The history of media studies shows displacement research, followed by effects research, content and semiotic analysis, the uses and gratifications perspective, and audience and consumption studies ethnography. Episodes of moral panic liberally laced these approaches, driving the research programme and making some funding applications more attractive than others. Online has an open research agenda and huge potential to inform us about ourselves, as well as about the medium and its characteristics. It has already attracted displacement research, and triggered a number of moral panics. Interactivity makes online a far more exciting and challenging venue for research than straightforward consumption studies of mass media.
Online communities offer sites of maximum interactivity and social creativeness.
They are the natural starting point for the post-Y2K research era. It tends to start in our second decade and, for the more interesting among us, it never ends. The phrase 'online community' accepts the community within the context of its environment and its communications ecology. Let's mark the end of the Internet's first decade by paying it the respect it deserves. The author acknowledges the particular contributions of Russell Carman, Marian Palandri and an anonymous reviewer to this paper.