<P> As Barry Wellman argues , internet studies may find its beginnings with the 1978 publication of The Network Nation , 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 . 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 . Some of these investigations , like the Pew Internet & American Life project and the World Internet Project 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 ( 1986 -- 1996 ) 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 . </P>
<P> As Barry Wellman argues , internet studies may find its beginnings with the 1978 publication of The Network Nation , 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 . 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 . Some of these investigations , like the Pew Internet & American Life project and the World Internet Project 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 ( 1986 -- 1996 ) 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 . </P>
when did communication scholars start to research new technologies like the internet
when did communication scholars start to research new technologies like the internet
1978
1978