Call for Contributions

Imagining the Internet(s):

A Collaborative Glossary

Matter of Imagination & Institute of Network Cultures

Co-edited by Anya Shchetvina & Nathalie Fridzema

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Due: 15th of September 2025

Submit: a 100 word pitch and a bibliography

In the last decades, Media Studies and STS scholars have shown particular interest in the imaginaries, ideas, and rhetoric in the social construction of the internet throughout its history (Flichy, 2007; Natale, 2016; Bory, Benecchi, Balbi, 2016; Bory, 2020; Ernst, Schröter, 2021; Wyatt, 2021). From early metaphors of cyberspace and electronic frontier, to founding myths, historical narratives or early network prototypes―in focus are different ways in which language, visual rhetoric and other means of imagination help us understand networks and network society. What is especially interesting in the recent years, is how there are more and more attempts to challenge the dominant US-centered historical narrative and highlighting the local peculiarities of internet development and surrounding meaning-making in different regions. However, the concepts used to critically describe and conceptualise these visions often remain scattered and unconnected across fields and geographies. Imaginaries or imaginaire, network ideology or technotopia, net romanticism or cyberculture―there are dozens of sharp concepts and sticky notions that help understand the role of imagination and discourse in our hugely digitised, increasingly networked history.

Our objective is to conduct a collective inventorisation of both well-established and emerging concepts and keywords that researchers identify as interesting for the study of how the internet has been historically imagined. Extending work done through Matter of Imagination—a newsletter, blog, and open-format working group based in Berlin and Groningen—the Collaborative Glossary invites researchers to think with and through the keywords that one can use to study the meaning-making that surrounds the internet. We invite proposals from established and early-career scholars working in STS, Media and Communication Studies, Web History, and related fields. Contributions may be grounded in empirical work, theoretical frameworks, or methodological reflections, and may come from any disciplinary or regional perspective.

The Glossary will be published by the Institute of Network Cultures, supported by European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, and will be a digital Open Access digital publication (a zine with ISBN), licensed via Creative Commons and distributed non-commercially. We take inspiration from experimental and creative works like Keywords of the Datafied State, A New AI Lexicon, The Glossary of Decentralised Technosocial Systems, Keywords for Studying Media, Culture & Information: An Index, Critical Data Studies Collaborative Glossary. We envision the Glossary to be both used as a compact and mobile artifact that via circulation could enhance cross-dissemination of the ongoing work on these topics between different countries, research schools and collectives. It also could be used as a prompt for teaching and classroom discussion.

If your pitch is selected, you'll be invited to write a short academic essay of 500–1000 words. The Glossary is not a dictionary or an encyclopedia. We do not expect each essay to be a substantial and full overview of the keyword. Instead, we encourage you to submit essays introducing the keyword, explaining its power for the study of imaginaiton and the internet, and pointing the reader to the direction of further readings.

Each entry will introduce and reflect on a single concept relevant to the study of internet imaginaries—explaining where it comes from, what it makes visible, and why it matters. You are encouraged to engage in writing that is both informative and engaging, and to produce critical, and sometimes personal texts that make the keyword accessible and thought-provoking. Each entry is accommodated with a personal selection of readings. In this manner, the essay itself will work as a brief and inspiring (or provocative) introduction to the keyword, while the selected reading will serve as a gateway for readers to dive deeper into the topic.

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Submissions guidelines and preliminary schedule:

Please submit a keyword and a ~100 word pitch (open style, include what you see fitting at this stage). The submission should also include a preliminary bibliography (the texts that will be later suggested in the essay for the further reading), and a short bio focusing on the experiences that make you a fitting author for the suggested keyword.

• Submissions should be sent to n.fridzema@rug.nl by the 15th of September 2025;
• Contributors will hear back before the 15th of October;
• Full glossary entries of 500-1000 words are expected by December 1st, after which there will be one feedback round;
• We envision publishing the Glossary by June of 2026 at the latest.

If you have any further questions, please contact the co-editors, Anya Shchetvina (anya.shchetvina[at]posteo.net) and Nathalie Fridzema (n.fridzema[at]rug.nl). We look forward to your contributions.

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References

Boomen, v. d. M. (2014). Transcoding the Digital: How Metaphors Matter in New Media. Institute for Networked Cultures. Amsterdam.

Bory, P., Benecchi, E., & Balbi, G. (2016). How the Web was told: Continuity and change in the founding fathers’ narratives on the origins of the World Wide Web. new media & society, 18(7), 1066-1087.

Bory, P. (2020). The internet myth: From the internet imaginary to network ideologies (p. 169). University of Westminster Press.

Ernst, C, Schröter, J. (2021). Media Futures. Theory and Aesthetics, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Flichy, P. (2007). The internet imaginaire. MIT press

Jasanoff, S. & Kim, S. H. (2015). Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In S. Jasanoff & S. H. Kim (Eds.), Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power (pp. 1-33). University of Chicago Press.

Natale, S., & Bory, P. (2017). Constructing the biography of the Web: An examination of the narratives and myths around the Web’s history. DIGITAL FORMATIONS, 29-42.

Streeter, T. (2010). The Net Effect. Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet. NYU Press.

Turner, F. (2006). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press.