Schedule for the Day

8:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.: Arrival, coffee

9:00 a.m.-9:15 a.m.: Opening comments from Pre-Conference Organizers

9:15 a.m.-10:45 a.m.: Roundtable 1: Historiography and the Very Idea of the New

Of continuing concern to the study of history and to the study of new media is the question of reflexivity: how do we understand the terms we apply to new media? And what are we to make of the changes in our own systems of thought? This roundtable will address these questions.

Eric W. Rothenbuhler, “What Is New? What Is Not?”
Carl Therrien, “The History of Video Games: Teleological Illusion and Other Methodological Issues”
Michele Rosenthal & Rivka Ribak, “Writing a history of ambivalent use: The case of alternative communities and old/new media”
L. Suzanne Suggs, Chris McIntyre & Joan Cowdery , “Health
Communication and New Media: Just Another TV Rerun?”
James Hay, “Watching Ourselves Through the New Tele-visuality”
Dmitry Epstein, “Following the "Digital Divide": Historically Situating the Construct in Realm of Communication Theories and Theories of Development”
Paul Skalski, “The Parallel Development of Film and Video Games: History and Implications”

10:45-11:15 a.m.: Coffee Break

11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.: Roundtable 2: Media History Old & New

This roundtable pulls together a set of papers that involve comparisons (implicit or explicit) between new media and media with a longer history. This kind of comparative focus has been an essential component of historical work on technology and media for some time.

Participants:

Michael Zimmer, “Renvois of the Past, Present, and Future: Hyperlinks, Discourse Networks, and the Structuring of Knowledge from the Encyclopédie to Web 2.0”
Noah Arceneaux, “Department Stores and Home Shopping, 1911-1950”
Ingrid Erickson, “Where Are You Now?: Locating Ourselves and Others in Mediated Communication”
Merav Katz-Kimchi, “Historicizing Utopian Popular Discourse on the Internet: Positions, Comparison, and Contextualization”
Fernando Bermejo, “Audience Manufacture in Historical Perspective”
Teresa M. Harrison, “Wielding New Media: Exploring the History of
Engagement with Media and Community”
Sabryna Cornish, “The Discursive Practices of Media Convergence: When Old Media Meet New Media”

12:45-1:15 p.m.: Lunch.

1:15-2:15 p.m.: Panel Discussion: Doing New Media History: A Roundtable

What does it mean to recount the history of new media? Does it mean we should study the development and stabilization of media technologies? Or does it mean that we should examine the interaction of new media technologies with various social and cultural practices and institutions? And what does it mean to work critically in a historical tradition? Can a historian recount the past without slipping into a celebration of inventors and
inventions that “changed the world?”

Panelists:

Carolyn Marvin
Jonathan Sterne
Lisa Gitelman
Fred Turner
Ben Peters

2:15-3:50 p.m.: Roundtable 3: Historicizing the New, Part I: Cultures, Meanings, and Codes.

New media have histories of their own. Many of these histories have yet to be told. These papers approach the history of new media through an emphasis on how they relate to certain meanings and ideas.

Melanie Chan, “A Critical Study of Representations of Embodiment and Immersion in Virtual Reality”
Carolyn Kane, “Decoding Color Codes: The Origins and Ideologies of Color in Computer Art”
Hiesun Cecilia Suhr, “The Role of Participatory Media in Consecrating the Arts: Underpinning the paradoxes in the artistic field of Myspace.com”
Stephen Coleman, David E. Morrison, & Simeon J. Yates, “When
Prophecy Fails and the Failure of Understanding”
Kelli Burns, “A Historical Examination of the Development of Social Media and Its Application to the Public Relations Industry”
Niels Brügger, “Website History”
M. I. Franklin, “The Browser Wars and Struggles for Control of the
Internet: The Next Generation”

3:50-4:15 p.m.: Coffee, Tea Break

4:15-5:15 p.m.: Roundtable 4: Historicizing the New, Part II: Institutions, Organizations, and Networks

The history of new media will, perforce, require researchers to pay particular attention to the structures that underlay the creation and use of media. This roundtable focuses precisely on the social structure portion of the equation.

Gado Alzouma, “The State, Media, and New Information and
Communication Technologies in Niger: A Historical Perspective"
Brian O’Neill, “DAB Eureka-147: A European Technological Imaginary for Digital Radio”
Zizi Papacharissi, “The Virtual Geographies of Social Networks: A
Comparative Analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn and A SmallWorld”
John Carey & Martin Elton, “The Other Path to the Web :The Forgotten Role of Videotex and Other Early Online Services”
Lonny J. Brooks, “The Long Arm of the American Futurist Project:
Connecting the Dots Between Internet Origins, Future Scenarios, and New Media”

5:15-6:15 p.m.: Reception