Chapter “History web,” “web history,” and “history of the web” : IN Book: The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies

Abstract

The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies explores the untapped potential of web archives for researching transnational digital history and communication. It covers cross- border, cross- collection, and cross- institutional examination of web archives on a global scale. This comprehensive collaborative work, emerging from the WARCnet research network, presents an exploration of the ways web archive research can transcend technological and legal challenges to allow for new comparative, transnational studies of the web’s pasts, and of global events. By combining interdisciplinary work and fostering collaboration between web archivists and researchers, the book provides readers with cutting- edge approaches to analyzing digital cultural heritage across countries. The book contains concrete examples on how to research national web domains through a transnational perspective; provides case studies with grounded explorations of the COVID- 19 crisis as a distinctly transnational event captured by web archives; offers methodological considerations while unpacking techniques and skill sets for conducting transnational web archive research; and critically engages the politics and power dynamics inherent to web archives as institutionalised collections. The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies is an essential read for graduate students and scholars from internet and media studies, cultural studies, history, and digital humanities. It will also appeal to web archiving practitioners, including librarians, web curators, and IT developers.