How online communication may affect academic knowledge production.
Some preliminary hypotheses
Michael Nentwich (Vienna)
Recent developments in communication technologies are about to change working
and collaborative patterns of academics. Online and offline internet conferences
as well as discussion fora of all kinds, exchange of drafts of joint papers
and resource sharing around the globe seem to convert academia into a global
research village. Since communication lies at the very heart of the academic
enterprise we need to ask whether these new tools and modes of communication
will impact on what academics actually produce.
We may hypothesize that just as the size and type of the chisels used
by the sculptor impact on the shape of his statue, the outcome of academic
knowledge production will be different whichever mode of communication
is used during elaboration. The proposed paper will elaborate this argument
and put forward some preliminary hypotheses and how they will be tested
in an ongoing empirical study.
The homepage of the study may be found at: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ita/cyberscience.htm
Papers held at the conference "Knowledge Networking in Cultural
Studies" are published in
TRANS.
Internet journal for Cultural Studies, No. 10/2001
Published/last change: 2001-06-20
Location (URL): http://www.inst.at/termine/knowledge/nentwich.htm
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