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Short abstract:

This paper examines both the power and future-making capabilities of historical web data by turning its attention to the role that large-scale open access web archives (like the Internet Archive, CommonCrawl and others) are playing in the circulation and commodification of web data.

Long abstract:

The proliferation and commodification of new and emergent forms of data has been a key area of interest within the digital social sciences. Previous debates have focused on the ways that online platforms and technologies are implicated in the datafication of everyday life, as well as social science claims to expertise in the realm of so-called ‘big data’. Whereas studies of datafication have heavily focused on corporate-owned social media and communication platforms, this paper turns its attention to the role that large-scale open access web archives are playing in the circulation and commodification of web data. The paper conceptualises the sociotechnical significance of web archives through the lens of Thrift’s (2005) concept of ‘knowing capitalism’. The paper explores how web archives are fundamentally premised on the mass accumulation of web content over time, and outlines the ‘value chains’ that organisations (such as the Internet Archive, CommonCrawl and others) enact through the collection, maintenance and transformation of the Web into stable data archives. Example use-cases demonstrate how these archives embody and generate diverse forms of (social, cultural, economic and political) value when deployed online. This analysis enables a broader interrogation of web archives beyond repositories for web-based research data (as they are frequently framed), towards critical sites for examining both the power and future-making capabilities of historical web data. The paper concludes by mapping a research agenda for the study of web archival use to further understand these data infrastructures and their place in the digital economy.