Academic attitudes toward new media: An exploratory multidisciplinary study

Abstract

This paper looks at the attitudes of UK academics toward new media, utilising organisational and sociocultural understandings of fields of scholarly enquiry. It focuses on four traditionally distinct disciplines-Creative Arts and Design, Computer Science, Health Science, Politics and International Relationsrepresentative of the range of approaches in higher education. Agreement was found among respondents across disciplinary communities about what new media represent and how they support their work. Analysis of semantic differential charts identified two dimensions underlying attitudes-'Flexibility' and 'Fitness for Scholarly Purposes'. Rather than being anchored by epistemological divisions, new media are assessed by practical viewpoints relating to the activity types they allow, and traditional measures of reliability.