Internet studies

A nice litle rant over at creativity/machine concerning trends in Internet studies. I'm sure that people in both this field and others will recognise Jean Burgess's description:

...a field which is not so much emerging as it is in the process of lockdown; validating itself as Serious and Important work via the tried-and-true technique of erecting a scaffolded structure of positivist social science research around the otherwise maddenly elusive [field name], furnishing the rooms with Big Topics (Regulation, Governance, and Law) that map nicely onto Big Institutions and decorating them with numbers - lots and lots of numbers.