Ignacio Siles

Making sense of the newspaper crisis: A critical assessment of existing research and an agenda for future work

This article analyzes recent research on the newspaper crisis. It discusses how authors have examined the sources, manifestations, and implications of this crisis, and the proposals to resolve it. In addition, the essay critically examines this body of work by assessing the main spatial and temporal contexts that researchers have studied, the theories and methods that authors employ, and the analytical tropes they have deployed to make sense of the crisis. Building on this assessment of existing research, the article outlines an agenda for future work that fosters an analysis of the process, history, comparative development, and manifold implications of this crisis, and advances various empirical strategies to examine some of its most under-theorized dimensions.

Web Technologies of the Self: The Arising of the “Blogger” Identity

Drawing on Michel Foucaults theories of subjectivity, this paper conceptualizes early blogging and online diary writing as “technologies of the self,” that is, procedures through which practitioners enacted certain identities as Internet users. This study combines archival research, close analysis of websites, and interviews with their creators. It analyzes how the most defining practices associated with the emergence of these websites in the second half of the 1990s enabled the performance of specific modes of identification for their users, expressed by concepts such as the “online diarist” and the “blogger.” The study broadens our understanding of technologies of the self by considering the role of websites as artifacts in processes of self-formation on the Internet.

From Online Filter to web Format: Articulating Materiality and Meaning in the Early History of Blogs

This paper investigates the transformation of blogs from online ‘filters’ into a ‘format’ for sharing a variety of content on the Web. To account for this process of partial stabilization, this study draws on a mixed-methods research design and on an interdisciplinary framework that combines scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) and communication studies. The article analyzes how different communities of users emerged, and how they created three types of websites in the second half of 1990s: online diaries, personal publishing journals, and weblogs. Next, it examines the process of technological stabilization through which weblogs came to crystallize the practices of Web appropriation of these communities. Three dynamics are explored. First, users appropriated weblogs by expanding their types of content. Second, a Web application (Blogger) helped the weblog stabilize and standardize as a site suitable for the purposes of these user communities. Third, software developers and users redefined it as the Web’s ‘native format’. This paper broadens our understanding of technological stabilization by showing that its investigation requires the consideration of how artifacts and content are variously articulated.

The rise of blogging: Articulation as a dynamic of technological stabilization:

This article conceptualizes the emergence and stabilization of blogging as a process of articulation; that is, the establishment of a non-necessary link between a group of internet users, websites, metaphors, and practices of content creation. Data for this study come from a mixed-methods research design. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that combines constructionist sociology of technology, communication and media research, and cultural studies, this article analyzes three important dynamics of articulation that shaped the rise of blogging from 1997 to 1999: the constitution of patterns of similarity between certain websites; the adoption of the term ‘weblog’ to identify this group of websites and their associated metaphors and content creation practices; and the coalescence of their creators into a self-defined community of users. This case affords significant opportunities for thinking about the contemporary appropriation of blogs and the dynamics of stabilization and use of new media.

Steps toward cosmopolitanism in the study of media technologies

Most scholarship on media technologies can be organized along two main dimensions of inquiry: the production or consumption of these technologies, and their content or material dimensions. This map of the field of inquiry would produce four specific research areas: the production of content, the consumption of content, the production of materiality, and the consumption of materiality. Despite their respective contributions, these silos have also resulted in important scholarly limitations. Thus, in this paper, we consider the intellectual opportunities that arise from reevaluating these traditions through the lens of cosmopolitanism, which promotes the crossing of scholarly territories in the study of media technologies in order to rethink assumptions and taken-for-granted processes. We propose some steps toward cosmopolitanism in the study of media technologies by elaborating on the theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, and design implications of conducting research at the intersection of these four areas.

Establishing the Internet in Costa Rica: Co-optation and the Closure of Technological Controversies

Research in science and technology studies has devoted significant attention to technological controversies and the mechanisms that actors employ to resolve them. This article contributes to this literature by developing the notion of co-optation as a dynamic of closure. Co-optation is conceptualized as the incorporation of an actor or group into the organizational structure of another group in order to avert threat or adapt to a context of change. Drawing on the history of the Internet in Costa Rica from 1990 to 2005, this study examines a controversy between two distinct models for the development of computing networks in this country: the academic, sociotechnical network and the state-sponsored, commercial project. The analysis shows that the dispute between these groups ended when the Costa Rican government co-opted leading figures of the academic network into its structure. The notion of co-optation helps us theorize shifts in the configuration of relations between groups that lead to the partial resolution of conflicts and have important consequences for the development of technological infrastructures.

25 Years of the Internet in Central America: an interview with Guy de Téramond

ABSTRACTJanuary 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the first dedicated Internet connection in Central America. Little is known about the conditions that characterised the early development of the Internet in this part of the globe. In this interview, made on 23 June 2017, Guy de Teramond, more commonly known as “The Father of the Internet in Central America”, recalls some of the main events that led the connection to BITNET and the Internet in this region. De Teramond talks about the motivations, challenges and satisfactions involved in regional connection projects in countries like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, during the 1990s; the role of the Organization of American States; the foundation of academic networks in Central America; and the privatisation of telecommunications in the region. These discussions are updated by addressing the contemporary state of these academic projects and some of the main challenges faced by countries of the Central American region in t...ABSTRACT January 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the first dedicated Internet connection in Central America. Little is known about the conditions that characterised the early development of the Internet in this part of the globe. In this interview, made on 23 June 2017, Guy de Téramond, more commonly known as “The Father of the Internet in Central America”, recalls some of the main events that led the connection to BITNET and the Internet in this region. De Téramond talks about the motivations, challenges and satisfactions involved in regional connection projects in countries like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, during the 1990s; the role of the Organization of American States; the foundation of academic networks in Central America; and the privatisation of telecommunications in the region. These discussions are updated by addressing the contemporary state of these academic projects and some of the main challenges faced by countries of the Central American region in the global geopolitics and governance of the Internet.