2025 ECREA Communication History Workshop

5 Feb 2025, 09:00 → 7 Feb 2025, 18:00 Europe/Zurich

31/3-004 - IT Amphitheatre (CERN)

WELCOME TO THE HOMEPAGE OF THE 2025 ECREA COMMUNICATION HISTORY WORKSHOP 

Communication Networks Before and After the Web: Historical and Long-term Perspective

 

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The 2025 ECREA Communication History Workshop is part of a series of events organized by the ECREA Communication History Section. These workshops take place every two years in a different European city, gathering scholars from around the world whose research explores the historical dimension of media and communication.

The 2025 ECREA Communication History Workshop was held from February 5 to 7, 2025, at CERN—the birthplace of the Web and a pivotal institution for the spread of the Internet in Europe. The event aimed to explore communication networks before and after the development of the World Wide Web.

The workshop hosted a prestigious lineup of keynote speakers, including Nicole Starosielsky (University of California), Robert Cailliau, François Flückiger, and Pier Giorgio Innocenti, offering unique insights into the evolution of communication infrastructures and their broader implications.

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Adress:                                                                                          

CERN                                                                                             

Esplanade des Particules                                                                      

1217 Meyrin                                                                                  

Switzerland

 

Access: Building 55

 

Conference Rooms:

Wednesday:

-Room 31/3-004 - IT Amphitheatre

Thursday:

-Room 31/3-004 - IT Amphitheatre

-Room 28/S-029

Friday:

-Room 6/2-004

-Room 6/2-024 - BE Auditorium Meyrin

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Ecrea_Program.pdf

Guide to join the ECREA Conference Workshop on Zoom.pdf

Wednesday 5 February ¶

17:15 → 18:15 Roundtable¶

17:15 In the footsteps of the early Web¶

Speakers: Robert Cailliau, Francois Fluckiger, Pier Giorgio Innocenti (ALICE)

Thursday 6 February ¶

09:00 → 10:15 Paper Networks: News, Infrastructures, and Communities in History¶

09:00 Network Disappearance: Changing Valuation of Newspaper Carriers as News Networks¶

Speakers: Fredrik Stiernstedt, Anne Kaun

09:12 Network of Fellowship, Debate and Exchange: Amateur Journalism and Nineteen Century American Youth Culture¶

Speaker: Peggy Cassidy

09:24 The Carnation Revolution between censorship and freedom: Journalistic Networks in Dictatorial and Democratic Regimes.¶

Speakers: Jacinto Godinho, Carla Baptista

09:36 Diachronic and synchronic perspectives on the Austrian news media landscape since 1848: Insights from the Austrian News Media Infrastructure project¶

Speakers: Andreas Schulz-Tomancok, Eva Tamara Asboth, Gabriele Melischek, Julian Wenger, Michael Alexander, Josef Seethaler

09:48 Epistolary networks: reconsidering the history of communication technologies.¶

Speaker: Jerome Bourdon

09:00 → 10:15 Telecommunication’s Networks: Making, Dismantling, Maintaining Nervous Systems¶

09:00 Manufacturing Switzerland. The first telegraph network as a workshop for the 1848's Constitution¶

Speaker: Riccardo Ferrigato (USI - Università della Svizzera Italiana)

09:15 The vast nerve system’: journalism, telegraphy, and empire at the Glasgow Herald (1873-1883).¶

Speaker: Chris Silver

09:30 Telegraph Towns: A Cultural Ecology of Transoceanic Wireless Landscapes¶

Speaker: Matt Parker

09:45 The poles that never died: a material history of dismantling the landline communication network in Sweden¶

Speaker: Julia Velkova

10:45 → 12:00 (Pre)Histories of the Web¶

10:45 HyperCard, or the hypertext for the rest of us. An evolutionary analysis of its life cycle.¶

Speaker: Carlos A. Scolari

10:57 CD-ROMs as connectors in the early development of the Web¶

Speaker: Valérie Schafer

11:09 Priming for the web: Pre-histories of the Danish web¶

Speaker: Niels Brügger

11:21 Portugal's Digital Dawn: Investigative Journalism, Hacker Communities, and the Rise of the Internet (1991-1995)¶

Speakers: Vânia Maia, Jacinto Godinho

11:33 Decentralised Media and Emergent Cultures in Web History: Narratives from Blockchain Integration to Social Media¶

Speaker: Ashwin Nagappa

10:45 → 12:00 Colonial and anti-colonial communication networks: origins, entanglements and continuities¶

10:45 From the “Black Atlantic Communication Network” to #BlackLivesMatter: Addressing Short Memory in Digital Media and Communication Studies¶

Speaker: Wendy Willems

10:57 The Digital Imperium¶

Speaker: Lee Grieveson

11:09 Networks of Domination and Violence: Colonial Communication and Power¶

Speaker: Burçe Çelik

11:21 Creating a Network for Colonial Propaganda: The Angolan Broadcasting Plan, 1961-1974¶

Speaker: Nelson Costa Ribeiro

11:33 British Imperial Broadcasting Networks, 1939-1989¶

Speaker: Simon J. Potter

13:00 → 14:15 Localizing Imaginaries, Rhetoric, and Metaphors of Networks (1960s - 2020s)¶

13:00 Networks Against the Internet: a History of Concept Through the Lens of Countermovement Rhetoric¶

Speaker: Anya Shchetvina

13:12 The never-ending promise of video as an alternative media network¶

Speaker: Susan Aasman

13:24 Imagining Revolutionary Connections: the Fax as Proto-Internet¶

Speaker: Jesper Verhoef

13:36 From Digital Cities to Networked Societies: Vernacular Socio-technical Imaginaries of the Public Web between 1994 and 2004¶

