Gauntlett or Silver?

Gauntlett or Silver? Who is more right? Who can tell the truth and nothing but the truth?

The difference of approaching the filed of web studies of two authors is significant. We can say this firmly if we compare only the introduction of both books (Gauntlett’s Web.Studies 2nd ed. and Silver’s Critical Cyberculture Studies). Different approach and different focus gives the different result. And how the approach, focus and result differes? We can say that the main difference is the following:

For Silver we can say that he is more theory-oriented, and for Gauntlett that he is more practice-oriented. If Looking through the glass of Williams‘s dichotomy high culture / popular culture, we can state that Silver represents high (web)culture and for Gauntlett that he represents the popular (web) culture. Before making the analysis we can finally stress that Silver offers more bird’s-eye view theory and Gauntlett more forg’s-eye view theory.

Silver is more interested in how internet studies are developing as an academic filed (showing the development with the help of Beaubine’s, Hogan’s and George’s four stage model). He is making the up-to-date overview of authours, literature, journals and academic centers. After elaborating the „academic“ perspecitive of the filed he highlights three cruical elmenets of the filed (historical contexts, social contexts and cultural difference). As Silver‘s focus are web studies as the the new discipline he structures his book into four sections: I) Fielding the filed, II) Critical approaches and methods, III) Cultural difference in/and cyberculture and IV) Critical histories of the recent pasts. Main effort of his book is making the overview of the field, making the basis on which others who come behind him can build and re-build.

On the other side Gauntlett shows himself as more practice-oriented scholar. As the one who analyses the popular forms of cyber culture. All his findings, of course, have the relation to the theoretical background, but because his focus is practical, he makes his intruduction to the filed differently. He drives us through different phenomena of cyberculture: internet, www, HTML, ASP, Flash, Google, Amazon, blogs, Wired…As he builds his book on the basis of practical happening in cyberculture, he structures his book very differently as Silver: I) Introduction, II) Web life, identities, arts and Culture, III) Web business, economics and capitalism and IV) Global web communities, politics and protest. In realtion to this structure he finds the following issues important: expression, communities, anonymity, identity, web-business and influence of web on politics and international relations.

If we answer the question from the title: Gauntlett or Silver? Pracatice or Theory? Both, because this is the only way to paint the truth and find out the true eseence of different aspects of modern networked society. Both because, they are the just the different side of the same coin.

References

• Silver, D. 2006. Critical Cyberculture Studies, Chapter: Introduction-Where is Internet Studies?, 1-14, New York: New York University Press. Available at: http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/0814740235intro.pdf

• Gauntlett, D. 2004. Web.Studies, 2nd ed., Chapter: Introduction. Available at: http://www.newmediastudies.com/intro2004p.htm