9781911307556
9781911307426
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 question 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.
296 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2017
Free digital open access editions are available to download from UCL Press.
Reviews
Table of Contents
"Introduction: The Web as History
Ralph Schroeder and Niels Brügger
PART ONE THE SIZE AND SHAPE OF WEB DOMAINS
1. Analysing the UK web domain and exploring 15 years
of UK universities on the web
Eric T. Meyer, Taha Yasseri, Scott A. Hale, Josh Cowls,
Ralph Schroeder and Helen Margetts
2. Live versus archive: Comparing a web archive to
a population of web pages
Scott A. Hale, Grant Blank and Victoria D. Alexander
3. Exploring the domain names of the Danish web
Niels Brügger, Ditte Laursen and Janne Nielsen
PART TWO MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT
4. The tumultuous history of news on the web
Matthew S. Weber
5. International hyperlinks in online news media
Josh Cowls and Jonathan Bright
6. From far away to a click away: The French state
and public services in the 1990s
Valérie Schafer
PART THREE CULTURAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES
7. Welcome to the web: The online community of GeoCities
during the early years of the World Wide Web
Ian Milligan
8. Using the web to examine the evolution of the
abortion debate in Australia, 2005–2015
Robert Ackland and Ann Evans
9. Religious discourse in the archived web: Rowan Williams,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sharia law
controversy of 2008
Peter Webster
10. ‘Taqwacore is Dead. Long Live Taqwacore’ or punk’s not dead?:
Studying the online evolution of the Islamic punk scene
Meghan Dougherty
11. Cultures of the UK web
Josh Cowls
12. Coda: Web archives for humanities research –
some reflections
Jane Winters"
Ralph Schroeder and Niels Brügger
PART ONE THE SIZE AND SHAPE OF WEB DOMAINS
1. Analysing the UK web domain and exploring 15 years
of UK universities on the web
Eric T. Meyer, Taha Yasseri, Scott A. Hale, Josh Cowls,
Ralph Schroeder and Helen Margetts
2. Live versus archive: Comparing a web archive to
a population of web pages
Scott A. Hale, Grant Blank and Victoria D. Alexander
3. Exploring the domain names of the Danish web
Niels Brügger, Ditte Laursen and Janne Nielsen
PART TWO MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT
4. The tumultuous history of news on the web
Matthew S. Weber
5. International hyperlinks in online news media
Josh Cowls and Jonathan Bright
6. From far away to a click away: The French state
and public services in the 1990s
Valérie Schafer
PART THREE CULTURAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES
7. Welcome to the web: The online community of GeoCities
during the early years of the World Wide Web
Ian Milligan
8. Using the web to examine the evolution of the
abortion debate in Australia, 2005–2015
Robert Ackland and Ann Evans
9. Religious discourse in the archived web: Rowan Williams,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sharia law
controversy of 2008
Peter Webster
10. ‘Taqwacore is Dead. Long Live Taqwacore’ or punk’s not dead?:
Studying the online evolution of the Islamic punk scene
Meghan Dougherty
11. Cultures of the UK web
Josh Cowls
12. Coda: Web archives for humanities research –
some reflections
Jane Winters"