This video from a presentation by Charli Carpenter has been posted a number of places. I first saw it over at the Monkey Cage. She poses a number of questions about how “new media” – facebook, blogs, twitter, youtube, etc. – and its use by IR scholars might be changing the relationship between IR scholarship and the world, and the nature of IR scholarship.

One thing she discusses is how new media “flattens” some of the hierarchies in our discipline, making it easier for a broader range of scholars to have their voices heard. And, via such mechanisms as comments on blogs, it may also internationalize and diversify the audience for our scholarship. As an Africanist, I have some doubts as to whether the flattening she discusses applies much to African scholarship and voices… but it might be that the new media is better than the previous status quo.