Each month, the open access team of the University of Groningen Library (UB) puts a recent open access article by UG authors in the spotlight. This publication is highlighted via social media and the library’s newsletter and website.

The article in the spotlight for the month of December 2024 is titled Revolutionary discourses from the past: a digital hermeneutical analysis of widely read academic publications on the social impact and significance of the internet, written by Nathalie Fridzema, Susan Aasman, Tom Slootweg and Rik Smit (all from the Faculty of Arts). 

Introduction

From the start, the academic community was deeply involved in both the technological and conceptual development of the internet. Works by Rheingold, Castells, and others put forward influential, intellectual imaginaries. Over thirty years later, these sources offer valuable insights, reflecting the novelty and excitement of the time. Often infused with rhetoric of radical transformation, these authors either consciously or unconsciously foregrounded a revolutionary period marked by digital utopianism, while also presenting critical views. This paper aims to identify and historicize common themes and concepts in influential academic publications on the internet's significance and social impact. By adopting a longitudinal and comparative approach, we aim to provide a historically informed understanding of Internet Studies. Our paper contributes to a tradition of media historical scholarship, examining how new technologies were socially constructed, how dominant discourses shaped popular imaginaries, and their role in the evolution of Internet Studies.

We asked first and corresponding author Nathalie Fridzema a few questions about the article:

Can you explain what a digital hermeneutical analysis is?

Hermeneutics refers to the theory and practice of interpretation. Digital hermeneutics extends this concept to the interpretation of digital texts, whether digitized or born-digital. These digital texts can include a wide range of artifacts such as websites, social media posts, digitized newspapers, or - in this case - digitized books. A digital hermeneutical approach leverages data-driven and structured digital methods, tailored to the type of text under study. For this article, we adopted a multi-layered and exploratory methodology, drawing on Katherine Hayles’ (2010) concept of scaled reading. This involves shifting between distant (computational), hyper, and close reading of the corpus. By using this approach, we were able to identify trends, similarities, and discrepancies across a large database of academic books while also placing these findings within a historical context.

You analysed academic books (published in the years 1996-2003) about the social impact and significance of the early internet. You describe some of the imaginaries (visions) that these authors had. Did you come across any visions related to open access or open science? 

Interestingly, visions of open access and open science did not emerge as prominent intellectual imaginaries within our methodological framework. However, these themes are undoubtedly integral to the web's history and are certainly present across the ten most relevant books we used for close reading, such as Tim Berners-Lee’s ‘Weaving the Web’ (1999) and Janet Abbate’s ‘Inventing the Internet’ (1999). One notable example is Howard Rheingold’s final chapter in ‘The Virtual Community’ (1993), where he introduces the concept of "disinfomocracy".  Here, he critically reflects on open access and open information, warning about the potential for misinformation and disinformation - a theme that has become highly relevant in today’s Web 2.0 landscape.

The open access (OA) movement emerged in the late 1990s-early 2000s as a direct consequence of the dawn of the internet and digitization. OA promised to transform the scholarly publishing landscape, making academic publishing more accessible, affordable and equitable. Almost 25 years on, the open access movement hasn’t fulfilled these promises and commercial publishers are more powerful than ever. Why hasn’t early optimism about the internet’s potential been realized?

The story of the web - both in this article and in my broader research - is one of strong ideological beginnings that gradually eroded over time. In its early days, the web was fueled by manifestos advocating for open access, freedom, creativity, and communication. In the Netherlands, this ideology took shape in initiatives like De Digitale Stad (The Digital City) and XS4ALL (Access for All). However, the development of the web coincided with the growing influence of neoliberalism in Dutch politics, which promoted free-market principles and a capitalist mindset. As a result, the web’s infrastructure increasingly became subject to market forces. Over time, social, economic, and legislative constraints undermined the web's original ideological foundations. This broader trend is not unique to the web. Brian Winston’s concept of “the law of the suppression of radical potential” suggests that all communication technologies - from the telegraph to the internet - follow a similar trajectory, where initial radical possibilities are gradually diminished by prevailing systems of power.

The ten most relevant books from your database were analysed in depth by way of close reading. What is your personal favourite among these titles? And why?

My personal favorite, even before conducting this research, is Fred Turner’s ‘From Counterculture to Cyberculture’ (2006). In this book, Turner explores how the countercultural movement within the tech world laid the foundation for what became known in the 1990s as the “new economy” and is now often associated with neoliberalism. Rather than focusing solely on technological development, Turner presents a rich and complex history of social networks, key actors, and cultural shifts. During my close reading, I also enjoyed Katherine Hayles’ ‘How We Became Posthuman’ (1999). This book combines a history of science - particularly cybernetics - with science fiction literature. Hayles’ critical perspective on literature and reading as a methodology is evident throughout the text, foreshadowing her later work on scaled reading, which we adopted in this article.

Could you reflect on your experiences with open access and open science in general?

As a third-year PhD researcher, I’m still relatively new to the world of open access publishing. I’ve heard some frustrating stories from colleagues who wanted to publish open access but were faced with unexpected, high fees. However, I had a positive experience when publishing this article. Thanks to an agreement between the University of Groningen and the publisher, the open access option was seamlessly offered through the journal’s portal and finalized with a single click. I think open access is really important, as I often rely on freely available articles for my own research. Additionally, I make it a priority to share my datasets openly. For example, the dataset used in this article is available through DataverseNL.

Useful links:

The Groningen Centre for Digital Humanities

The UG Digital Competence Centre provides support for data publication in DataverseNL

Citation:

Fridzema, N., Aasman, S., Slootweg, T., & Smit, R. (2024). Revolutionary discourses from the past: a digital hermeneutical analysis of widely read academic publications on the social impact and significance of the internet. Information, Communication & Society, 27(12), 2222–2241. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2024.2420025

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