The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) is a learned society dedicated to the advancement of the transdisciplinary field of Internet studies. Founded in 1999, it is an international, member-based support network promoting critical and scholarly Internet research, independent from traditional disciplines and existing across academic borders.
AoIR was formally founded on May 30, 1999, at a meeting of nearly sixty scholars at the San Francisco Hilton and Towers, following initial discussions at a 1998 conference at Drake University entitled "The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory: Metaphor, Magic & Power". The inaugural conference was organised by Nancy Baym, Jeremy Hunsinger and Steve Jones at the University of Kansas in 2000, and attracted 300 scholars. As the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, its rapid growth during the first few years of its existence marked the coming of age of Internet studies. It has continued to grow, with a membership of approximately 1000 scholars. It supports AIR-L, a mailing list with over 7,000 subscribers.
AoIR holds an annual academic conference, as well as promoting online discussion and collaboration through a long-running mailing list. It also hosts a Mastodon instance, AoIR.social.
Activities The Association supports scholarly communication in a number of ways: It organizes an annual, peer-reviewed scholarly conference, which accepts paper and presentation submissions from all disciplines. As part of its annual conference, it hosts an annual one day interdisciplinary Doctoral Colloquium for Ph.D. students and an Early Career Researchers event for professionals who are in their first academic positions following the completion of the Ph.D. It hosts the AIR-L mailing list with over 5000 subscribers. It has published multiple editions of the Internet Research Annual with Peter Lang. It hosts working groups that produce reports of interest to researchers in the field, most notably the AoIR Guide on Ethical Online Research. It co-sponsors an annual issue of the journal Information, Communication and Society consisting of top papers from the annual conference. It publishes Selected Papers of Internet Research (SPIR), an open-access online collection of papers presented at the annual conference. It curates videos of its keynote and some of its other speakers on its YouTube page.
Conferences 2026 - AoIR 2026: Regenerations, Mexico City, Mexico 2025 - AoIR 2025: Ruptures, Niterói, Brazil 2024 – AoIR 2024: Industry, Sheffield, United Kingdom 2023 – AoIR 2023: Revolutions, Philadelphia, United States 2022 – AoIR 2022: Decolonising the Internet, Dublin, Ireland 2021 – AoIR 2021: Independence (online) 2020 – AoIR 2020: Life (online) 2019 – AoIR 2019: Trust in the System, Brisbane, Australia 2018 – AoIR 2018: Transnational Materialities, Montreal, Canada 2017 – AoIR 2017: Networked Publics, Tartu and Tallinn, Estonia 2016 – AoIR 2016: Internet Rules! Berlin, Germany 2015 – Internet Research 16: Digital Imaginaries, Phoenix, United States 2014 – Internet Research 15: Boundaries and Intersections, Daegu, South Korea 2013 – Internet Research 14: Resistance + Appropriation, Denver, United States 2012 – Internet Research 13: Technologies, Salford, United Kingdom 2011 – Internet Research 12: Performance and Participation, Seattle, United States 2010 – Internet Research 11: Sustainability, Participation, Action, Gothenburg, Sweden 2009 – Internet Research 10: Internet: Critical, Milwaukee, United States 2008 – Internet Research 9: Rethinking Communities, Rethinking Place, Copenhagen, Denmark 2007 – Internet Research 8: Let's Play!, Vancouver, Canada 2006 – Internet Research 7: Internet Convergences, Brisbane, Australia 2005 – Internet Research 6: Internet Generations, Chicago, United States 2004 – Internet Research 5: Ubiquity?, Brighton, England 2003 – Internet Research 4: Broadening the Band, Toronto, Canada 2002 – Internet Research 3: Net/Work/Theory, Maastricht, Netherlands 2001 – Internet Research 2: InterConnections, Minneapolis, United States 2000 – Internet Research 1: The State of the Interdiscipline, Lawrence, United States
Presidents
#NameTerm1Steve Jones1999–20032Nancy Baym2003–20053Matthew Allen2005–20074Charles Ess2007–20095Mia Consalvo2009–20116Alexander Halavais2011–20137 Lori Kendall2013–20158 Jennifer Stromer-Galley2015–20179 Axel Bruns2017–201910Lynn Schofield Clark2019–202111Tama Leaver2021–202312Nicholas John2023–202513Sarah T. Roberts2025–2027
References
External links AoIR Web Site Air-L, the AoIR listserv Ethical decision-making and Internet research: Recommendations from the AoIR ethics working committee