The Internet does not of course only have one history but many: Researchers in this field have opened a variety of paths allowing for the examination, under different perspectives, of how the Internet has developed and shaped humans and societies. The Internet Histories approach is deeply intertwined with theoretical questions that may be seen as situated along a spatial and temporal axis, with unclear beginnings and endings. While the past connects with the present and possible futures, the local also connects – in the digital globalized context – with a globalizing history. Indeed, the Internet – from its beginnings – has also been conceived as inherently intercultural. In 2001, Charles Ess viewed the Internet as a technology bringing its users towards an “intercultural global village”. In 2005, Sonia Livingstone perceived the transnational and intercultural aspect of the Internet as actually its distinguishing factor, as it enabled an “increased degree of connectedness among social actors world-wide”.
Today, in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, interculturality has become ubiquitous. The Internet offers a space in which encounters with unfamiliarity and uncertainty are constant, necessitating the navigation of a myriad of cultural codes and artifacts, all subject to rapid and dynamic change. Thus, an intercultural perspective can surely shed light on both historically conceived digital pasts and theoretical speculations regarding digital futures. Digital Intercultural Communications approaches can also benefit from adopting a perspective cognisant of the past, while also viewing this in relation to possible futures. We would therefore like to bring these perspectives together in the online conference: “Digital Pasts and Futures: Internet History, Digital Interculturality and Reimagining Digitality”.
Possible theoretical and/or empirical approaches include (but are not limited to):
- Internet histories from an intercultural perspective, beyond a national only narrative
- Commonalities between Digital Intercultural Communications scholarship and the Internet Histories perspective
- Platformization and interculturality: futures and pasts
- AI and interculturality: futures and pasts
- Postcoloniality, interculturality and digitality
- Methodological approaches combining Internet Histories, digital theory and interculturality
- Theoretical and speculative reimaginings of the Internet, from an intercultural and/or cosmopolitan perspective
- Discursive approaches towards the Internet and its perception, from an intercultural or comparative perspective
- How the Internet has been conceived as a tool for the promotion of a positively perceived version of interculturality
- The Internet and the multiple understandings of interculturality
Please send an abstract (250 words) of your intended paper to redico@uni-jena.de by 28 February 2025. It is intended that a selection of the papers presented will be published following a peer review process in book form, funding pending, with the transcript Publishing House in the Series “Studies in Digital Interculturality”. The conference is without fees and completely online and is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). Keynote speakers that have already been confirmed include Prof. Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg), Associate Prof. Helle Strandgaard Jensen (Aarhus University), Prof. Ethan Zuckerman (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Prof. Ramesh Srinivasan (University of California, Los Angeles).
Organizers: apl. Prof. Dr. Fergal Lenehan and PD Dr. Luisa Conti
(ReDICo, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena)
Bibliography
Ess, C. (Ed.), Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Livingstone, S., “Critical Debates in Internet Studies: Reflections on
an Emerging Field.” In LSE Research Online, London, 2005.
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/1011/