For over a 150 years, there's been a British version of
Who's
Who - a listing of 'people of influence and interest
in all fields'. Similar guides are also published in the
USA, Canada,
Australia
and elsewhere. Of course, in answer to the question 'who's
who?', you might well ask, 'says who?' - or even, 'who cares!'
In other words, who gets to decide who's important and influential
and who's not? And does it really matter anyway?
Well, the reason we've put together a Who's Who in CMC
is because it's another way of getting to know the field
(see Basic
Theory: Unit 1). It's also useful for keeping track
of how the field is developing and changing. So, what we've
done here is to identify a range of scholars and personalities
working in CMC and Internet Studies. In each case, we've
identified where they are, what CMC-related courses they
teach, what their main research interests are, and any other
significant details. Remember, this is not an exhaustive
list.
To visit each person's homepage or website, just click
on their name below.
Nancy
Baym
Department of Communication Studies, University of Kansas,
USA
Professor Baym teaches a CMC course called Interpersonal
Communication and Online Communication. Her main research
interests are: the creation of identity, solidarity and
normative standards for behavior in CMC, and the interplay
between online and offline social life. She was guest editor
in 2003 of a special issue of the Electronic
Journal of Communication on the topic of interpersonal
relationships and the internet. <name
index
Jody
Berland
Department of Humanities, Atkinson College, York University,
Toronto, Canada
Professor Berland teaches Media & Culture in the CMC-related
Joint Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture.
Her main research interests are: cultural studies of nature,
science, technology and the environment; music and the media;
and space and place. She has been working on a book about
culture, technology and space, and is Editor of Topia:
Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. <name
index
Manuel
Castells
Department of Sociology and Department of City and Regional
Planning, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Professor Castells teaches the CMC-related courses Sociology
of the Information Society and Information Technology
and Society. His main research interest is the social
and economic implications of the internet. He has been a
visiting professor at 15 universities in Europe, the United
States, Canada, Asia and Latin America, and has lectured
at about 300 academic and professional institutions in 40
countries. Professor Castells has also been an adviser to
both the United Nations and the European Commission. <name
index
Daniel
Chandler
Department of Theatre, Film & Television Studies, University
of Wales Aberystwyth, Wales, UK
Doctor Chandler teaches the CMC-related courses Mediated
Communication, Media Semiotics, Bent Screens
and Website Design Issues. His main research interests
are in visual semiotics and gay representation in cyberspace.
He also maintains the superb online resource Media
and Communication Studies Site. <name
index
Brenda
Danet
Emerita, Sociology & Communication, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Israel; Research Affiliate, Anthropology, Yale
University, USA
Professor Danet specializes in research on linguistic, social
and visual aspects of writing and communication on the internet. For example,
she is the author of Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (2001) and has been guest
editor of two special issues of the JCMC: Play
and Performance in Computer-mediated Communication (1995) and, with Susan
Herring (see below), The
Multilingual Internet (2003).<name
index
John
December
Department of Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
USA
John December teaches CMC-related courses like Introduction
to the Internet/WWW and Creating WWW Documents.
Although not an academic researcher as such, he is very
well known for establishing and running for many years the
Computer Mediated
Communication Magazine. <name
index
Bosah
Ebo
Department of Communication, Rider University, USA
Professor Ebo teaches CMC-related courses in communication
ethics, public relations and international communication.
His main research interests are in the areas of international
communication and popular culture. He has also co-edited
two books concerned with importants issues of ethics and
equality in cyberspace: Cyberghetto or Cybertopia: Race,
Class and Gender on the Internet and Cyberimperialism:
Global Relations in the New Electronic Frontier. <name
index
David
Gauntlett
The Media School, University of Bournemouth, England, UK
Professor Gauntlett teaches CMC-related courses about the
impact of the media on society and individual identities,
new media and cyberspace. His main research interests are:
media products and the construction of self/self-identity;
the 'power' of the media and the agency of audiences. He
maintains an award-wining online resource called theory.org.uk.
<name index
Donna
Haraway
Department of the History of Consciousness, University of
California at Santa Cruz, USA and Media and Communication,
European Graduate School, Switzerland
Professor Haraway teaches the CMC-related course Human
& Nonhuman: Companion Species. As a visiting professor
at the European
Graduate School she also teaches At the Interface
of Nature and Culture. Her main research interests are
in technoscience, biopolitics, the history of science, cultural
criticism and feminist theory. <name
index
Caroline
Haythornthwaite
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Professor Haythornthwaite teaches the CMC-related courses
Computer-Mediated Communication, Social networks
and Information, and Information, Technology and
Organizations. Her main research interests are: computer-supported
distributed knowledge and learning; social networks and
virtual communities. She has recently co-edited with Barry
Wellman The
Internet in Everyday Life (2002), and with Michelle
Kazmer 'Learning, Culture, and Community: Multiple Perspectives
and Practices in Online Education' (2004).<name
index
Susan
Herring
School of Library and Information
Service, Indiana University at Bloomington, USA.
