Iscc web historiography

THE CENTRE FOR INTERNET STUDIES

Niels Brügger, Director, the Centre for Internet Studies & co-director NetLab

Web historiography, An emerging field within internet studies , 25 june 2013

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Web historiography

An emerging field within internet studies




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paris.fr — 2013

paris.fr — 2003,Internet Archive

paris.fr — 2008,Internet Archive




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Lessons to be learned?

The importance of the web is growingMore and more of our societal, cultural, political, etc.

communication take place on the web

The web of the past disappears40% changed, 40% removed, 20% still there after one year

If we want to document the present or study the past on the web we have to archive it

‘We’ can be a scholar/group of scholars or a (trans)national web archive such as the Internet Archive or BnF/INA

Web archiving matters for anyone who wants to use the web as a source in any kind of study




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Agenda

1. Web historiography Why study the history of the web? Web and web strata Historiography and the web

2. The history of one website: www.dr.dk, 1996-2006

3. Web archiving Digitized, Born-digital, and Reborn-digital Materials A short history of web archives The case of the Danish Netarkivet

4. The challenges of the archived web The characteristics of the archived web Analytical and methodological consequences

5. A register of websites: An old practice with new implications




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1. Web historiography — Why study the history of the web?

During the first decades of internet studies historiography did not play a significant role

when establishing a new field, studying the past is less urgent than studying the presentthe very short past of the web may not even be considered a history

Web history today:a few web histories have been writtennot yet constituted as a field of study in its own right (lack of a set of shared theoretical and methodological assumptions or discussions)a growing interest in the field




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Web strata: web element web page web site web sphere web

Web element

1. Web historiography — Web and web strata




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Web page




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Website

Web page

Webelement

Web site





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Website

Web page

Webelement

Web sphere

Web sphere





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The web

Web





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The web

Website

Web page

Webelement

Web sphere





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Fundamental questions of historiography:

1.The purpose of the study

2.The philosophy and theory of history

3.Methodological issues concerning the source material

1. Web historiography — Historiography and the web?




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Specific challenges for web historiography

1. The purpose of the study

2. The philosophy and theory of history

3. Methodological issues concerning the source material

One of the main source types stands apart, namely archived web material.





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The web as a tool:

Web History

Digital History

web historiography the web as source

to improve historical research to present and communicate the historian’s work





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Website

Web page

Webelement





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Overall aimto write a monograph about the development of dr.dk from 1996 to 2006

started july 2007 supported by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities in

2007-10 The development of the project website is supported by the

'Knowledge Society' research priory area of the Faculty of Humanities, Aarhus University





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What are the driving forces behind the creation and development of www.dr.dk from 1996 to 2006, and what are the consequences of these for the website?

What theoretical and methodological new developments are required in order to be able to analyze www.dr.dk?

Status:

1) collected a great number of sources (problems with access, time consuming)

2) theoretical/methodological discussions (papers, articles, book chapters)

3) read all relevant press releases 1990-2006 — first framework

4) reading all sources

5) writing about the period 1990 to August1996





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Source material

Many sources — minutes of meetings, strategy papers, correspondance, etc.

And the archived website, in two ways: the object of my history of dr.dk (textual structure, layout, etc.) a source that tells us something about the history of dr.dk

(information about the site, the organisation DR, etc.)





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DigitizedPreviously analog material which has been digitized.

Born-digitalHas never existed in any other form than digital.

Reborn-digitalBorn-digital material which has been collected and preserved, and which to some degree has been changed in this process.

3. Web archiving — Digitized, Born-digital, and Reborn-digital




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The short history of web archives — 12-14 years — three main phases

The pre-history of web archives begin of the 90ies and onwards individuals, families, organizations, institutions... html, screendumps no considerations about archiving no considerations about cultural heritage

Static web publications in national libraries app. same period national libraries static web documents, look like journals and books overall approach that of print culture (catalogueing...) more professional legal deposit laws

The dynamic web in (trans)national web archives a little later crawlers, spin-off of search engine technology the number of archiving initiatives increases dynamic web material librarian approach challenged other transnational stakeholders

Examples The Internet Archive, 1996 — snapshot, transnational Kulturarw3, Sweden, 1996/97 — snapshot, national Pandora, Australia, 1996 — selective, national Netarkivet, Denmark, 2005 — three strategies, nation. BnF/INA, 2006

