Report from the field on Online Discussion Groups
H-Net Discussion Group
H-SHEAR list, The Early American Republic
Months reviewed: June, August, and September 2004
Who is involved in the discussion?
Who are the members of the discussion community?
Mainly college and university Professors, researchers, journal editors, and independent scholars interested in the history of the early American Republic.
What is being discussed? Does the online discussion serving purposes that are not provided by other media?
1. Announcements for events, conferences, conference panels, seminars, symposia, and calls for papers. Could be and is done in professional historical journals and magazines.
2. Announcements for fellowships. This can be and is done in other media: journals, Perspectives
3. Queries and answers on early American Republic topics. Only the web can provide this service connecting professors and researchers at geographically dispersed colleges and universities. By far, most postings in the logs were of this type.
4. Professors seeking assistance with preparing lessons on the early American Republic. Many looking for lists of primary or secondary sources. This could not be done with such a wide audience in any other medium.
5. Scholarly discussion of a topic in the history of the early Republic.
6. H-Net job guide: could be and is done in other media: journals, Perspectives. H-Net version does provide a
hyperlink to the university website.
7. Interactive book reviews. This could only be done on the web. Helps to enhance scholarly nature of H-SHEAR.
8. Book advertising (8/13 Jan Roland, Liberty Library of Constitutional Classics). This is done as well in other media, but the web provides a larger audience. But does H-SHEAR reach a significantly larger audience than SHEARS' written journal. But advertising on H-SHEAR is free.
Note: Only one "chat" observed in the months I reviewed: a string of comments on the History Channel's "First Invasion" (9/13, 9/14, 9/15, and 9/18)
Examples:
1. Professors seeking assistance with preparing lesson plans (8/10, "Printed Primary Sources" discussion)
2. Interactive book review (8/26, announced and 8/31, review and reply by author)
3. Scholarly discussion (9/19 and following, Beutler "epistemic turn from sound to sight")
Are online history communities real communities?
"Most community ties are specialized and do not form densely knit clusters of relationships. For example, our Toronto research has found that except for kin and small clusters of friends, most members of a person's community network do not really know each other" (Wellman and Gulia).
If community is defined in this way, based on the example of H-SHEAR my answer would have to be yes. H-SHEAR has very specialized community ties - largely professionals seeking research or lesson plan support and conference/job information. Relationships are not densely knit - professional only, no broadly supportive relationships.