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                Send your abstract to ECREA Communication History
Workshop

Communication Networks Before and After the Web: Historical and Long-term
Perspective
CERN, Switzerland, 5-7 February 2025


The 2025 ECREA Communication History Workshop will be hosted by CERN (Conseil
Europen pour la Recherche Nuclaire / European Council for Nuclear Research),
where the World Wide Web took its first steps between the end of the 1980s and
the early 1990s.

This special location inspired us to choose the theme of communication
networks from long-term and historical perspectives as the key topic of the
workshop. Network is one of digital literacys most symbolic and obsessively
repeated keywords and metaphors. However, communication networks are not
exclusively digital. From telegraphy to telephony and wireless communication
in the 19th century, from radio and TV networks in the 20th, the concept of
network has been used even before the Internet and, specifically, the Web.
Communication networks seem to transform the sense of speed, space, and place,
creating new connections and erasing others. Networks enable the exchange of
communication or limit it; new networks are launched, and old ones are
abandoned or have to be maintained.

Interrogating communication and networks from a diachronic perspective can be
approached from numerous angles: networked communication and its
infrastructures, communication through networks, and within networks, networks
of communication, and communication on networks, to name but a few. This
inquiry should encompass discourses, imaginaries, modalities, infrastructures,
governance, and many other dimensions. Three main historical perspectives on
communication networks are suggested:

1. Communication and networks before the digital age:
    Potential topics for exploration include, but are not limited to letters,
press, telegraph and telephone networks, radio, and TV networks, but also
other forms of communication networks, through for example learned societies
or rumor. The legacy of these models, their physical or symbolic persistence,
their stakeholders, and their structure are topics of interest as well as
issues of regulation and governance.

2. Imaginaries, representations, and narratives related to networks:
    This may include cultural imaginaries and narratives surrounding networks
in a long-term perspective, their representations in media, the controversies
that may have arisen through time, utopia, and mythologies related to networks
and networked societies. A reflection on the word per se, its emergence and
eventual disappearance, and its metaphorical history is also welcomed.

3. Digital communication networks: from socio-technical origins to
platformization:
    Genesis and evolution of digital networks, communication dynamics and
changes through digital networks, online communities and their modalities of
communication, and past discourses and approaches surrounding the development
of networked communication are only a few topics that may be diachronically
addressed. The history of social network sites, even the disappeared ones or
the failed European attempt to create alternatives to US platforms, can be
considered. The digital dimension of networks should always be considered from
a historical perspective, in line with the focus of the section.

Other transversal topics such as the role of networks in shaping communication
and community, their impact on societies, or network analysis for studying the
history of communication may be proposed. The study of networks in
communication and media studies is also welcome: media studies, for example,
have often advanced theories about small or large networks, their social role,
the power of media in creating or breaking social networks, the strong or weak
ties created by networks, etc.

We invite scholars from various disciplines to freely submit abstracts for
papers addressing these themes. Submissions should be in English and have a
clear historical approach. Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted no later
than 31 July 2024. Proposals for full panels (comprising 3 or 4 papers) are
also welcome: these should include a 300-word abstract for each individual
presentation and a 150-word rationale for the panel.

Send abstracts to: comnet@usi.ch. Authors will be
informed regarding acceptance/rejection for the conference no later than 13
September 2024. Early career scholars and graduate students are highly
encouraged to submit their work (please indicate if the research submitted is
part of your thesis or dissertation project).

Fees and accommodation: The conference registration fee is 150 Swiss
francs/about 150 euros (100 Swiss francs/about 100 euros for Ph.D. and M.A.
students), and participants are asked to cover their travel expenses. This fee
includes apero at the get-together, coffee breaks, and two lunches. A special
rate has been arranged for lodging near CERN: a single room with a private
bathroom for 58.00 Swiss francs. Further information will be sent to all the
accepted presenters.

Local organizers: James Gillies and Jens Vigen (CERN, Geneva), Deborah
Barcella, Martin Fomasi, and Gabriele Balbi (USI Universit della Svizzera
italiana, Lugano).

For the section management team: Christian Schwarzenegger (University of
Bremen), Valrie Schafer (C2DH, University of Luxembourg), Marie Cronqvist
(Linkping University).

Keynote
On February 6th, Nicole Starosielski, renowned author and co-editor of over
thirty articles and five books on media, infrastructure, and environments,
including The Undersea Network (2015), Media Hot and Cold (2021), Signal
Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure (2015), Sustainable Media:
Critical Approaches to Media and Environment(2016), and Assembly Codes: The
Logistics of Media (2021), will deliver the keynote address at a special
session of the workshop.

For further information, please visit our website:
https://ecreahistorysection.com/last-news-2/
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