3. Web archiving — A short history of web archives




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Three general strategies:

a) snapshot

b) selective

c) event

From Bjarne Andersen: ”DK-domænet i ord og tal”, netarkivet.dk

Coverage

Time

Snapshot

Selective

Event

3. Web archiving — The case of the Danish Netarkivet




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4. The Challenges — The Characteristics of the Archived Web

Different archiving purpose and strategy

Differences as to technological choices

Web archiving

Macro web archiving

•archiving institutions, such as national libraries•aiming at preserving the cultural heritage of, for instance, a nation state•allows for as many different kinds of research projects as possible in the future

Micro web archiving

•individual scholars or groups•in relation to, for instance, a specific research project•usually calibrated to fit the research project in question




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The online web is changed or deleted with an unprecedented pace

Must be collected and archived here and now, while it is still online

The web archive is a real-time archive





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The archiving institution that wants to archive the online web must make a number of choices

What is archived is almost never a copy on a 1:1 scale of what was once online

A collection of unique versions which did not exist before the act of archiving

It is created in and by the process of archiving, which is why it can be considered 'reborn' digital material

The archived web is a reborn, unique and deficient version and not simply a copy of what was once online





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No matter how an archived web document has been created, and no matter in what archive it is found, the web historian cannot expect it to be an identical copy on a 1:1 scale of what was actually on the live web at a given time

From born digital to 're-born digital'

Two reasons for this

• the archived web document is an actively created and subjective re-construction

• it is almost always deficient





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An actively created and subjective re-construction

• subjective because choices have to be made between different archiving forms and strategies (made by either an individual or an institution)

• a re-construction in the sense that it is re-created on the basis of a variety of archived web elements that are re-assembled and re-combined in the archive

Thus, the archived web document is the result of an active process and in this sense it does not exist prior to the act of archiving.





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Almost always deficient — for two reasons

• technical reasons (soft- or hardware), for instance words, images, graphics, sounds, moving images can be missing, or some of the possibilities of interaction can be non-functional in the archived web document

• the dynamics of updating, that is the fact that the web content might have changed during the process of archiving, and we do not know if, where, and when this happens — an example





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”During the Olympics in Sydney in 2000, I wanted to save the website of the Danish newspaper JyllandsPosten. I began at the first level, the front page, on which I could read that the Danish badminton player Camilla Martin would play in the finals a half hour later.

My computer took about an hour to save this first level, after which time I wanted to download the second level, ’Olympics 2000’. But on the front page of this section, I could already read the result of the badminton finals (she lost).

The website was — as a whole — not the same as when I had started; it had changed in the time it took to archive it, and I could now read the result on the front page, where the match was previously only announced.”

N. Brügger: Archiving Websites, 2005, pp. 22-23





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Consequences• we cannot be sure that we have everything in our archive — we

will always have lost something in the asynchronous relationship between updating and archiving

• we are also in danger of getting something that in a way was never there — something that is different from what was really there





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My archived version of the newspaper’s website can be a combination of elements from two (or more) versions that were there at different times — but they were never there at the same time as they might now be in my archive.

Paradox:• the archive is not exactly as the website really was in the past (we

have lost something)• but the archive may be exactly as the Internet never was in the

past (we get something different).





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The process of archiving

• creates a unique version and not a copy

• a version of an original which we can never expect to find in the form it actually took on the web

• neither can we find an original among the different versions, nor can we reconstruct an original based on the different versions





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Since a web archive usually covers more than one point in past time, numerous versions of the same web element will exist — a URL, a web page, an image, a website, a hyperlink etc. — each from a different point in time

Most often websites (especially larger websites) are not continuously archived in their totality — the spatial extension of the same archived website is not necessarily identical throughout time

The broad web archive is multitemporal and multispatial





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The rapid and endless new developments of software and use forms on the web force the archiving institutions to try to keep pace with these changes

The web archive is often reactive in the sense that it is constantly struggling to keep up with the changes

The web archive tends to be reactive





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The web material is incomplete compared to what was once online — two general types of incompleteness

The user of a web archive will miss some of the information about the web which is usually at hand on the online web

Individual web elements and possibilities of interaction may be missing

Something is missing





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What is specific for the incompleteness of web archives is not that things are missing, but rather that they may be missing in ways which make it very difficult to determine if something is missing at all as well as what and where

