Between marginal and mainstream. Communities and ecosystems at stake

The three research articles in this special issue and the interview with Ronda Hauben are partly the result of the 4th RESAW conference, that brought together through the RESAW network a community of researchers, web archivists and professionals, united around a common interest, namely web history and web archives. The 4th RESAW conference, organised on 17 and 18 June 2021 by the C2DH (Centre for contemporary and digital history) at the University of Luxembourg, sought to examine the tension between marginal and mainstream in web history, and to go beyond this binary view. The aim was to study all the nuances, shifts in meaning, difficulties in defining and measuring audiences, as well as the evolution over the course of history of digital practices, content, producers, and communities, from the fringes and peripheries to the centre and the core of the Web. The RESAW conference was also an opportunity to launch the HIVI research project , hosted at the C2DH, and the topics that were addressed at the conference were also related to virality.