Internet Histories最新文献_第5页

Forgotten passwords and Long-Gone exes: the life and death of Renren 被遗忘的密码和早已逝去的前任：人人网的生与死

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-04-03 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2065153

Lianrui Jia

{"title":"Forgotten passwords and Long-Gone exes: the life and death of Renren","authors":"Lianrui Jia","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2065153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2065153","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Founded in 2005, Renren was a popular and leading Chinese social media network, especially among college students. However, after reaching its heyday in 2011, user growth dwindled and advertisers fled. By 2018, Renren morphed from a social network to a secondhand car sale business. This paper reconstructs the history of Renren and documents its failed transformation from a social network to a platform. Grounded in platform studies and a political economy theoretical framework, this paper traces Renren’s platform evolution from two perspectives: first, from an end user’s point of view, it examines how Renren’s user interface registered and mirrored shifting corporate strategies and platformisation processes writ large; second, given Renren’s status as a privately-owned, publicly-traded and for-profit business entity, the paper examines how Renren pursued different strategies in search of a viable business model and later on in managing shareholder value and profitability. Ultimately, this paper presents the rise and fall of Renren first and foremost as a platform historiography project. It then discusses Renren’s demise by looking retrospectively at changing interface design, business strategies, and financialisation against the broader dynamics and shifting sociocultural uses of the commercial Chinese internet.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":"6 1","pages":"133 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47419297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The rise and fall of MapQuest MapQuest的兴衰

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2057752

R. Wilken

{"title":"The rise and fall of MapQuest","authors":"R. Wilken","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2057752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2057752","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article builds an historical account of the rise and fall of US mapping firm MapQuest. It charts the emergence and rapid rise of MapQuest as a popular early provider of online maps – detailing notable innovations, key developments, and successive ownership changes, and the significance of these for MapQuest – and it documents its equally rapid fall. The article draws on political economy of communication (and geographic political economy) approaches in its analysis of MapQuest. This critical framework is valuable for the way that it draws attention to the different stakeholders involved in controlling and commercialising MapQuest’s applications for web-based and mobile devices, and the structural factors that shape and influence the industries in which it operates. From this analysis, it is argued that a range of factors led to MapQuest’s dramatically diminished market share within the field of online mapping. These included: a lack of revenue generation opportunities; significant map data quality issues; loss of consumer visibility due to search algorithm interference; and a reactive rather than proactive approach to innovation under consecutive owners. This account of MapQuest is important in two ways. First, while MapQuest is a significant firm in the history of contemporary digital mapping, particularly as a pioneer of online distributed mapping, the firm’s history and its contribution to digital mapping remains under-represented in internet histories scholarship. Second, this article contributes to growing interest in and deepening critical understanding of platform precarity, asking: What becomes of platforms when they falter? And what are the factors that contribute to their decline?","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":"6 1","pages":"172 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44674129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Demonstrating and negotiating the adoption of web design technologies: Cascading Style Sheets and the CSS Zen Garden 演示和协商采用网页设计技术:层叠样式表和CSS禅宗花园

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-03-31 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2055274

Derren Wilson, Saeed-Ul Hassan, N. Aljohani, Anna Visvizi, R. Nawaz

{"title":"Demonstrating and negotiating the adoption of web design technologies: Cascading Style Sheets and the CSS Zen Garden","authors":"Derren Wilson, Saeed-Ul Hassan, N. Aljohani, Anna Visvizi, R. Nawaz","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2055274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2055274","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) express the visual design of a website through code and remain an understudied area of web history. Although CSS was proposed as a method of adding a design layer to HTML documents early on in the development of the web, they only crossed from a marginal position to mainstream usage after a long period of proselytising by web designers working towards “web standards”. The CSS Zen Garden grassroots initiative aimed at negotiating, mainstreaming and archiving possible methods of CSS web design, while dealing with varying levels of browser support for the technology. Using the source code of the CSS Zen Garden and the accompanying book, this paper demonstrates that while the visual designs were complex and sophisticated, the CSS lived within an ecosystem of related platforms, i.e., web browsers, screen sizes and design software, which constrained its use and required enormous sensitivity to the possibilities browser ecosystems could reliably provide. As the CSS Zen Garden was maintained for over ten years, it also acts as a unique site to trace the continuing development of web design, and the imaginaries expressed in the Zen Garden can also be related to ethical dimensions that influence the process of web design. Compared to Flash-based web design, work implemented using CSS required a greater willingness to negotiate source code configurations between browser platforms. Following the history of the individuals responsible for creating and contributing to the CSS Zen Garden shows the continuing influence of layer-based metaphors of design separated from content within web source code.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":"7 1","pages":"27 - 46"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43586061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The death of GeoCities: seeking destruction and platform eulogies in Web archives GeoCities的死亡:在网络档案中寻找毁灭和平台颂词

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-03-17 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2051331

