Mediated Communication and the Evolving Science System: Mapping the Network Architecture of Knowledge Production

Abstract

The advent of electronic media into the academic environment has forever changed the way academics communicate, perform their research, and contribute to the production of knowledge.These relatively recent changes in the mode of knowledge production have been theorized by Gibbons (et al; 1994) as a shift from Mode I to Mode II which indicates a move away from knowledge production in traditional research contexts to an environment in which knowledge is created in broader, trans-disciplinary social and economic contexts. Similar arguments have been made in two significant OECD publications (1996, 1997), where the advent of electronic media is considered part and parcel of this shift in the predominant mode of knowledge production. The increasing use of electronic media for communication and the current changes in the ways that knowledge is produced are mutually implicated phenomena, and this introduces a problematic: what is the relationship between print and electronic media with respect to how knowledge is produced in academic environments? In part, this problematic motivates this thesis