Paper short abstract:

Media anthropology as a sub-discipline emerged in such a moment that it offered a vitalizing power into the ongoing disciplinary crisis of anthropology. While doing this, it made anthropologists powerful scholarly players in the rapidly emerging field of social scientific studies of Internet.

Paper long abstract:

After 1980's fundamental and unintendedly destructive critique (like in "Writing Cultures"), Media studies was one of the major attempts in recalibrating the discipline in the study of modern society. With a dynamic rethinking of theoretical perspectives and methodological novelty towards mass media compared to other disciplines, I do believe Media anthropology not only refreshed and empowered anthropologists in crisis but began to offer novel approaches for Media Studies. At the same period, we have witnessed a rapid emergence of a new media starting by late 1990s: Internet. Social scientific study of Internet was a challenge for all disciplines but Media anthropologists were already dynamically involved in a quest to create a sub-discipline and unlike other disciplines, anthropologists did not imagine Internet as a totally new phenomena but could capture the very emergence of a new media (No need to mention much emphasis on "emergence" in early 2000s). Subjects of e-seminars in the Media Anthropology Network demonstrate how smoothly media anthropology began to cover old and new media and began to offer insights for both the discipline and the other disciplines interested in media studies.