INTRODUCTION: Internet Research as It Isn't, Is, Could Be, and Should Be

The articles included here are a self-reflexive effort by a diverse group of scholars to answer this question. Among the specific queries authors were invited to consider were the extent to which Internet research is an academic “field” or “discipline,” what it means to label this field, whether “Internet research” is the right name, and what this field might learn from the histories of other interdisciplinary fields. The essays collected here provide a remarkably consistent portrait of this emerging domain, offering a collective critique of what we have created, what we should become, and what we fear becoming. The motivation for this issue arose through my work with the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), an association I helped to create and which I served as president during the time this issue was crafted. As recently as late 1998, AoIR was only an idea batted around by a small group of young scholars feeling somewhat out of place within their disciplines. When we began our mailing list, air-l, in November 1998, we had 14 subscribers. Two years later, we held our first conference, which Jeremy Hunsinger and I organized, at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. We dreamed of an international conference bringing together top scholars from multiple disciplines all around the world. We hoped in our more realistic moments for a crowd of at least 100, some of whom might come from outside the midwestern United States. We were not prepared to see our vision manifest itself in the group