when did communication scholars start to research new technologies like the internet
Internet studies As Barry Wellman argues, internet studies may find its beginnings with the 1978 publication of The Network Nation,[6] and was largely dominated by computer scientists, presenting at venues like the annual CSCW conference. These were quickly joined by researchers in business fields and library and information science.[7] By the late 1990s, more attention was being paid to systematic investigation of users and how they made use of the new technologies. During the 1990s, the rapid diffusion of internet access began to attract more attention from a number of social science and humanities disciplines, including the field of communication.[8] Some of these investigations, like the Pew Internet & American Life project[9] and the World Internet Project[10] framed the research in terms of traditional social science approaches, with a focus less on the technology than on those who use them. But the focus remained at the aggregate level. In the UK, the ESRC Programme on Information and Communications Technologies (1986â€“1996)[11] laid considerable ground work on how society and ICTs interact, bringing together important clusters of scholars from media and communications, society, innovation, law, policy and industry across leading UK universities.