Professor Herring
is the new editor of the Journal of Compter
Mediated Communication (JCMC). She teaches Content Analysis for World Wide
Web. Gender, language and power in CMC are her main research interests. She
is currently working on a project about pornography on the Web.<name
index
Steve
Jones
Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago
Arguably one of the best-known names in CMC, Professor Jones
was co-founder of the Association
of Internet Researchers (AoIR) and is very well-known
for his edited books about Computer Mediated Communication.
He is a Senior Research Fellow with the Pew
Internet and American Life Project and co-editor of
the journal New
Media and Society. <name
index
James Katz
Department of Communication, School
of Communication, Information and Library Studies, The State
University of New Jersey, USA.
Professor Katz teaches
Mediated Communication and Society, Telecommunications Policy
& Processes and Internet & Society. His
main research interests are the social consequences of personal
communication technologies. Currently he is investigating
mobile phones and the Internet affect social relationships
and how cultural values influence usage patterns of these
technologies.<name
index
Douglas Kellner
Department of
Education, UCLA Graduate School of Education
& Information Studies, Los Angeles, USA.
Professor Kellner is teaching
courses about the philosophy of education. His research
interest has got a broad scope: education and technology/philosophy,
cultural studies as well as politics and media. His last
publication is about <name
index
Sarah Kiesler
Human-Computer Interaction Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh, USA.
Professor Kiesler teaches
Human Computer Interaction and is involved in various
research projects, as for example on Multidisciplinary
collaboration
and distributed work and on Human-robot interaction.
Kiesler applies techniques and theories deriving form
behavioral and social sciences to understand the interaction
between people and technology.<name
index
Robert Kraut
Human-Computer Interaction Institute,
Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie
Mellon University at Pittsburgh, USA.
Professor Kraut teaches
communication in organizations and computers in organizations.
With the experience gained in the telecommunication industry,
he focused his research interest to social psychological
issues of internet, technology & conversation and
computers in organizations. Professor Kraut's work was
the first to demonstrate, based on a representative sample
(national survey), that the internet is not 'harmful'
- contrary to many assertions and predications. He has
also been working with
Sarah Kiesler
(above) on the HomeNet project that investigates the social affect of everyday
use of telecommunication on people's relationships.<name
index
Arthur & Marilouise Kroker
University of Victoria, Canada
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
are the editors and founders of CTHEORY and CTHEORY Multimedia. Arthur Kroker is Canada
Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory the University
of Victoria, Canada (beginning July 1, 2003). Marilouise
Kroker will be Senior Research Scholar at the University
of Victoria beginning July 1, 2003. They are editors of
a new book series with the University of Toronto Press
entitled Digital Futures. Arthur Kroker's most recent
book entitled _The Will to Technology _will be published
in print form in late 2003 and in multimedia format in
fall 2003. Arthur Kroker's most recent project will be
to establish the Pacific Center of Technology and Culture
at the University of Victoria.<name
index
Martin Lea
Department of Psychology, University
of Manchester, UK.
Doctor Lea teaches behavioral
research on the internet and he runs an online graduate
teaching module called Internet@work.
With a background in social psychology, his main research
interest is in social psychological aspects of interaction
mediated by computer technologies and the internet. He
has worked on a project in the British Virtual
Society programme and is currently working on a project
called COMMORG (Communication
and Organization) that is analyzing the social implications
of email communication in organizations, particularly
in relation to organizational trust and identity.<name
index
Leah Lievrou
Department of Information Studies,
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies,
University of California at Los Angeles, USA.
Professor Lievrou teaches
courses such as Human-Computer Interaction,
Information-Seeking
Behavior and Information in society.
She focuses her research on the social and cultural changes
that are associated with CMC as well as on the interaction
between new technologies and knowledge.<name
index
Sonia
Livingstone
Department of Media and Communications,
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Professor Livingstone is
a social psychologist whose more recent work has focused on children, young people
and the internet. For example, she has published books such as: Children and Their
Changing Media Environment (2001, edited with Moira Bovill), The
Handbook of New Media (2002, edited with Leah Lievrouw - see above), and Young
People and New Media (2002). One CMC-related class
which Professor Livingstone teaches is The
Audience in Mass Communications.<name
index
Malcolm
Parks
Department of Communication, University
of Washington at Seattle, USA.
