February 9, 2001

Scholars Should Take Care in Studying Internet Use, a Journal Article Warns

One of the pioneers of mass-communication research advises scholars who are studying the Internet to learn from the mistakes of earlier researchers.

In the current issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Guido H. Stempel III and a colleague write that academic research into television audiences lagged behind industry studies, which disseminated inaccurate data that scholars then used.

This time around, Mr. Stempel says, researchers need to