Dear colleagues, 

Special issue of Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society

(Editors of special issue: Andreas Fickers and Valérie Schafer)

The Internet and the European Market 

“The internet and digital technologies are transforming our world. But existing barriers online mean citizens miss out on goods and services, internet companies and start-ups have their horizons limited, and businesses and governments cannot fully benefit from digital tools. It's time to make the EU's single market fit for the digital age – tearing down regulatory walls and moving from 28 national markets to a single one”. This assessment on the European Commission website (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/digital-single-market_en) invites to analyse the relationships between the EU’s single market and the digital age from a critical perspective.

This interdisciplinary special issue will examine the relationship between EU regulation, Internet and market integration from an historical perspective. We welcome articles that seek to analyse the way the development of Internet has facilitated market integration. At the same time, this development has created major regulatory challenges at the EU level — e.g. peering between ISPs, the taxation of electronic commerce, data protection issues, etc. The articles in this special issue may explore the Internet integration-regulation interactions from the perspective of a diverse range of analytical frameworks. The historical development of this interaction will be considered along with its various political, legal and economic dimensions.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

· Development of a Trans-European Internet market (transnational networks and services, ISPs, peering, etc.)

· Internet integration in the EU Internal Market (development of e-commerce, banking activities, free circulation of goods, services and digital access to goods and services)

· Internet as a facilitator for EU Internal Market integration

· Digital Single Market Strategies

· Discourses, imaginaries, regarding « Digital as a driver for growth » in the EU

· Debates and controversies regarding EU Market Integration on the Web

· Regulatory issues and challenges regarding Internet and the Web in the EU

· European stakeholders and their evolution in Internet integration-regulation

· Comparative approaches of Internet integration-regulation interactions in the EU and in other areas/markets

Submissions

Please send abstracts of a maximum of 700 words to Andreas Fickers (andreas.fickers@uni.lu) and Valérie Schafer (valerie.schafer@uni.lu) no later than 15 April 2019. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 1^st May 2019 and authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit an article. Please note that acceptance of an abstract does not imply final publication as all articles must go through the journal’s usual double blind peer review process.

Time schedule

· 15 April 2019: due date for abstracts

· 1^st May 2019: notification of acceptance

· 15 December 2019: submission of papers

· January-March 2020: review process and revisions

We are hoping to organize a two-days workshop to discuss papers at the University of Luxembourg during the editorial process (2^nd semester of 2019).

 More information on Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rint20