Katie Mackinnon

引用次数: 2

“They’re describing Yelp in 1992!”: revisiting the Blacksburg Electronic Village “他们描述的是1992年的Yelp !:重新参观布莱克斯堡电子村

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-03-11 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2049069

Tamara Kneese

{"title":"“They’re describing Yelp in 1992!”: revisiting the Blacksburg Electronic Village","authors":"Tamara Kneese","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2049069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2049069","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Launched in 1993, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV), located in Blacksburg, Virginia and connected to Virginia Tech, was an experiment in community computing. Through its funding models and technologies, the BEV united government, municipal, corporate, and university interests. While it received media attention and scholarly engagement in its prime, the BEV has not yet been reconsidered as part of the larger critical history of virtual communities and platforms. Through primary and secondary accounts of the BEV, I argue that the BEV’s trajectory is emblematic of how communities learn to negotiate going online for the first time, balancing the visions of designers and funders with those of users. The BEV was both a prototype and, later, a laboratory for participatory design, connecting an entire town to the World Wide Web. Its online listings of local businesses and e-commerce hub, known as the Village Mall, applications like MOOSburg—a multi-user domain—and an interactive Virtual School wired the town. The BEV was a small, rural, geographically-situated community used by senior citizens and college students alike, but it was not always inclusive. I point to critical scholarship about the BEV and other early electronic communities to situate the BEV within larger theoretical considerations regarding the relationship between electronic communities and local geographies, the different expectations of designers versus users, and the problems of inclusion, moderation, and control, even when access is provided.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":"6 1","pages":"154 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42144653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

A ‘lifetime of indentured servitude:’ rights, labor, and gender anxieties in a dead men’s rights newsgroup 一个死人权利新闻组中的“终身契约奴役”:权利、劳动和性别焦虑

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-02-14 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2038867

Alexis de Coning

引用次数: 0

The first propaganda war through computer networks: STEM academia and the breakup of Yugoslavia 通过计算机网络进行的第一场宣传战:STEM学术界和南斯拉夫的解体

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2022-02-07 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.1992992

Mato Brautović

{"title":"The first propaganda war through computer networks: STEM academia and the breakup of Yugoslavia","authors":"Mato Brautović","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2021.1992992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2021.1992992","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The history of computer networks is relatively well described in Western literature but some parts of the world have been neglected. This paper explores the first ways in which computer networks were used in Yugoslavia, since these are different from the modes used in the West or Russia, because the dissolution of the country – mixed with its transition from communism to democracy and the wars for independence – created an environment which allowed computer networks to be used in unprecedented ways. The paper uses a mix of historical method, computational methods for collecting and analysing USENET data, semi-structured interview, archival research, and qualitative online observation. The main findings show that access to Western technology and participation in academic networks enabled Yugoslavian STEM academia and hackers to use computer networks for the first computer networks’ propaganda war. Slovenians, Croatians, and Serbians created electronic mailing lists through which they tried to manipulate international actors and to bond the diaspora for a common cause, and they additionally fought in USENET discussion groups by implementing trolling techniques.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":"7 1","pages":"179 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42597793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

“Yakety yak: Don’t talk back”: An autopsy of anonymity gone awry “牦牛：别顶嘴”：匿名尸检出了问题

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2021-12-28 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.2020470

K. Montalbano

引用次数: 0

When Wikipedia met Tor: trials of legitimacy at a key moment in internet history 当维基百科遇到Tor:互联网历史上关键时刻的合法性考验

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2021-12-13 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.2015967

Sebastiaan Gorissen, R. Gehl

引用次数: 0

Situating the Internet as infrastructure: the case of post-socialist Lithuania 将互联网定位为基础设施:后社会主义立陶宛的案例

IF 1.3

Internet Histories Pub Date : 2021-12-13 DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.2000246

Migle Bareikyte

{"title":"Situating the Internet as infrastructure: the case of post-socialist Lithuania","authors":"Migle Bareikyte","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2021.2000246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2021.2000246","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although the Internet is a key global infrastructure, it is still often perceived in an abstract manner by the general public, which tends to disregard how the Internet emerges in different places. In contrast, this paper situates the Internet as infrastructure development in post-socialist Lithuania against the backdrop of multi-sited fieldwork within its telecom industry. Drawing on fieldwork material analysis comprised of qualitative interviews, participatory observation and archival research as well as previous research from media studies, this paper contributes to Internet studies via three conceptual motifs that emerged from fieldwork material—infrastructuring practices, geopolitical imaginaries and critical negotiations—that were evaluated in order to research media infrastructures and argue for the situated analysis of infrastructural labour, geopolitics and critique that frame Internet development. It further argues for the need to explore Internet infrastructure developments in post-socialist Eastern Europe that remain unrepresented in media infrastructures research, despite the rich potential of case studies into the simultaneous emergence of the Internet within new nation states.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":"7 1","pages":"161 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47827423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0