Saving the Web : facets of Web archiving in everyday practice
Jessica Ogden · ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) · 2020
This thesis makes visible the work of archiving the Web. It demonstrates the growing role of web archives (WAs) in the circulation of information and culture online, and emphasises the inherent connections between how the Web is archived, its future use and our understandings of WAs, archivists and the Web itself. As the first in-depth sociotechnical study of web archiving, this research offers a view into the ways that web archivists are shaping what and how the Web is saved for the future. Using a combination of ethnographic observation, interviews and documentary sources, the thesis investigates web archiving at three sites: the Internet Archive – the world’s largest web archive; Archive Team – ‘a loose collective of rogue archivists and programmers’ archiving the Web; and the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) –a community of academics, librarians and activists formed in the wake of the 2016 US Presidential Election to safe-guard environmental and climate data. Through the application of practice theory, thematic analysis and facet methodology, I frame my findings through three ‘facets of web archiving’: infrastructure, culture and politics. I show that the web archival activities of organisations, people and bots are both historically-situated and embedded in the contemporary politics of online communication and information sharing. WAs are reflected on as ‘places’ where the past, present and future of the Web collapses around an evolving assemblage of sociotechnical practices and actors dedicated to enabling different (and at times, conflicting)community-defined imaginaries for the Web. WAs are revealed to be contested sites where these politics are enabled and enacted over time. This thesis therefore contributes to research on the performance of power and politics on the Web, and raises new questions concerning how different communities negotiate the challenges of ephemerality and strive to build the ‘Web they want’.