International Relations 2.0: The Implications of New Media for an Old Profession 1 Charli Carpenter University of Massachusetts Amherst Daniel W. Drezner The Fletcher School, Tufts University The International Relations (IR) profession has not fully taken stock of the way in which user-driven information technologies—including Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia—are reshaping our professional activities, our subject matter, and even the constitutive rules of the discipline itself. In this study, we reflect on the ways in which our own roles and identities as IR scholars have evolved since the advent of ‘‘Web 2.0’’: the second revolution in communications technology that redefined the relationship between producers and consumers of online information. We focus on two types of new media particularly relevant to the practice and the profession of IR: blogs and social networking sites. Keywords: Web 2.0, social networking, blogs, international studies Consider the following parables. A senior International Relations (IR) scholar writes a moderately successful blog. Mired in papers that need to be graded, he procrastinates by dashing off a quick post about bad student writing, announcing a contest for his fellow IR scholars to submit the worst sentences they have seen in their papers. This post attracts a lot of amusing comments and links, as well as some interesting sugges- tions about how to improve student writing. Some of the professor’s own students, however, take umbrage at the implied critique of their writing skills. After hearing such complaints in his comments, 2 and from a student listserv, the professor wonders if he crossed a line in his post. A junior IR scholar goes to a job interview in 2006, and is asked about a phe- nomenon called ‘‘Facebook’’ over dinner. Ensconced in a graduate school of public and international affairs, the job candidate is unfamiliar with the (then) undergraduate craze. Returning home, and wondering if she blew her interview when she replied ‘‘Facebook, what’s that?’’ the assistant professor starts looking into the ‘‘Facebook’’ phenomenon, not sure what she is getting into. Before she 1 We are grateful to Henry Farrell, Stu Shulman, Patrick Meier, David Kinsella, Alex Montgomery, Steve Saideman, Dan Nexon, Jason Wilson, and Susan Glasser for their assistance and feedback. 2 For example, one student suggested a counter-contest entitled, ‘‘Worst Typographical Error by a College Pro- fessor in a Blog Post Intended to Poke Fun at Typographical Errors in Student Papers.’’ Accessed at http:// www.danieldrezner.com/archives/003637.html#459527, February 2009. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-3585.2010.00407.x Ó 2010 International Studies Association International Studies Perspectives (2010) 11, 255–272.