Internet Manifestos (1980s–2020s): The Shifting Contexts of a Writing Practice

A funded X-Student Research Group (summer semester 2026) led by Anna Shchetvina at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Musik- und Medienwissenschaft / Music and Media Studies). The internet has been the subject of many political concerns, utopias and dystopias over the last 50 years, many of which can be traced through the history of one particular writing practice — the manifesto. Written by hackers, cyberfeminists and journalists, as well as tech marketing professionals, manifestos have been a fruitful playground for political discussions and aesthetic experiments, yet these materials and their historical role are largely understudied. Participants formulate and work through their own (group or individual) research question, working with a database of more than 1,000 examples of internet manifestos published between the 1980s and 2020s. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, the group traces the interplay between manifesto writing and the technological and political history of the internet; the project is accompanied by a public blog tracing preliminary observations.