Ian Milligan

Niels Brügger

The SAGE Handbook of Web History

"How will the history of the present be written? As life continues to move online, the web becomes ever more important for an understanding of the past. This book offers an original theoretical framework for approaching the web of the past, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right"--

Doing History in the Digital Age

The Archived Web

Web 25: Histories from the First 25 Years of the World Wide Web celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Web. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Web has played an important role in the development of the Internet as well as in the development of most societies at large, from its early grey and blue webpages introducing the hyperlink for a wider public, to today's multifacted uses of the Web as an integrated part of our daily lives. This is the first book to look back at 25 years of Web evolution, and it tells some of the histories about how the Web was born and has developed. It takes the reader on an exciting time travel journey to learn more about the prehistory of the hyperlink, the birth of the Web, the spread of the early Web, and the Web's introduction to the general public in mainstream media. Furthermore, case studies of blogs, literature, and traditional media going online are presented alongside methodological reflections on how the past Web can be studied, as well as accounts of how one of the most important source types of our time is provided, namely the archived Web. Web 25: Histories from the First 25 Years of the World Wide Web is a must-read for anyone interested in how our online present has been shaped by the past.

Histories from the First 25 Years of the World Wide Web

Web 25

The Web has been with us now for almost 25 years. An integral part of our social, cultural and political lives, ‘new media’ is simply not that new anymore. Despite the rapidly expanding archives of information at our disposal, and the recent growth of interest in web history as a field of research, the information available to us still far outstrips our understanding of how to interpret it. The SAGE Handbook of Web History marks the first comprehensive review of this subject to date. Its editors emphasise two main different forms of study: the use of the web as an historical resource, and the web as an object of study in its own right. Bringing together all the existing knowledge of the field, with an interdisciplinary focus and an international scope, this is an incomparable resource for researchers and students alike. Part One: The Web and Historiography Part Two: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections Part Three: Technical and Structural Dimensions of Web History Part Four: Platforms on the Web Part Five: Web History and Users, some Case Studies Part Six: The Roads Ahead

Ralph Schroeder

The World Wide Web has now been in use for more than 20 years. From early browsers to today’s principal source of information, entertainment and much else, the Web is an integral part of our daily lives, to the extent that some people believe ‘if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist.’ While this statement is not entirely true, it is becoming increasingly accurate, and reflects the Web’s role as an indispensable treasure trove. It is curious, therefore, that historians and social scientists have thus far made little use of the Web to investigate historical patterns of culture and society, despite making good use of letters, novels, newspapers, radio and television programmes, and other pre-digital artefacts.This volume argues that now is the time to ask what we have learnt from the Web so far. The 12 chapters explore this topic from a number of interdisciplinary angles – through histories of national web spaces and case studies of different government and media domains – as well as an introduction that provides an overview of this exciting new area of research.

Using Web Archives to Understand the Past and the Present

The Web as History

This is the first edited volume to put the emerging field of web history on the agenda of internet research. Sixteen original chapters investigate how the use of the web has developed in the realm of web culture at large, as well as how the organization of web industries and old media institutions on the web have changed. A number of fundamental theoretical and methodological questions related to doing web history are also examined. The collection aims to explore some of the possible ways of approaching the web of the past, based on the assumption that the past is not only important for historical purposes, but because it must be taken into consideration in order to fully understand the web of the present and the web of the future. The book includes a foreword by Charles Ess and contributions from Kirsten Foot, Steven Schneider, Alexander Halavais, Ken Hillis, and more.

Web History

Valérie Schafer

Gerard Goggin

In 2017, the new journal Internet Histories was founded. As part of the process of defining a new field, the journal editors approached leading scholars in this dynamic, interdisciplinary area. This book is thus a collection of eighteen short thought-provoking pieces, inviting discussion about Internet histories. They raise and suggest current and future issues in the scholarship, as well as exploring the challenges, opportunities, and tensions that underpin the research terrain. The book explores cultural, political, social, economic, and industrial dynamics, all part of a distinctive historiographical and theoretical approach which underpins this emerging field. The international specialists reflect upon the scholarly scene, laying out the field’s research successes to date, as well as suggest the future possibilities that lie ahead in the field of Internet histories. While the emphasis is on researcher perspectives, interviews with leading luminaries of the Internet’s development are also provided. As histories of the Internet become increasingly important, Internet Histories is a useful roadmap for those contemplating how we can write such works. One cannot write many histories of the 1990s or later without thinking of digital media – and we hope that Internet Histories will be an invaluable resource for such studies. This book was originally published as the first issue of the Internet Histories journal.

Niels Brügger

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