Professor Parks is interested
in the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships
in online environments. Current studies focus on identity
presentation on personal homepages and on relationship
metaphors in e-commerce. He most recently co-authored
a review of research on online interaction for the Handbook of Interpersonal Communication.<name
index
Sheizaf Rafaeli
Graduate School of Business, University
of Haifa, Israel.
Professor Rafaeli is founding
editor (since 1993) of the Journal of Computer
Mediated Communication (JCMC). He is currently teaching Communication Technologies
and Social Change and classes in e-commerce. His main research interest are
interactivity, subjective value of information, information sharing, and the notions
of network topologies, disintermediation and reintermediation. Some of the work
for which Professor Rafaeli is very well known includes a 1998 book Network
and NetPlay and the ProjectH
collaboration.<name index
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold has written
many articles and books on Cyberspace communities, education
and technology, technology criticism and technology and
democracy. His most recent publication is Smart Mobs:
The Next Social Revolution. Rheingold is leading the "brainstorm
community"- a virtual pool for people coming from various
fields sharing ideas about any kind of topic.<name
index
David Silver
Department of Communication, University
of Washington at Seattle, USA.
Doctor Silver's research
interests focuses generally around the intersections between
computers, the internet, and contemporary American cultures,
and more specifically on the social and cultural construction
of cyberspace. Since 1996, he has been building The
Resource Center
for Cyberculture Studies an online, not-for-profit
organization.<name
index
James
Slevin
Institute for Communication, Journalism
and Information Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark.
Amsterdam School of Communication Studies, Amsterdam University,
The Netherlands.
Professor Slevin's CMC-related
research interests are social aspects of communication
and modern culture, with particular reference to the development
and the impact of the internet and related networks. He
currently teaches Computer Mediated Communication
at Roskilde University and the course The Internet:
Between Commerce and Culture at the University of
Amsterdam.<name
index
Sandy
Stone
Department of Radio-TV-Film, Advanced Communication Technologies
Laboratory (ACTLab), University of Texas at Austin, USA
and Media and Communication, European Graduate School
at Wallis, Switzerland.
Professor Stones research
interests cover a wide range of topics, from performance and performance theory,
phenomenology of interface and interaction, virtual systems to the traffic in
the boundaries between art and technology, to name only some of them. Stone teaches
Simulation of Body and Desire at The European Graduate School. She founded
the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) in Austin,
Texas, where she also teaches CMC-related classes.<name
index
Russell Spears
School of Psychology, Cardiff University,
Wales, UK
Professor Spears' research
interests include social stereotyping, intergroup relations,
social influence and social-psychological aspects of computer-mediated
communication. He is currently editor of the British Journal
of Social Psychology.<name
index
Stelarc
Cyber Performance Artist, West Melton
Victoria, Australia. Principal Research Fellow in the
Performance Arts Digital Research Unit, Nottingham Trent
University, UK.
Stelarc is an Australian-based
performance artist whose work explores and extends the
concept of the body and its relationship with technology
through human-machine interfaces incorporating medical
imaging, prosthetics, robotics, VR systems and the Internet.
The interest is in alternate, intimate and involuntary
experiences. Prosthetic
Head and Fractal
Flesh for example are two of a range of Stelarc's
cyberart projects.<name
index
Sherry Turkle
Program in Science, Technology , and
Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
USA
Professor Turkle is studying
a range of objects, including "affective" computer
programs, humanoid robots and games that simulate people,
creatures and societies. She is running another current
research project in the area of "things and thinking"
which looks at the impact of using screens and simulation
technologies on a range of professions. Professor Turkle
founded the MIT initiative on technology and self. Within this program,
she offers the seminar Technology and Self.<name
index
Nina Wakeford
Department of Sociology, University
of Surrey, Guilford, UK
Doctor Wakeford's main
research interests concern the sociology of technology:
computing, the internet and associated multimedia industries
and the methodology for studying new media and technologies.
She currently teaches classes on the Sociology of New Technologies and Contemporary ethnography and innovative methodologies at the University
of Surrey.<name
index
Joseph B. Walther
The Department of Communication, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Professor Walther conducts
research concerning the social, professional, and cooperative
issues in CMC. He is interested in the interpersonal effects
of technology and currently teaches CMC-related courses
such as Communication in Cyberspace, and CMC
in Distributed Groups. He is also the editor of the
Journal of Online Behavior.<name
index
