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

DEADLINE EXTENDED
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 March 1, 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 <http://bit.ly/3LAq6Ku>

Selected contributors will be invited to submit full drafts (for written 
pieces, maximum 3,500 words including endnotes and works cited) by May 
15, 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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