The client that is used to connect to a server serves a function that is almost as important as the server itself. The client governs how a user is able to interact with a digital system, the actions they are able to take, what information they can view, and what information is being shared. This paper presents a vision of a Loyal Client, a client that is aligned with the preferences of the end user rather than those of the platform. This is an old idea from the early days of the internet which we feel should be modernised for social media. We argue that a loyal client is a key piece of a generative internet and introduce four principles by which to evaluate whether a client is loyal, arguing that a loyal client should be: protective, interoperable, customisable, and usable. We explore this concept using three historical case studies: Usenet, instant messaging, and web browsers, connecting each case back to these principles.

Today, a variety of actors, including traditional journalists, activists, and NGO workers, are using digital media and data to investigate emerging injustices, especially in the context of crises and wars. The Baltic States find themselves under hybrid forms of attack and other forms of injustice that emerge as a consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Using 17 semi-structured interviews and short-term fieldwork with investigative practitioners from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, we analyse how investigative practitioners perceive the changes and implications in their practices since Russia’s full-scale invasion. We argue that the full-scale invasion has significantly changed the work of investigative practitioners. We identify the emergence of pervasive threat perceptions, new investigative themes and data practices, and the reconfiguration of collaborative practices among investigative practitioners. They show how investigative practices in the Baltics today not only analyse and counter injustices, but also need to adapt to changing perceptions of security and foreign influence to become, we argue, “resilient investigative practices”. Paradoxically, investigative practitioners also engage in what we conceptualise as “tactical avoidance”, i.e. a conscious trade-off and a form of resilience through the suppression of painful, uncomfortable knowledge to carry out their work. With our research, we contribute to the dynamic digital war and media studies by bringing an empirical study of situated investigative practices from a geopolitically charged region into transnational discussions, furthering research on the subjects of securitisation, cooperation, and tactical avoidance in times of war.

This article argues that Sovietera expert institutions, such as the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics, played a central role in the post-1991 development of the so-called digital state. By tracing the origins of the decentralized and distributed data exchange layer, the Estonian X-Road, to Soviet attempts in building a national Automated Control System, this article shows how information networks and databases became central to late socialist politics, and how questions over the structure of the network (centralized vs decentralized) and content of accumulated data (economic vs social) became sites of contestation during Perestroika. Having won this struggle in the 1980s, anti-Soviet Estonian engineers and visionaries then rewrote their own histories, arguing that the X-Road was a distinctly novel, Western-oriented technology, rather than the continuation of a decades-long Soviet debate.

This paper presents a historical account of the representation of gender in the Wikidata knowledge base. Wikidata is a collaborative, multilingual project edited by an international community of users, and one of its goals is to represent biographical knowledge about people, including gender. Since Wikidata’s launch in 2012, the community has been discussing the best approach to conceptualise gender within a shared ontology, showing an increased awareness of the complexity of this task. Although there is still no universal consensus on the treatment of gender identities in Wikidata, it is interesting to reconstruct the history of the decisions made by the community in this regard, which are often influenced by historical events happening outside of the platform. Since the Wikidata gender model has changed significantly over time, the Wikidata Gender Diversity (WiGeDi) project has built a timeline of events to track its evolution from a very narrow interpretation of gender as a binary, to a representation that is more inclusive towards marginalised identities such as those of trans and non-binary people. Looking at this process under the lens of critical data studies allows us to understand how the community overcame linguistic, cultural and generational barriers to reach a deeper understanding of the complexity of gender.

iWiW was one of the first Hungarian online social networks (OSNs) and the largest ever. The site was launched in 2002, and at its peak in 2010 it had 4.5 million members, more than two-thirds of all internet users in the country. The site was shut down in 2014 by its then-owner, Hungarian Telekom. As the first socio-historical account of the site, based on oral history interviews, this paper aims to shed light on a lesser-known chapter of local digital media history by providing insights into the development of iWiW. This examination includes a focus on the social meanings and values that underpinned the OSN’s development strategies, which were contested by a changing set of relevant social groups. The paper shows how the debates of the five main relevant social groups (entertainers, early enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, mass users, and corporate entrepreneurs) shaped the development of the site during the OSNs three main eras. In each era, the site had different goals, technological features, business and development strategies, favoured and represented by the most influential relevant social groups at the time. In this sense, the "offline part" of the network has always played a decisive role in the history of iWiW, from the beginning to the end.

Museums have widely used digital technologies to expand their societal and cultural impact. In terms of their use of information technologies (IT), museums have evolved from initial experiments in the 1950s to a significant online presence today. In the process of digital transformation, museums have shaped their digital identity, aiming to expand their activities beyond museum walls with emerging new roles in the digital era. The concept of museums’ digital identity is the focus of this paper. To articulate the concept, the theory of digital identity, the methodology of web history, the concept of virtual museums, and museum branding, are brought into consideration. The author articulates the concept of museums’ digital identity and outlines a number of components at the collective and individual levels embodied in national strategies and policy documents relating to digital transformation, articulated in statements by museum associations, revealed in features of their online presence, and embedded in brand design. In the conclusion, the author raises questions about the driving force of museums in developing digital identity and the need to comprehensively analyse the multiplatform museum presence.

From open-source software for collection management to open access initiatives for public reuse, the museum community is experiencing an ongoing transformation in what the concept of openness truly means. Adopting the social construction of technology as a theoretical framework and analytical method, this study investigates the changing attitudes and practices among museum professionals, especially how the intellectual precepts of the “new museology” have influenced the conceptualisation and operationalisation of openness. Methodologically, this study explores the archive of the Museums and the Web conference and conducts a qualitative content analysis of papers presented between 1997 and 2020 related to the topic of openness. By identifying and comparing how these papers discussed open-oriented practices, this study demonstrates how museum professionals have socially constructed the changing meanings of openness in the past twenty years and provides empirical evidence about how the new museology discourse has been realised in practice.

Despite the key role played by political elites in enacting and justifying policies related to the internet in India over the past few decades, the manner in which they viewed digital technologies has received relatively little attention. Using Charles Taylor’s notion of social imaginaries, this work attempts to help address this gap by examining the key values espoused within the narratives put forward by high-ranking government functionaries to understand the perspectives of this small yet powerful group. Through a thematic analysis of Prime Ministerial speeches from 1998 onwards it explores their visions in terms of the kind of internet users these were centred on, the role such technologies could play in pursuing development agendas, and how they addressed major issues such as private enterprise, the rural-urban divide and infrastructural gaps. Augmenting this with data on the growing accessibility of the internet itself during this period and major legislative acts passed, it offers a glimpse at the on-going process of shaping the internet by elite groups through the narratives they represent it by.

peer reviewed