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17 December: An open lecture online by Nathalie Fridzema “Researching the Early Dutch Web: Digital Methods for Historical and Historiographical Objectives in Internet Studies”

Final online seminar in 2024: Nathalie Fridzema will give an open presentation “Researching the Early Dutch Web: Digital Methods for Historical and Historiographical Objectives in Internet Studies” on 17th December as a part of the Oberseminar series.

This event will accommodate online format offering an opportunity to join online. Don’t miss the last Oberseminar Series in 2024! To secure your spot please navigate to Evenbrite page!

Nathalie Fridzema. Image courtesy: https://www.rug.nl/staff/n.fridzema/?lang=en

Nathalie Fridzema is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen specializing in early Dutch web cultures and digital heritage. She has a bachelor and (research) master in Media Studies with a minor in Digital Humanities. Whilst working as research assistant together with Prof. Dr Susan Aasman on a preliminary web project, Nathalie delved into internet provider XS4ALL and personal homepages. These pilot studies formed the foundation for her ICOG PhD project at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies in Groningen. The objective of the PhD project is to create a cultural history of web practices before web 2.0, specifically in the Netherlands between 1994 and 2004. This period of the preliminary web – characterized by idealistic initiatives adhering to utopian ideals like participatory democracy, freedom, and accessibility – is often overshadowed by the swift development of platforms and social media. In this project, Nathalie will take a critical look into this influential period, focusing on the everyday user and website maker.

The abstract of the talk is as follows:

The guest lecture will explore two perspectives relevant to Internet Studies and digital humanities approaches, using a research project on the early Dutch web as a case study. First, it will address the growing importance of born-digital materials, such as web pages, and how to effectively interpret these sources from a web-minded perspective. This includes critical considerations like how archival practices balance with the technical challenges of creating digital web archives, and how the datafied web can be utilized for a variety of digital methods. Second, the lecture will highlight the significance of Internet Studies scholarship, emphasizing how its historical connection with early web initiatives has shaped the development of the internet. It will also discuss how a digital hermeneutic approach, involving scaled reading, was used to identify dominant intellectual imaginaries from a database of widely-read academic publications.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
valentinaprishchepova (December 2, 2024). 17 December: An open lecture online by Nathalie Fridzema “Researching the Early Dutch Web: Digital Methods for Historical and Historiographical Objectives in Internet Studies” HDSM. Retrieved May 16, 2025 from https://hdsm.hypotheses.org/4396


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