No stable original to compare with

Incompleteness is rarely documented

Something is missing





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4. The Challenges — Analytical and Methodological Consequences

The complex blend of hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality, and fluctuation (born-digital material) increases when combined in the web archive with material from other points in past time

Each synchronic and historically distinct form of heterogeneity and complexity is multiplied, accumulated, and combined diachronically

The further the archive stretches back into the past, the more heterogeneous and complex the archived material becomes

Heterogeneity and complexity is multiplied




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The structure of hyperlinks is an integrated part of the archived web and not just an added feature of the archive

Gives rise to problems of inconsistency related to time and space

Temporal inconsistency between the link source and the link target

Spatial inconsistency if the link target is not archived at all

Difficult to determine if — and to what extent — the archived web material is inconsistent or not

Hyperlinks become inconsistent





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When studying the online web one can select a corpus to study, for instance, a set of URLs or file types

In a web archive: since a number of versions of each element exist, one has to construct not only one corpus, but two.

First the URLs that should be included in the study

Second the specific versions of each of these URLs

An archived web corpus is a double construction





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The archived content itself as well as the division of the material in elements can be changed

Any 'montage' of the archived elements in the archive — or any extraction from the archive — is also an editing of these elements

Reason: the subdivision of the archived material and the subsequent combination of elements are not necessarily inscribed in the material itself

A continuum with no clear-cut temporal or spatial subdivisions inscribed by the producer; the subdivisions are editable, scalable, and random, and they are made a posteriori by either the web archive or the scholar

The archived web is edited and editable





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The amount and the complexity of the archived material do not allow for systematic and detailed processing of the entire archive once the web has been archived (exceptions exist)

Have to make do with either the metadata provided by the archived web itself (e.g. meta-tags in the source code), or with the log files from the archiving process, if the archive makes them available

Subsequent processing is lacking





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If transnational studies are to be based on archived web material, all the analytical and methodological consequences outlined above are multiplied by the number of involved web archives

The interoperability between web archives is challenged





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How can one of the basic practices of media and web

historiography — the creation of a register of websites — shed

new light on the use of the web as a historical source?




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A register of sub-sites on dr.dk

Sub-site: dr.dk/nyheder, dr.dk/radio, etc.

The register includes 480 sub-sites and can be seen at:

www.drdk.dk/registrant.html





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A register

tailored to the research question(s) it makes it possible to answer

media characteristics of the medium it registers

makes use of a number of categories: Title, date of publication or transmission, writer, director, cast, etc.





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Main concern — web material

The media characteristics of the web medium forces us to reconsider and possibly reinterpret the categories:

What should be understood by 'Title', 'Date of publication or transmission', etc.?

Main concern — traditional media

Which categories to include with a view to uniting research question and media characteristics?





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Print media, film and radio/television

The title of a newspaper and the titles of the articles in it are supplied by the publisher and they are unequivocal

And the same goes for film, radio and television

Title

Websites

Three possible titles:

the name as it appears from the sub-site’s textual content

the URL of the sub-site as it appears in the location line in the browser window

the page title which the publisher may have given the web page, and which can be read at the top of the browser window





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Yet another problem — redirects

A URL may not correspond to an actual website, but can be merely an 'empty' name

Consequences

A sub-site can have more names than the ones on the webpage — a number of possible 'satellite names'

It is difficult to find these 'satellite names', and we cannot see them on the website

It is difficult to determine, whether a URL corresponds to a website or redirects to another URL, and is thus is ’empty’





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... and this issue becomes further complicated in connection with historical studies...

Redirects are not always identical over a period of time, they come and go and their role may change, a former main URL may become a redirecting URL — and the other way around

Concluding on the category ‘Title’

In a register of a historical source such as a Website, one of the most fundamental categories ’the title’ is in many ways more equivocal and

fluid than it is in other media types

And in general it is very difficult to reconstruct and document this network of names in the past.





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Can normally be identified without difficulty due to the material or semiotic characteristics of the medium (or combinations of these):

printed newspapers or film: the material delimitation of each copy

radio or television programs: semiotic demarcation of programs in the flow by means of transitional markers such as jingles, voice-overs, titles and credit lines

newspaper articles: material delimitation — the individual newspaper copy — and semiotic delimitations within each copy (headings, layout of text, pagination...)

