University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 5-2002 The Diffusion of New Media Scholarship: Power, Innovation, and Resistance in Academe Judith R. Edminster University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Edminster, Judith R., "The Diffusion of New Media Scholarship: Power, Innovation, and Resistance in Academe" (2002). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/1520 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Contents Title Page Abstract Overview Methodology THE DIFFUSION OF NEW MEDIA SCHOLARSHIP: POWER, The Origin and INNOVATION, AND RESISTANCE IN ACADEME Development of the Dissertation Genre ● Current Value by ● Traditional Print ● Genre Theory Current ETD Initiatives JUDITH R. EDMINSTER ● International Initiative ● UMI Role A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment ● US Innovators of the requirements for the degree of ● Best Practices Doctor of Philosophy ● Graduate Department of English Education College of Arts and Sciences ● Challenges to University of South Florida Diffusion ● Training Issues ● Recommendations May 2002 The Diffusion of ETDs ● Relative Advantages Major Professor: Joseph M. Moxley, Ph.D. ● Compatibility Committee Members: James A. Inman, Ph.D. with Academic Debra Jacobs, Ph.D. Norms Rosann Webb Collins, Ph.D. ● Communication Barry Maid, Ph.D. ● Complexity, Trialability, Observability The University of South Florida ETD Pilot Project Sound Files and Sample ETDs References THE DIFFUSION OF NEW MEDIA SCHOLARSHIP: POWER, INNOVATION, AND RESISTANCE IN ACADEME by JUDITH R. EDMINSTER A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida May 2002 Major Professor: Joseph M. Moxley, Ph.D. Committee Members: James A. Inman, Ph.D. Debra Jacobs, Ph.D. Rosann Webb Collins, Ph.D. Barry Maid, Ph.D. Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are an evolving genre of graduate student research that is gaining widespread acceptance among universities in the international community. ETDs are also beginning to diffuse slowly among American universities; however, a number of issues continue to work against more rapid adoption among intitutions in the United States. This dissertation examines ETDs as an evolving electronic research genre by (1) historicizing the situated development of its predecessor, the traditional print dissertation, in nineteenth century German and American Universities; (2) reporting on the current state of the Networked Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations, an initiative of Virginia Polytechnic University; (3) analyzing ETDs as a technological innovation undergoing the diffusion process according to Emmet Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory; and (4) presenting the results of an ETD pilot project ethnography carried out at the University of South Florida. Overview The work of scholarship is inseparable from the practice of writing. The Greek alphabet itself was devised with the goal of creating a means of representing reality that would foster and cultivate the cognitive capability of abstraction essential for rational thought. For hundreds of years, scholars labored to produce written scholarly work by hand. With the coming of print culture, not only were they able to produce knowledge more efficiently, but the nature and process of scholarship itself was in many ways transformed by the new medium. Today, information technology promises a new wave of change for the practice of knowledge production. Powerful search engines speed the process of data collection in every discipline; synchronous and asynchronous online communication facilitate the rapid dissemination of conversation within scholarly communities; electronic publication promises an unprecedented proliferation of new scholarship at the same time it threatens the conventions of “gatekeeping” and peer review. And, resistance to this rapid and revolutionary transformation of professional scholarship resounds in every corner of the university. As academe continues to move cautiously toward adopting various forms of digital scholarship, graduate students will play a key role in moving beyond this resistance. At the opening reception of a recent Computers and Writing conference entitled, Evolution, Revolution, and Implementation: Computers and Writing for Global Change, Professor William Condon of Washington State University noted that it is graduate student research and publication in the computers and writing community which is the most active and productive site for the construction of new knowledge. Although I agree with Condon and am inclined to think that his statement holds true for many other fields of study as well, it is also true that traditional models of graduate research production, particularly the print dissertation, impose significant constraints on both graduate research and its availability to the scholarly community. Despite the transformative, (r)evolutionary potential that electronic forms of writing and publication offer new scholarship, graduate theses and dissertations are still written and published in linear print and subsequently shelved away in university libraries where the vast majority simply gather dust, read by perhaps one or two interested researchers who access them in print, often for a fee. Most are never read at all. Digital libraries of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) offer an alternative to this waste of valuable scholarship. In addition, they offer researchers new opportunities to explore the possibilities electronic writing offers for developing new genres of academic scholarship. The Networked Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), housed at Virginia Polytechnical University servers, is one such digital initiative that has gained the support of several international and American colleges and universities since its inception in 1996. Their several objectives include: increasing the availability of student research to scholars; preserving theses and dissertations electronically without a paper copy; and empowering graduate students to convey a richer message through the use of multimedia and hypermedia technologies. Not unexpectedly, resistance to such innovative efforts to transform or, in Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s conceptual terminology, to remediate academic scholarship, is fairly widespread (5). Despite the growing number of pilot projects at American universities that address the need to prepare graduate students to conduct and publish their research utilizing new technology, academic administrators and faculty continue to struggle with moving beyond the traditional modes of research and publication, citing everything from the superiority of acid-free paper, to the dangers electronic publication poses for the protection of intellectual property rights in support of their resistance. My argument for the remediation of the traditional print dissertation, the primary genre associated with graduate student research, both acknowledges and addresses the nature of this resistance. I suggest that some resistance to ETDs is analogous to the resistance toward the mass reproduction of art voiced by Walter Benjamin. In his 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin expresses his ambivalence toward the mass reproduction of original works of art. On the one hand, mechanical reproduction of an original work of art destroys the “aura” of the historical context in which it is embedded; on the other hand, “technology creates a new kind of political or revolutionary potential for mass art, a potential that can also be dangerous” (Bolter and Grusin 73-4). The aura produced by an original work of art confers a kind of authority on both its creator and the particular representation of reality the work offers. Mass access to art thus creates the potential for the interrogation of that authority. Benjamin’s central question becomes: “What are we entitled to ask from a work of art?” Must it remain original, unique, and relatively inaccessible as it hangs on a museum wall? The same question can be asked in the context of academe: “What are we entitled to ask from a work of scholarship?” Must it remain original, unique, and relatively inaccessible as it gathers dust on a library shelf? And further, does the revolutionary potential of unlimited access to knowledge by multiple audiences via the World Wide Web perhaps pose the same threat to the scholarly elite as the mass reproduction of art once did to the artistic elite? Just as the remediation of art through mass reproduction brings audiences closer to the work, the digital remediation of scholarly publication will bring both scholarly and general audiences closer to the research; in the case of multimedia works, audiences are presented with the opportunity to construct knowledge on multiple cognitive levels. One of the most popular electronic dissertations published in the NDLTD is an architectural student’s research into the space of Middle Eastern Turkish coffee shops; what could be a more immediate experience