CAPSTRANS CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS 2008

INTERNET HISTORIES 2: AUSTRALIA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC, PERTH, STATE LIBRARY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA - 14 June 2008

This ARC Cultural Research Network workshop is convened by Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland and co-sponsored by CAPSTRANS & the Centre for Social Research in Journalism and Communications, UNSW.

Background
Aim of Workshop
Keynote Speaker
Call for Papers for an Internet Histories Collection
About the Convenors

Background

Internet Histories 2: Australia and the Asia-Pacific is the second of two workshops exploring the emerging field of Internet Histories. Following on from the Vancouver October 2007 pre-conference workshop of the Association of Internet Researchers, this event will further investigate conceptualisation of the problematics of Internet histories, what the state of the field is, and what specific challenges exist for cultural research, and media histories.

Aim of Workshop

Internet Histories 2 will focus upon:

• Australian Internet histories;
• Internet histories in the region, notably from leading Asia-Pacific countries (such as China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines);
• What comparative Internet histories tell us about the development of the Australian Internet — and the possibilities for the paths the technology might take in the future;
• What are the implication of specific Internet histories for revising taken-for-granted, general ideas about the Internet?
• What are the challenges of doing Internet histories, and what are the particular issues for concepts, methods, tools, documentation, archives, interpretative strategies, and presentation of research findings?

Keynote speaker

Professor Kim Shin Dong, Director of Institute for Communication Arts and Technology, Hallym University

Call for Papers for an Internet Histories Collection

In addition to the Internet Histories 2 workshop, we also issue a call for papers for a collection on Internet histories. Drawing on papers from both Internet histories workshop, but also from other submissions, we wish to compile a collection that comprehensively investigates the state of Internet histories. Accordingly, for this Internet Histories collection, we welcome submissions that offer perspectives on questions such as (but certainly not limited to):

• What sorts of Internet histories are currently available, or in progress — whether national, country-specific, local, subcultural, community, or transnational and translocal?
• What are the histories and trajectories currently missing and why do these particular lacunae exist? What histories of the Internet are being foreclosed, overlooked, or not yet imagined, and what are the implications of this?
• Who is currently writing, reading, collecting, valorising, or even enshrining Internet histories?
• What are the dominant accounts of Internet history, or dominant assumptions regarding these?
• What histories do we have of Latin American, African, Oceanic, or Asian Internet, for instance, compared to European or North American Internet?
• What challenges does doing Internet history pose? what is specific about Internet history compared to histories of media, communications, or other technologies, or broad social or cultural histories?
• How do our understandings of Internet and mobile technologies and cultures vary depending on the kinds of quite specific histories that condition these?
• How do a researcher’s own culture and patterns of use determine the kinds of questions s/he may raise concerning the history of ‘the Internet’?

For either the Internet Histories 2 workshop or the Internet Histories collection, please send 150 word abstracts to both convenors by 1 February 2008: Gerard Goggin (g.goggin@unsw.edu.au) and Mark McLelland (markmc@uow.edu.au). Please indicate whether you wish your submission considered for the workshop, or collection, or both. Further details can be found on the project website.

About the Convenors

Gerard Goggin is Professor of Digital Communications and deputy director of the new Centre for Social Research in Journalism and Communications at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (g.goggin@unsw.edu.au). He is author and editor of a number of books on mobiles and Internet, including Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media (2008), Cell Phone Culture (2006), Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia (2004), and Digital Disability (2003).

Mark McLelland lectures in the Sociology Program in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the author or editor of six books relating to Japanese cultural history, minority social groups and new media. These include Japanese Cybercultures (2003) and Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age (2005).

Gerard and Mark are the editors of the forthcoming collection, Internationalizing Internet Studies (Routledge, 2008).