Assignment 2: New Media & Key Theoretical Concepts

The Silver reading, Where Is Internet Studies was just what I needed to read at this point in my new carrier as a graduate student. I found myself asking the same question last, and this week. Where is this class located, where is the teacher, and what is I suppose to do exactly. Yes, those are very micro level concerns, but they can be extrapolated to the larger question that Silver is asking.

I found two points especially interesting in, Where is Internet Studies. The first being how Beaubien, Hogan and George described the growth of an academic discipline in there book, Learning the Library, and secondly, how much this field of “new media” builds upon older studies.

The four stages of the growth of an academic discipline very much mirrors the growth of an Internet community that revolves around an interest or hobby. In the pioneering stage you have the new adopters that have stumbled across this “new thing”, that only they know about. They get to study it, learn all they can about it and then begin to disseminate the information to others. In the elaboration phase the first adopters get to share how cool they were to discover this “new thing” with others, this increases attention on the subject. The more people involved the greater the scrutiny and the development of rules. In the proliferation stage the group has expanded and several web sites about the “new thing” have begun to spring up and a community is born, with it’s own rules, terminology and culture. Lastly in the establishment phase you begin to see not only a web presence for this “new thing” but print publications, conventions and possibly graduate and undergraduate studies. I think primarily of comic book culture when writing this. Comics went from nothing to a billion dollar business, but also an area of study. There are several texts that explore how comics and comic heroes affect American culture. There are also several colleges in the United States that offer undergraduate as well as graduate degrees in sequential storytelling.

In his book Silver tells us that “new media” studies is many times incorporated in other disciplines’ such as American studies, anthropology, psychology and the like. He poses that this cross-pollination, as he calls it, suggests that the study of “new media” is a rich field. But I wonder if that is also what makes us ask the question, “What Is Internet Studies”. Not that we should, or could examine the world of new media without these other disciplines’, they are necessary and without them we would just be navel gazing about how “cool” the internet is and not have any academic tools to draw upon. I have found myself having a difficult time explaining to people what I am studying. At first I was nervous about this, but as I read more, and examine it more, I am developing a vocabulary that I lacked. This is not unlike how this academic discipline is being developed.

In the Silver book, Where Is Internet Studies the author poses and answers many questions as to what Internet studies are. As I surfed the web looking up some of the journals and organization that were in the reading, I realized that this field is widespread and always growing. The more we understand how it relates to other disciplines and other modes of thinking it develops itself, frames how we study it, and expands outward like the web itself.

Silvers, D. (2003). Where is Internet Studies , pp. 1-12.