RESAW Conference 2025: Siegen at the center of digital research
Aarhus, London, Amsterdam, Marseille - and now Siegen: Almost 100 researchers from eleven countries came together at the University of Siegen for the international RESAW (Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials) Conference 2025 to discuss the historical roots of the data-driven internet. The conference takes place every two years at different locations. This year, it was organized by the Siegen Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) "Media of Cooperation".
Under the title "The datafied Web", the two-day conference featured over 40 presentations on the question of how data collection, web analysis and digital surveillance practices have developed since the 1990s: From simple web counters to complex tracking technologies. Numerous contributions were also dedicated to the aesthetics of early web metrics, the transformation of archiving practices and the history of data-driven platform economies.
Dr. Sebastian Gießmann, initiator and main organizer of the conference, explains: "The datafication of the web has brought about a decisive transformation of capitalism - and capitalist economies have in turn datafied the World Wide Web. Our current platform economies are based on the historical development of cookies, advertising on the web and the measurement of data publics."
"The aim of the RESAW conference is to trace how the datafied web became the sensory media environment we live in today - a web of predictive recommendations, user-specific variations, AI-generated aesthetics and ephemeral interfaces. A web where "what you see" is the product of where you clicked, what your cursor hovered over and what model you unknowingly trained. Exploring this web - and preserving its stories - is precisely where the research agendas of RESAW and Media of Cooperation meet," says Prof. Dr. Carolin Gerlitz, spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Center "Media of Cooperation".
The Siegen conference also marked the tenth anniversary of the RESAW network. A panel discussion moderated by Prof. Dr. Niels Brügger (University of Aarhus) reflected on the development of the RESAW community, which has been dedicated to digital cultural heritage and research into archived web content since 2012. A total of 22 panels examined the conference topic from interdisciplinary perspectives - for example from media studies, digital history, computer science, sociology or science and technology studies. In addition to researchers from Germany, representatives from Luxembourg, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the USA and Scandinavia were also present.
Organized by the CRC "Media of Cooperation"
The RESAW conference was organized by the Collaborative Research Centre "Media of Cooperation", which has been based at the University of Siegen since 2016 and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The interdisciplinary research network investigates how media enable forms of cooperation, exchange and participation - be it in digital platforms, in sensor-based everyday practices or in interaction with artificial intelligence.
In the current funding phase, the focus is on sensory media and technical sensemaking, i.e. the question of how machines cooperate with humans by collecting and processing data from the environment and preparing decisions - for example in health apps, in smart homes or in mobility. The CRC pursues a praxeological approach: media are researched in specific contexts of use - always with a view to how people use media and how media in turn affect people.
