Talk for OII MSc Students on the interdisciplinary field of Internet Studies, and some of the major issues surrounding its history and future.

1. Internet Studies:
The Foundations of a Transformative Field
Bill Dutton
Oxford Internet Institute (OII)
University of Oxford
www.ox.ac.uk
Presentation for Students and Faculty, Lisbon University Institute,
Lisbon, Portugal, 10 April 2013.

2. Rising Prominence and Diversity
• Increasing significance of the Internet
• Worldwide Diffusion
• Meta-research: Winson Peng et al 2013,
and Rice and Fuller 2013
• Tremendous Growth and Increasing
Diversity
• New Efforts at Synthesis: Handbooks,
Symposia, Debate

3. Objects of Study
• Technology (Internet, Web, Internet of Things)
• Use (in Contexts)
• Everyday Life in a Network Society
• Creating and Working in a Network Economy
• Communication, Power and Influence in a
Converging Media World
• Policy, Governance, and Regulation
•

4. Key Questions
• Who Shapes?
• Why?
• With What Implications?

5. Technology Use (Context) Policy
Who shapes? Who shapes Who uses Who shapes
design and (does not use) law and policy?
implementa- in what ways?
tion?
Why? What goals Why such Their goals and
(structures, and objectives patterns in objectives?
cultures, … drive design particular
shaping development contexts?
choice)
With what Do technical Do patterns of How is
implications for designs bias use support evolving
whom? use and different ecology of law
impacts? aims/groups? and policy
shaping design
and use?

6. Perspectives on the Field
• Fad, multi-disciplinary field, sub-field
of other disciplines, or a discipline of
its own? ‘Interdisciplinary Field’
• Defining the Internet: Narrowly,
Broadly? - Histories
• Two conceptions of Internet
Studies:
• Particularistic (Wellman)
• Synoptic

7. Transformative Role
• Transforming Study of ICTs
• Transforming the Disciplines

8. The Future of Internet Studies
• Networking a Multi-Disciplinary
Status Quo
• Specialization and Fragmentation
• Integrative: Creating a Derivative
Discipline

9. Number and Proportion of Internet Users by Region
Source: Internet World Stats- www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. Penetration rates are based on a world population of
6,930,055,154 and 2,267,233,742 estimated Internet users for December 31, 2011.

10. Internet Studies
• 2000: Lawrence, Kansas
• 2013: Worldwide Diffusion
and Increasing Significance
‘We are not in Kansas
anymore’, indeed.

11. Internet Studies
• Dutton, W. H. (2013), ‘Internet Studies’ in
Dutton, W. H. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of
Internet Studies. Oxford University Press
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2231188
• Peng, T. Q., Zhu, J. J. H., Zhang, L., & Zhong,
Z. J. (2011). “Mapping the Landscape of Internet
Research: Text Mining of Social Science Journal
Articles 2000–2009,” New Media & Society.
DOI: 10.1177/1461444812462846.