Spatial extent

Websites

Seems in some respects closer to broadcast media, as the outer limits are established almost solely by semiotic means




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Challenge

Does not unfold as a linking of semantic elements in a time-based progressive chain of expression

How to get an overview of the entire spatial extent of the website?

And how to do this over time, in historical studies?


”a coherent textual unit that unfolds in one or more interrelated browser windows, the coherence of which is based on semantic,

formal and physically performative interrelations.”

N. Brügger: ”Website history and the website as an object of study”, New Media & Society, 11/1-2, 2009, p. 122.




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Concluding on the category ‘Spatial extent’

The Website is not delimited in a material way (as are print media) or by the linking of semantic elements in a progressive chain of expression (as are broadcast media)

We are dependent:on such aspects as semantic cohesion, paratexts and linking when delimiting the spatial extent of the subsiteand on the consistency of these means of expression over time when trying to trace the same subsite in the past





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Websites

May have something similar to a ‘start time’

But not based on a 'narration' with a beginning, a story and an end.

More complex — a ‘continuum of publication’


Temporal extent


The temporal extent is based on the rhythm of chronology:

print media have a clearly marked and precise time of publication (month, week, date and hour)programs in broadcast media have a precise start time, followed by a transmission time and a precise stop time, all of which are marked in the aired program and possibly also in a program schedule




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Start time?

First time published on a webserver.

But can be difficult to establish with certainty:

almost never mentioned on the website in the same way as in a newspaper or a broadcast program

secondary sources such as program schedules does not exist

press releases can help, but not always possible to determine whether the website was actually launched on the announced date

... and, unfortunately, web archives are not of much help...

The existence of a subsite in a web archive: it existed at the time of archiving

Conclusion

In most cases the start time will be imprecise

— a period of time rather than a point in time





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Temporal extent of the subsite from the 'start point' and onwards?

If a start time can be established, the temporal extent of the subsite from this point onwards is fundamentally different from that which we know from other media types:

a continuous publication with no overarching marked temporal subdivisions, such as dates or hours/minutes

the temporal subdivisions are not made by the producer at the time of publication or transmission, but by the archive or the researcher 'post festum’

temporal subdivisions are therefore random in relation to the time continuum of the media artifact — and they can therefore be changed after publication

temporal subdivisions are not necessarily identical in different archives — most often they are not — and they can be different in the same archive





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Stop time?

Although the Website has a temporal extent like a radio or television program, it does not need to have a stop time in order to be a website as does radio and television programs.

The stop time of a website may be defined in two different ways.

the website has been removed from the web server

the website is not being updated anymore, but remains on the web server





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In both cases we face a number of practical problems in determining what has actually happened....

We may only be able to register the fact that at a certain point in time, it was no longer online.

It is difficult to determine whether the website is actually being updated or not


Consequence

It is very difficult to determine when a website ‘ends’.

If our register has to show how meny websites existed at a given time the number of active websites tends to grow — an accumulation

of ‘non-ended’ websites




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Concluding on the category ‘Temporal extent’

Compared to the programs of broadcast media:the web sub-site as a whole is often continuousthe well-known entities of start and stop times may in themselves form more of a continuum than a point in timethe website may thus appear to be a historical source that is not only continuous, but infinite





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Various archived versions


Regardless of who stores a newspaper or a film strip, or who presses the record button, archived copies of newspapers, films and radio and television programs are by and large identical.

Minor differences may, for instance, include the absence or presence of commercials in archived television programs.

Websites

A unique version and not a copy.

The differences between archived sub-sites are more or less fundamental to their presence in an archive.

Standardization and documentation is difficult.




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Concluding on the category ‘Various archived versions’

The differences between versions may very well affect the above-mentioned categories – names, spatial and temporal extents — insofar as they may vary, depending on which archived version is used.

The differences between archived versions play a crucial role when establishing a register of subsites, which is why it is relevant to register the known archived versions as well as their limitations and deficiencies.





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A register of websites?

A register of subsites is in many ways significantly different from registers of other types of media such as newspapers, films, radio and

television, whether in their analog or digital form.

The question is no longer simply whether we wish to include the 'title' and 'publication date' in our register, but also how we wish to interpret

the terms 'title' and 'publication date'.





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Websites

The apparently simple and practical task of creating a register of these historical sources forces us to reconsider well-known categories in a number of ways, and to supplement the usual assumptions regarding which categories to include with more fundamental reflections on what we actually understand by each of these.


... are easy ;-)





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Iscc web historiography