Interrogating the politics and performativity of web archives

Since the mid-1990s institutions such as national libraries and the Internet Archive have been ‘archiving the Web’ through the harvesting, collection and preservation of ‘web objects’ (e.g. websites, web pages, social media) in web archives [55]. Much of the focus of the web archiving community has been on the continued development of technologies and practices for web collection development [38], with an increased attention in recent years on facilitating the scholarly use of web archives [25, 24, 61]. This research will take a step back to consider the place of web archives in light of ‘the archival turn’ and emergent questions over the ever- expansive role of the archive and the Web in everyday life. First coined by Stoler [81], ‘the archival turn’ denotes a shift from ‘archive as source’ to ‘archive as subject,’ signalling wide-ranging epistemological questions concerning the role of the archive (and the archivist) in shaping and legitimising knowledge and particular ways of knowing. This research proposes to re-situate web archives as places of knowledge and cultural production in their own right, by implicating both the web archivist and the technologies in the shaping of the ‘politics of ephemerality’ [82] that lead to the creation and maintenance of web archives. This study will identify key underlying assumptions about what the Web is (e.g. a ‘Web of Documents,’ ‘abstract information space’), what of the contemporary Web is (or isn’t) being archived, and the relative affordances for web archival practice and scholarly use. Furthermore, drawing on critical approaches to information, Science and Technology Studies and Web Science, this research will engage with the performativity of web archiving, the practices of selection, collection and classification, and the possible implications for a socio-technical understanding of web archives

‘Go Fish’: Conceptualising the challenges of engaging national web archives for digital research

Our work considers the sociotechnical and organisational constraints of web archiving in order to understand how these factors and contingencies influence research engagement with national web collections. In this article, we compare and contrast our experiences of undertaking web archival research at two national web archives: the UK Web Archive located at the British Library and the Netarchive at the Royal Danish Library. Based on personal interactions with the collections, interviews with library staff and observations of web archiving activities, we invoke three conceptual devices (orientating, auditing and constructing) to describe common research practices and associated challenges in the context of each national web archive. Through this framework we centre the early stages of the research process that are often only given cursory attention in methodological descriptions of web archival research, to discuss the epistemological entanglements of researcher practices, instruments, tools and methods that create the conditions of possibility for new knowledge and scholarship in this space. In this analysis, we highlight the significant time and energy required on the part of researchers to begin using national web archives, as well as the value of engaging with the curatorial infrastructure that enables web archiving in practice. Focusing an analysis on these research infrastructures facilitates a discussion of how these web archival interfaces both enable and foreclose on particular forms of researcher engagement with the past Web and in turn contributes to critical ongoing debates surrounding the opportunities and constraints of digital sources, methodologies and claims within the Digital Humanities

Implicit agency in observed actions: evidence for N1 suppression of tones caused by self-made and observed actions

Every day we make attributions about how our actions and the actions of others cause consequences in the world around us. It is unknown whether we use the same implicit process in attributing causality when observing others' actions as we do when making our own. The aim of this research was to investigate the neural processes involved in the implicit sense of agency we form between actions and effects, for both our own actions and when watching others' actions. Using an interval estimation paradigm to elicit intentional binding in self-made and observed actions, we measured the EEG responses indicative of anticipatory processes before an action and the ERPs in response to the sensory consequence. We replicated our previous findings that we form a sense of implicit agency over our own and others' actions. Crucially, EEG results showed that tones caused by either self-made or observed actions both resulted in suppression of the N1 component of the sensory ERP, with no difference in suppression between consequences caused by observed actions compared with self-made actions. Furthermore, this N1 suppression was greatest for tones caused by observed goal-directed actions rather than non-action or non-goal-related visual events. This suggests that top–down processes act upon the neural responses to sensory events caused by goal-directed actions in the same way for events caused by the self or those made by other agents

The quality of life and social needs of international medical graduates : emerging themes in research

A literature review was conducted to identify the experiences, challenges and acculturation of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) living and working throughout rural and remote Australia. As such recently published literature highlighted key factors impacting IMGs living and working in rural and remote areas which informed the acculturation process in western society. IMGs acculturation throughout Australian rural settings occurs rapidly among these higher educated migrants. Those IMGs with Australian spouses or who have practiced in rural settings prior to migration also experience a new phase of acculturation. However, maintaining cultural and religious connectivity continues to be challenging in these settings. Community awareness and an ability to embrace IMGs and cultural differences remain crucial for identity and cultural retention. Nevertheless, few studies recognised quality of life and social needs of IMGs and their family’s impact on the rural acculturation and settlement success. Previous research has focused primarily on employment integration, satisfaction and practice support. The identified literature is in no way extensive as it focuses on IMGs in the Australian context, which may impact on transferability. A gap exists where quality of life and social needs of IMGs and their families have been overlooked. These are crucial factors impacting rural acculturation, retention and IMGs health and wellbeing. The literature highlights insights into IMGs acculturation as they migrate and reside in Tasmania, a less culturally diverse population, remains absent with very little comparable research conducted

Expanding the care continuum for HIV/AIDS: Bringing carers into focus

This review by the International Center for Research on Women explores the specific issues that cluster around the provision of care in the context of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. With the support of the Population Council’s Horizons program, this review applies the care economy lens to two key sectors, health and social protection, and finds that while important strides are being made, much more needs to be known and done to enable individuals, families, and households to survive in a world shaken by AIDS. The report documents the challenges faced by family care providers, who are primarily women and unlinked to existing services; responses by the health sector and the community to support caregivers, including the involvement of youth and men in caregiving; and government- and private-sector–sponsored social protection programs to help sustain the safety nets of households affected by HIV/AIDS