Kosovo on the Web: A national Web history of a country without a domain Dr. Anat Ben-David Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel @anatbd
What are the possibilities and challenges in studying the Web histories of unstable countries and territories? Palestine - Not yet sovereign, CcTLD since 2003 Yugoslavia - Disintegrated in 1992, CcTLD ‘outlived’ the country until 2010 Kosovo - Declared independence in 2008, but was never delegated a CcTLD
Sovereignty, State-Building and Standards Number of FIPS Independence UN recognition Countreis ISO 3166-1 Country Codes Recognising 1998 - 1993 - Observer Status Palestine Oslo accords 136 (exc. US) PS WE / GZ 2012 - Observer State 2008 - No XK Kosovo Decleration of 112 (inc. US) KV (RU veto) (EU assigned) Independence
Sovereignty and technological spaces Int. Dealing Country CcTLD Facebook Code Local Google Name on (ICANN) Recognition (ITU) Google Maps +970 .ps Google.ps Palestine 2010 No 1999 2003 2010 +383 Kosovo No 2012 No No 2016
Digital Border-Markers CcTLD IP addresses Whois Data “Mapping” National Web Demarcation Network analysis
Histories of an Uncharted Web Territory (A reflexive approach) “Charting” instead of Mapping, “Territory” instead of Domain Mixed Temporalities Mixed Primary Sources Multiple Spatialities / histories “Completeness” is not a goal
Prospects of Sovereign Spatialities in different periods of the Web “State of the Finding / Period Source Type of Analysis Nation” Argument Reporting War URL extraction, “Early Web” Alb-Net news from the ground / Kosovo War Whois mapping, (~1997-2001) groups via diaspora Topic Modeling sources Advance Search From War to Outlink extraction Web* Live Web + “Porous Post- from the Internet Internet Archive Networks" Independence Archive Whois mapping Page-Like Bordering “Post Web” Network of “Digital Kosovo” Facebook Albania and the ~2008+ Facebook pages US from Kosovo
The Early Web - Reporting the Kosovo War from the ground?
The Early Web - Reporting the Kosovo War from the ground?
The Early Web - Reporting the Kosovo War from the ground?
“Post Web” - Has Kosovo given up on the Web and migrated to Facebook? “Want to order a book from Amazon and have it delivered to your home in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital? Because Amazon doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent state, you need to put "Albania" as your country of residence, followed by "Kosovo Kosovo Kosovo" in the additional comments box, just to drill home the point that you don’t actually live in Albania. And even then, orders end up disappearing in the bureaucratic cracks” -Phillip Boyes, Foreign Policy , December 2013
Digital Kosovo
US Government Kosovar / Albanian Musicians Kosovar NGOs Hollywood Albanian NGOs EU Political Parties UK Universities Source: Socialbakers.com, Top 100 Facebook Pages from Kosovo
Does the hyperlink network paradigm hold when a country has no CcTLD? Searching the Live Web: Kosovo / Kosova/ Kosove in URL; results from Kosovo to http://biblioteka-ks.org http://bit-kosova.com http://bks-ks.org http://blueskylive.com http://bosnalijek-ks.net http://botasot.info http://bpk-kos.org http://bqk-kos.org Combining live Web lists with historical list from http://britishcouncil.org http://bu-ks.net http://building-ks.net http://business-kosovo.com http://caa-ks.org http://cacttus.com http://cardial-kosova.com http://cato.org http://cbak-kos.org http://ccm-kosovo.com Extracting outlinks from lists through the http://civilsocietyindex.wordpress.com http://clardkosovo.org Generating historical hyperlink networks per
Emerging naming conventions: Websites with “Kosov” in URL, geolocated in Kosovo Seeds Extracted URLs 772 332 0 300 600 900 1200 120 Independence - State Building 90 Facebook Recognition 60 War 30 0 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
Emerging naming conventions: Websites with “Kosovo” in URL, geolocated in Kosovo
Websites with KS in URL - Geolocated in “Prishtina” (Whois in disarray) AL RS KV GB US MC YU XK SI 80 60 40 20 0 URLs
Conclusions Official Standards vs. “Soft Sovereignty” (URL conventions, Facebook as preferred space) The limits of this study (Distorted Whois temporalities / Network reconstruction as artefact Web’s history proposes different knowledge paradigms through which national webs are studied What can be learned from this to other national Webs? The demise of the ccTLD and the rise of social platforms as the border-making technologies of the Web
Kosovo on the Web: A national Web history of a country without a domain Dr. Anat Ben-David Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel @anatbd
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