Speaker: Nathalie Fridzema

13:48 Networked Mediality: (Re)assembling the Imaginaries of Black-Boxed Technologies from the Stars to the Data Points¶

Speaker: Natalia Stanusch

13:00 → 14:15 Visible and Invisible Networks, Visible and Invisible Societies¶

13:00 Narrating Eurovision’s first Decade on Swiss TV: Making Visible Transnational Network Infrastructures¶

Speaker: Anne-Katrin Weber

13:12 Continuity in Transition: The Evolution of Spanish Television Networks from Franco to Democracy (1959-1989)¶

Speaker: Javier Jurado

13:24 Rewired: Imaginaries of technologically networked crime and police work in HBO’s The Wire¶

Speaker: Torbjörn Rolandsson

13:36 Raw Punk: Glocality, Creative Processes, Inner Logics and Networks¶

Speaker: David Andersson

13:48 (Hidden) Ties between Media and Politics? How networks of politicians and journalists evolved from the analog to the digital¶

Speakers: Alessandra Colaceci, Christian Wasner, Thomas Birkner

14:30 → 15:45 On the Earth, In the Sky: Transportation, Satellite, and Alarming Networks¶

14:30 Nautical charts are not networks¶

Speaker: Lars Lundgren

14:42 Produced A Demand for an Island: Military Satellite Communications, Ground Bases and Empire.¶

Speaker: Rachel Hill

14:54 The pan-arab satellite network, 1990-2015: narratives and affects¶

Speaker: Marwan M. Kraidy

15:06 The Acoustemology of Sirens: A Century of Urban Communication Infrastructures of Fear and Public Sonic Warnings¶

Speaker: Marie Cronqvist

15:18 An Iberian nordvision? Transnational Integration and Protectionism: The Role of Television in Iberian Dictatorships.¶

Speaker: Rita Luís

14:30 → 15:45 The Past is Emergent: Transformation and Continuities in Networking¶

14:30 Trolling from the past: the heavy legacy of the world's first vaccine coverage and the anti-vaccine leagues counterpart¶

Speakers: Hernâni Zão Oliveira, Helena Lima

14:42 "Opening the doors to cyberspace and discovering this was a hospitable territory": Community Memory, an electronic social network in the pre-digital age¶

Speaker: Julie Momméja

14:54 Understanding the Continuity and Transformation of Mobile Media Over Time: Insights into the Dynamics of Communication and Control¶

Speaker: Elif Grant

15:06 The transformation of networks through mobility and the inclusion of cities as a territory of social practices¶

Speakers: Eduardo Campos Pellanda, Mágda Rodrigues da Cunha

15:18 Communication and networks before the digital age¶

Speaker: Christine Davidsson Sandal

17:00 → 18:30 Keynote speech Nicole Starosielski, chair Andreas Fickers¶

Friday 7 February ¶

09:00 → 10:15 Social Networks (Whatever it Means): Origins and Changes in Networks’ Cultures¶

09:00 Virtual communities by post: The hobbyist computer magazine as a network forum¶

Speaker: Kevin Driscoll

09:12 Historicizing Gaming Cultures as Networked Cultures¶

Speakers: Erik Koenen, Christian Schwarzenegger

09:24 Skyblog stories¶

Speaker: Emmanuelle Bermès

09:36 The glocal genesis of Facebook tracking, 2010-2025¶

Speakers: Rasmus Helles, Klaus Bruhn Jensen

09:48 Understanding the Social Network of WeChat¶

Speaker: Yinan Sun

09:00 → 10:15 The Materialities of Wireless and Wired Networks: Transmitters, Imaginaries, Connections¶

09:00 Reclaiming Wires: Antecedents to networked communication¶

Speaker: Chris Scheidler

09:12 Towers of Prestige: Dutch Radio Transmitters and Public Relations¶

Speaker: Vincent Kuitenbrouwer

09:24 Forging Networks: Imagining national, international, and local radio spaces in early Canadian radio¶

Speaker: Anne MacLennan

09:36 The cultural and political significance of broadcasting transmitters in Wales¶

Speaker: Jamie Medhurst

09:48 A History of Bluetooth¶

Speaker: Inga Schuppener

10:45 → 12:00 Computer Networks: Histories, Imaginaries, Thinking¶

10:45 Can three computers agree? Computer scientists and the political imagination of 1980s distributed computing.¶

Speaker: Steve Jankowski

10:57 Computers as Infrastructure. On the new Digital Environment in the Swiss Federal Administration, c. 1990¶

Speaker: Mirjam Mayer

11:09 BBSes and Fidonet: connecting computer users before social media.¶

Speaker: Michał Owczarek

11:21 Network Thought Before the Web: From Metaphor to Archetype¶

Speaker: Leah A. Lievrouw

11:33 The end of the network hope?¶

Speaker: Paolo Bory

10:45 → 12:00 “Seeing” Research Networks. Indexes and Communication Networks for (Astro)physicists¶

10:45 Science Citation Index: Mapping the Networks of Science¶

Speaker: Lai Ma

11:00 The War Map of Science. Citation Indexing and the Statistical Order of Knowledge¶

Speaker: Xavier Nueno

11:15 Pioneering experiences in the creation and uptake of Usenet newsgroups for astrophysicists (1983-1994)¶

Speaker: Monica Marra

11:30 The Physics Preprints Exchange Network¶

Speaker: Phillip H. Roth