Of, By, and For the Internet: New Media Studies and Public Scholarship

Abstract

This paper proposes we must actively work to craft a new media studies of, by, and for the internet, one that must seek to transform rather than simply disrupt both scholarship and the broader social landscape, or our online scholarly practices will certainly reinscribe existing hierarchies and inequities. New media studies, of, by, and for the internet is not the abstract and utopian dream for perfect communication envisioned in the early 1990s, suited to more idealistic aims of seamless transmission of information. It is about whose speech is suppressed, by what means, and how this suppression can be countered. It is about the care work entailed in seeking social change, accounting for the toll this care work exacts, and sharing that load more equitably by extending material and emotional supports to those from whom this work demands the highest personal costs. I consider viral academic speech as offering the opportunity to develop and sustain new modes of "public/scholarship," beginning from examining a viral academic speech event that happened to me.