first AoIR conference, and a prolific author and contributor to internet research, studying ‘the net’ as a network and influencing so many that followed. His publication list is long and influential as can be seen on google scholar.

What you can’t see from such a list of papers is the influence on those of us who were in the right place at the right time to work and learn with him. When you look at his co-author list, you are seeing a depth of engagement, support, mentorship and friendship in the social network of Barry’s ‘academic children’ including those of us in academic careers and those in industry and government positions – and, his ‘academic grandchildren’ as we followed his example of collaboration. Barry embraced the new network of publication venues for CMC, new media, and internet research, including an early issue of the very new Journal of Computer Mediated Communication with its very new idea of open access, and journals New Media and Society, and Information, Communication and Society.

Over his life, Barry never let up on his research. His intense research collaborations included many doctoral students and fellow researchers including his wife Beverly Wellman. His network carries on but we have all lost a lot with his passing.

/Caroline

Caroline Haythornthwaite
chaythor at syr.edu
Professor Emerita, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Professor Emerita, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

https://haythorn.wordpress.com/