What’s in a web archive? Three cases of web history, a close, middle and distant reading

Niels Brügger, Aarhus University

This lecture will introduce web archiving and web archives, and give three examples of how web archives can be used as source in the witing of web history. Web archives are collections of what has been publicly available on the web, but what can they be used for, and which theoretical and methodological issues are implied in the use? I will briefly introduce web archiving and the European and US landscape of existing web archives, followed by an overview of three historical projects I have been working with: the history of the Danish public service broadcaster DR’s website (close reading), the history of the web activity related to Danish parliamentary elections (middle reading), and the history of the entire Danish web domain (distant reading). The main focus will be on the latter of these three topics.