[Commlist] CFP - Turning Points in Media Studies: The Long 1990s in Global Internet Histories edited volume

We are delighted to share a Call for Papers for an upcoming edited 
volume in the Turning Points in Media Studies anthology series, titled 
The Long 1990s in Global Internet Histories. Proposals are due by 
January 15, 2026.

This volume grows out of a multi-year collaborative project at the 
Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the 
University of Pennsylvania and a 2023 satellite event at the Association 
of Internet Researchers conference on the same theme.

Our aim with this collection is to bring together scholars, researchers, 
artists, and practitioners who are examining the development of the 
Internet and networked cultures through media histories, archives, and 
perspectives that extend beyond North Atlantic narratives. In 
particular, we seek work that illuminates the richness, unruliness, and 
generative complexity of media practices across the Global South during 
the “long 1990s.”

We would be grateful if you could share this call widely with 
colleagues, research networks, graduate students, and others who may be 
interested.  We welcome both traditional academic essays and 
experimental or multimodal contributions.

You will find the full Call for Papers below, including themes of 
interest and submission guidelines.

Best wishes,
Eszter Zimanyi (on behalf of the Editorial Team)

Call for Papers: The Long 1990s in Global Internet Histories

Turning Points in Media Studies is an anthology series examining 
critical moments that shaped the development of media in various parts 
of the world, the circumstances and histories leading to these moments, 
and their impact on media development in subsequent periods. This 
volume, titled ‘The Long 1990s in Global Internet Histories,’ emerges 
from internal workshops at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for 
Advanced Research in Global Communication. The workshops reconsidered 
the coordinates and foundations of the Internet’s development and 
expansion across the world. These conversations culminated in a 
satellite event at the annual conference of the Association of Internet 
Researchers in October 2023. Building on the insights shared by our 
symposium presenters, this edited collection steers clear of Anglophone, 
north-Atlantic media histories. Instead, it returns to ‘the long 1990s’, 
a period defined by major political-economic, social, and cultural 
transformations across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, 
to offer a global perspective on the history of the Internet. We explore 
the unruliness and abundance of media cultures that emerged out of the 
political-economic churn of the decades spanning 1980s, 1990s and the 
early 2000s to consider multiple ways of being and doing things on the 
Internet. Assembling an otherwise overlooked range of archives, material 
cultures and experiences, this volume reimagines the trajectories of 
Internet’s development and proliferation across multiple analog and 
digital media.

We are interested in critical academic essays and reflections as well as 
experimental and multimodal work on the Internet’s layered proliferation 
across the Global South.  We ask: what new histories of the Internet 
emerge into view if we think from the moment of ‘reform’ and ‘economic 
liberalization’ in varied regional contexts? In what ways would our 
understanding of Internet histories and digital futures shift if we were 
to draw insights from media histories, practices, and environments from 
varied Global South contexts that do not, or will not, follow an easily 
comprehensible, linear path toward a seemingly inevitable digital 
horizon? How does a return to the long 1990s, however belatedly, recast 
Internet histories and re-imagine digital futures?

Thematic Concerns

Drawing inspiration from our collective conversations over the past 
three years, we particularly encourage contributions engaging with three 
conceptual threads:

* Belatedness: Following Ali Behdad, we invite essays that theorize 
“lateness” not as lag or deficit but as a productive, generative 
condition—one that allows us to rethink Internet and media histories 
outside the framework of ‘catching up’. Belatedness enables us to 
revisit the 1990s and trouble the temporal frameworks of economic 
liberalization, economic reform, and neoliberal modernity.

* Unruly Milieus: We seek accounts of messy, heterogeneous media 
environments that refuse neat categorizations. Rather than simply 
positing a national account of the Internet, we ask how networked 
cultures emerge through the technical and material interactions of 
satellites, digital infrastructure, and other informal circulations.

* Abundance: We seek critical inquiries on the abundance of media forms 
and cultural production from non-Western and diasporic communities that 
highlight gender, labour and class relations. We invite reflections on 
how media technologies, practices, and personalities from this era – 
from FM radio and cable television to SD cards, cybercafés, and pirate 
film cultures – challenge teleological narratives of inevitable 
digitalization.

Formats and Interventions

Turning Points in Media Studies is supported by Manifold @Penn, an 
intuitive, collaborative, open-source platform for scholarly publishing. 
Manifold transforms scholarly publications into live digital works 
through rich media support and iterative texts. We welcome 
interdisciplinary and multimodal contributions, including but not 
limited to:

Scholarly essays
Photo-essays and visual interventions
Critical explorations of early internet archives and objects
Creative nonfiction, diaries, and fieldnotes
Artwork or multimedia reflections, including audio-centered practices

Submission Guidelines
Please submit the following materials by January 15, 2026 via the form 
linked below

Title of the piece
Type of Contribution
Abstract (250–300 words)
Author name, institutional affiliation, and email address

Submission form: http://bit.ly/3LAq6Ku

Selected contributors will be invited to submit full drafts (maximum 
3,500 words, including endnotes and works cited) by April 1, 2026. 
Submissions should follow APA 9th edition formatting and use endnotes 
rather than footnotes. Please note that no payment from authors will be 
required to publish in this open-access volume.

If you have any further questions, email us at: 
(cargc.turningpoints /at/ gmail.com)

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