Web History

This study examines the use of visual data analytics as a method for historical investigation of national Webs, using Web archives. It empirically analyzes all graphically designed (non-photographic) images extracted from Websites hosted in the historical .yu domain and archived by the Internet Archive between 1997 and 2000, to assess the utility and value of visual data analytics as a measure of nationality of a Web domain. First, we report that only 23.5% of Websites hosted in the .yu domain over the studied years had their graphically designed images properly archived. Second, we detect significant differences between the color palettes of .yu sub-domains (commercial, organizational, academic, and governmental), as well as between Montenegrin and Serbian Websites. Third, we show that the similarity of the domains’ colors to the colors of the Yugoslav national flag decreases over time. However, there are spikes in the use of Yugoslav national colors that correlate with major developments on the Kosovo frontier.

Niniejszy artykuł stanowi podsumowanie badań ilościowych i jakościowych autorów nad historycznymi materiałami z platformy społecznościowej YouTube. Główny problem badawczy dotyczył kwestii znaczenia narracji historycznej dla współczesnego społeczeństwa polskiego i specyfiki jego świadomości historycznej. Badaniu zostało poddanych 635 filmów z 6 kanałów o tematyce historycznej w latach 2013-2019. Autorzy wskazują na związek między analizą ilościową tematyki filmów z obecnymi w społeczeństwie tendencjami zainteresowania historią. Wskazano na funkcjonowanie trendów dotyczących najbardziej popularnych filmów oraz ich związek z warstwą jakościową narracji w nich przedstawionych. Poddano dalszej ewaluacji hipotezę o etnocentrycznym zainteresowaniu historią. Obserwowalna jest przewaga narracji polityczno-militarnej oraz już zauważalnie mniejsza przewaga perspektywy faktograficznej nad procesualną, co staje się sprawą dalszej refleksji autorów. Przeprowadzone badanie wykazało również, iż zainteresowanie historią wyrażone na portalu YouTube potwierdza szczególne miejsce w świadomości historycznej Polaków  narracji poświęconej dziejom XX wieku oraz II Wojny Światowej.

Yahoo's purchase of make-your-own-website platform GeoCities in 1999 and subsequent implementation of a new Terms of Service agreement led to one of the most notable boycotts in Web history. During the "Haunting," GeoCities users stripped their homepages of color and content, replacing blinking GIFs with excerpts of the offending Terms of Service. In this landmark battle over content rights and access control, protestors used the platform antagonistically, disrupting the value of user-generated content and undermining the company's strategic vision for the platform. Within a week, the Haunting of GeoCities successfully forced Yahoo to acquiesce to protestor demands and set enduring standards for Terms of Service that preserved greater rights for content creators. This case study from the early Web demonstrates how access is always bound up in a struggle over control and offers a timely reminder of how users have been-and can be-vital agents of platform politics.

Disappeared websites are the missing pages of web history. We examine over 140 memory narratives of disappeared websites in China, in which 176 disappeared websites are remembered. We find that memories of disappeared websites rarely treat websites as dead objects, machines, or even as media, but more often as people whose death is mourned and memories cherished. They not only narrate the biographies of the websites but also the autobiographies of the storytellers. The main biographical plot in these narratives of disappeared websites is a lovely life that was tragically cut short. Disappeared websites are most remembered for the passion, community, and sense of youthful idealism which they had inspired. Remembrances of disappeared websites are both retrospective and prospective. They resuscitate a lost golden age while expressing voices of protest at Internet censorship. They both highlight and repair a web history marked by disruption and disappearance. Ever since their first appearance, websites everywhere have come and gone. Those which disappear, do so for many different reasons such as financial, political, and managerial.

Pochi strumenti al pari di internet riescono a canalizzare una straordinaria quantità di informazioni destinate a miliardi di utenti e a fungere da cassa di risonanza per numerose ed eterogenee cause mediatiche. I moderni circuiti di comunicazione di massa hanno permesso alla contronarrazione risorgimentale di diffondersi sul web, dove le insorgenze digitali trovano ampi spazi per la propria affermazione nel discorso pubblico. Questo contributo mira a fornire un’analisi delle riletture del brigantaggio su siti internet e social networks, a partire da materiali letterari e audiovisuali elaborati tra XIX e XX secolo. Si mostrano gli strumenti utilizzati a supporto della vulgata antirisorgimentale che, tramite linguaggio diretto, slogan, icone e fotomontaggi, pongono l’utente di fronte a numerose difficoltà al momento di valutarne la veridicità. Si affrontano, sinteticamente, le metodologie della ricerca online, alla luce delle risposte che il web offre a domande di ricerca su brigantaggio e Risorgimento.

