ICT Research and Disciplinary Boundaries: Is "Internet Research" a Virtual Field, a Proto-discipline, or Something Else?

Manuscript submission deadline: February 27, 2004

Edited by Nancy Baym, University of Kansas

Issues raised by information and communications technologies (ICTs) transcend disciplinary boundaries. Ever since the beginning of ICT research, scholars have sought to carve out spaces within the discipline-bound institutional structures where streams of thoughts of different hues co-mingle more freely. The early efforts in the1960s and 1970s focused on the creation of interdisciplinary research centers and programs and journals such as Telecommunications Policy and The Information Society. In the 1980s and 1990s, we saw the rise of schools of information, information studies, and informatics on campuses where the conditions were ripe for entrepreneurial activity. The variation in the names and curricula of these schools suggests that we are still trying to get a sense of the new intellectual landscape. Within this unsettled context, the growing number of researchers attracted towards the Association of Internet Researchers [AoIR] conference gives reason for pause. One now often hears people talking about the "field" of "Internet Research" while its practitioners continue to be housed in departments and schools of library science, business, information science, communications, and others. Something clearly seems to be afoot. But what is it? Is Internet Research a virtual field wherein we have resigned to the permanence of disciplinary boundaries and created an overlay or virtual network across them? Or, are we seeing the emergence of a proto-discipline whose growth will knock down disciplinary boundaries and create a new institutional space? Or, is Internet Research a forerunner of some other configuration we barely understand? This special issue seeks to explore and chart out this evolving intellectual landscape.

Contributions in the form of full-length articles (6000 words), forum pieces (3000 words), and short position papers (1000 words) are invited. The special issue intends to present a variety of perspectives and hence is open in terms of topics covered. Among other things, contributors could address questions such as the following:

To what extent is Internet Research an academic "field" or "discipline"?

What does it mean to label this field? Is "Internet Research" the right name? What are the other possibilities and what are their implications?

To the extent that it is a field, what is its emergent structure?

In what ways does the growth of this research area parallel or differ from other disciplines? What lessons for the present and the future might be learned from those histories?

Where do we stand now relative to where Film Studies, Women's Studies, and other new fields were a few years ago?

Manuscripts prepared according to the TIS guidelines
(http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/contributors/authors.html) should be submitted by February 27, 2004. Please send the manuscripts to Nancy Baym. Authors are encouraged to discuss their ideas with the guest editor.