The main argument in this book is that “can we describe internet studies as a field or discipline” As I read through the introduction, I remembered the times we discussed the identity crisis in information systems (IS) discipline. Some similarities that I recognized between IS and the potential Internet studies disciplines are:
- Researchers in both areas come from very different backgrounds. Therefore, their research topics have a large variance. On one hand, each essay in the book focuses on a different aspect of the effect of the Internet. For instance, one essay focuses on government, while another essay focuses on gender. On the other hand, in IS some scholars have positivist research philosophy and focus deeply on technical aspects of designing an artifact while others take a post-positivist research philosophy to solve an organizational problem by using IT.
- Quality of qualitative research seems to be an interdisciplinary topic. In IS, qualitative approaches such as grounded theory, ethnography, and case study started to gain acceptance in late 1990s. (Avison et al, 1999). From this perspective, I did not understand why the author wanted to include this essay in a book published in 2006. Was the debate between quantitative and qualitative approaches still going on in 2006? Or perhaps the author wanted to justify how Internet studies could be conducted in a skeptical, ethical, and systematic way by using a qualitative approach. In this context, I am curious on whether there has been a grounded theory study on this potential field.
- “Have we generated new theories of our own?” I think this is an excellent question. (p. 5) IS relies on and contributes to cognitive science, organizational science, and computer science in order to understand interactions among organizations, technologies, and people. However, if we look at the theories used in our discipline (http://www.fsc.yorku.ca/york/istheory/wiki/index.php/Main_Page), we see that these theories are not pure IS theories. Hence, IS relies on and contributes to kernel theories. As for the Internet studies, I think the situation is not different because in order to understand wide diversity of the effects of the Internet, one needs to know a wide diversity of knowledge from related fields. In this context, a common saying in IS is that an IS professional should wear both business and computer science hats in order to broker knowledge between business and computer professionals.
From my perspective, a discipline leads to profession which has three identifying characteristics: Exclusive education, self regulation, and competitive entrance (McConnell, 2005). Exclusive education requires an extensive education and mastery in a “specialized area”. In this book, it seems to me that each particular essay focuses on specialized area such as government, business, or gender. For instance, I found the following conference on the Internet related to this topic.
Critical Cyberculture Studies: Mapping an Evolving Discipline April 26-27, University of Maryland
Session One: Political Action in Cyberspace
Session Two: Theoretical Cyberspace
Session Three: Ordinary and Extraordinary Cyborgs
Session Four: Different Literacies
Session Five: Cyborg Bodies
Session Six: Hegemonic Notes
Session Seven: Painting With Pixels
Session Eight: Agency and Artifice in Cyberspace
Session Nine: The Business of the Web
Session Ten: Identity Technologies
Session Eleven: Divides
Session Twelve: Cyberculture Defined
Session Thirteen: Publishing in a Virtual Field (Roundtable)
Session Fourteen: Talking Online
References
Avison, D., Lau, F., Myers, M., and Nielsen, P. A. Action Research Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM. 42, 1, 1999
McCoccell, S. Professional Software Development.Pearson Education, Inc Boston, MA (2005).