Libro disponibile in Open Access sul sito: http://jmc.uniba.it/index.php/prodotti-della-ricerca/

Il volume è stato pubblicato grazie al sostegno del Consiglio di Amministrazione e della Cattedra Jean Monnet dell'Università di Bari, programma Erasmus+.

The essay investigates the evolution of the " narratives of invention " used by the founding fathers of the World Wide Web in a selected corpus of papers written by Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues from 1989 up to 1993 and later in the books of James Gillies and Robert Cailliau and of Berners-Lee himself in 2000. Thanks to a textual analysis that cross these sources, we identify three main sets of common keywords that did not change and three couples of conflicting keywords that depict the evolution of the narratives over time. Change and continuity, intertwined with conservation and innovation, emerge as the key-strategies of the Web's founding fathers in narrating their idea.

The internet has rapidly and dramatically changed the way in which companies operate, sell, communicate. With the internet, even the smallest and most localised business has a potential global reach, and the development of online payment has redefined the selling market in most sectors. Boundaries and borders are being radically re-discussed. However, the fast and dispersed nature of the world wide web makes it particularly difficult to make estimates on the size and growth of a country’s economy online.
This paper analyses the impact that the diffusion of the internet had on UK companies in the mid to late 1990s. In 2010, the United Kingdom enjoyed the world’s largest e-commerce market per capita and the second largest online advertising market ; but how did companies react to the arrival of the internet as a tool for everyday life?
This research attempts to investigate a series of questions related to the creation of online space on part of UK companies between 1996 and 2001; a framework that defines a period in which internet was starting to spread, but it was not as common and as pervasive as it would be in the following decade. In first instance, the paper analyses which types of companies where the first to “evolve” to the digital world; which business sectors were the most proactive; how many UK-based companies opened their websites already in the 1990s, and for which reasons; when did the internet become a fundamental tool for the commercial and communication strategies of British companies, rather than just another medium.
The paper then proceeds to analyse the evolution of the online presence of UK companies with a comparison between the website (or webpage) of a company in the 1990s and the live website. This section addresses the evolution of the structure, graphics and content of companies’ websites; the changes in the aesthetic, in the type of content provided and in the way in which this content is organised for the visitors.  The section also focuses on the creation of digital “addresses” on part of UK businesses, from the choice of internet services providers to decisions regarding the domain (in particular, the choice between the .com domain as opposed to the more “national” and “local” .co.uk). Finally, this part of the research studies the relations between live websites and social networks.
In third instance, the paper attempts to understand which British companies were the first to adopt e-commerce solutions on their websites, and of which type.  This sections also focuses on the relation between UK businesses and the large American platforms for online sales, such as Amazon and Ebay.
Finally, in its fourth and final section the paper reconstructs the debate over the arrival of the internet on the economic press of the time: what was the perception of the impact that the internet would have in the near future on the economy, and what were the expectations and the worries brought about by such a powerful new medium.
In order to provide an answer to the aforementioned questions, the paper uses a combination of online archival sources and a more traditional approach. Most of the research is based on the Internet Archive, accessed through the web engine devised by the British Library in collaboration with the Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities. In addition, the research has been based on live internet sources, mostly live companies’ websites and social networks. The data collected thanks to the digital sources were combined with questionnaires sent to a selection of companies and business archives and with articles from the specialized press published in the period taken in consideration. 
All in all, the paper hopes to provide a first reconstruction of the history of the online presence of economic agents in a specific country and also to provide a set of data and a methodological framework for further research on the relations between the internet and a country’s economic system.

In this article, we propose a methodological outlook for historical platform studies to increase the prominence of platform historiography in the field and practice of web history and archiv-ing. We discuss the challenges of social media archiving and the research opportunities for 'platform' historiography by focusing on the distinctive characteristics of web-based social media 'platforms'. Based on our review of the literature, we argue that it is critical to foreground how contemporary platforms serve multiple user groups beyond end users (e.g. developers, business, investors) and how they operate on multiple levels (e.g. interface, architecture, ecosystem). By attending to the multiple sides and layers of social media beyond their end users only, we can reconstruct histories of platforms, not only as social networks, but also as technical artefacts , business organisations, and more. A focus on the materiality of platforms introduces numerous underutilised archived web sources that present significant entry points and research opportunities for platform historiography. We assess the availability of these archived sources across the leading web archives. Our results show that despite the challenges of social media archiving, platforms' resources are in fact well-preserved if we look beyond their end-user interfaces. Drawing on illustrative examples, we discuss two sets of entry points and materials for platform historiography at length: first, for writing developer-side histories, and second, for business-side histories. We conclude with recommendations for platform historians and archiv-ing practitioners and reflections on the future of platform historiography.