[Air-L] WebCultures: a new mailing list for web history and allied fields

Michael Stevenson mpstevenson at gmail.com
Wed Aug 27 02:19:08 PDT 2014


*Apologies for cross-posting*

Dear colleagues,

Please consider subscribing to WebCultures, a new mailing list for web history and allied fields.

http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/webcultures_listcultures.org

WebCultures aims to bring together a growing number of researchers in the fields of web and internet history as well as the many archivists, artists, theorists, ethnographers, social scientists, critics and practitioners whose work intersects with the history of the web and new media culture. 

Ideally, the list will provide relevant announcements as well as a space for rich discussion and collaboration, for example around the following topics and questions:

Mapping the field 
What are established and emerging themes in web and internet history? Is it already possible to map a web historiography, in the sense of an overview of canonical questions, approaches and knowledge? How does existing work address the range of possible histories of web cultures, producers and users, media and communication forms, websites and platforms, web aesthetics, standards and protocols, software and programming languages, groups and institutions?

Education 
Where do web and internet history fit in existing media studies and communications programs? What kinds of digital media history courses are being developed? Should students born in the 1990s learn about Gopher or the development of RSS - and if so, what are the best ways to interest and motivate them?

Resources and methods
What on- and offline archives related to web and internet history are available, and how else is this history being preserved?  What methods and tools are available for web archiving and for mining existing web archives? How can knowledge of the specific problems involved in doing web history be pooled?

Relationship to other domains 
How can web history build on existing work in media and communications history? What does it have to offer research focused on newer objects of study such as social media platforms and the Whatsapp generation of communication apps? Conversely, how does the appearance of these new objects affect how we view and research web history? 

Institutionalization
What is the discipline’s status? What conferences, journals, funding opportunities and jobs are out there, or should be out there?

Of course, this list of topics may prove to be too ambitious, or not ambitious enough. Hopefully, at the very least, the mailing list will provide a better sense of who’s working in this fast-growing field. For any questions or subscription issues, please contact the list administrator (me) at michael [at] webcultures.org.

Michael Stevenson 
Assistant Professor New Media & Digital Culture 
Dept. of Journalism Studies
University of Groningen
http://www.webcultures.org/
http://twitter.com/_mstevenson




More information about the Air-L mailing list