Internet studies - two approaches

Comparing two introduction articles on the same topic (at first sight) reveals quite different approach to the subject of internet studies. David Gauntlett in Web.Studies presents internet media as any other popular media stressing its’ usability potential with putting people in the centre of it: “New media would be nothing if it wasn’t meaningful to people,….” Gauntlett includes in the book several important issues from participatory media like blogs, wikis which returns media to its “authentic, community roots”, to the attention “the scarce resource, which everybody on the web is struggling for.” He points to the main issues in web studies which are gathered around individual – possibility of expressing oneself, building the community and expressions of identity. The author basically encompasses major areas of everyday life that influences the web and vice versa. They are presented from the very basic, user’s standpoint of view and remains on the surface of the individual field of discussion. The problem is that web studies are influenced by so many other disciplines, that it can not be studied as a whole in one package. With that approach we can only get crumbs of it.

On the other side is David Silver with more theoretical approach, trying to define the status of the Internet studies as a discipline, seeing it as an interdiscipline, where “traditional disciplinary approaches can help inform our understanding of new sites of study”. Silver stresses the importance of all forms of networked media and culture that surrounds us today with critical cyberculture studies locating its object of study within various overlapping context.

Cyberculture studies still lack theories but considering interdisciplinary approach there is sufficient theoretical base at the moment. Without doubt new theories will emerge as the discipline ripens and the boundaries are set. But with only two decades of research of the field it can be hardly expected to have them by now.