Information & Culture is an academic journal printed three times a year by the University of Texas Press. It publishes original, high-quality, peer reviewed articles examining the social and cultural influences and impact of information and its associated technologies, broadly construed, on all areas of human endeavor. In keeping with the spirit of information studies, we seek papers emphasizing a human-centered focus that address the role of and reciprocal relationship of information and culture, regardless of time and place.

The journal welcomes submissions from an array of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches, including but not limited to historical, sociological, psychological, political and educational research that address the interaction of information and culture.

To learn more about our submission standards or submit an article for publication in Information & Culture, visit our submission requirements page.

 

New Issue: Volume 55 Number 2 (June 2020)

From Programming to Products: Softalk Magazine and the Rise of the Personal Computer User

by Laine Nooney, Kevin Driscoll, Kera Allen

p. 105-129

Laine Nooney is an assistant professor of media and information industries in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her research specializes in the social, labor, and economic history of the computer and video game industries.

Kevin Driscoll is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. He coauthored Minitel: Welcome to the Internet, and runs the Minitel Research Lab, an online archive dedicated to the French videotex platform.

Kera Allen is a PhD candidate in the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on the history of computing, with an emphasis on the workplace, spreadsheet software, and transnational adoption of early personal computers.

Becoming Socialist: Print Culture and the Global Revolutionary Moment, 1880–1914

by Brendan Fay

p. 130-148

Brendan Fay is assistant professor in the School of Library & Information Management at Emporia State University. His work has appeared in the journals Library and Information History, Current Musicology, and Cultural History, and his first book, Classical Music in Weimar Germany: Culture and Politics before the Third Reich, was published in 2019 by Bloomsbury.

Deliberation or Manipulation? The Issue of Governmental Information in Sweden, 1969–1973

by Fredrik Norén

p. 149-168

Fredrik Norén has a PhD in media and communication. His research interests concern primarily two areas: governmental communication in the 1960s and 1970s and digital text analysis. Together with Emil Stjernholm, he has recently edited a volume on propaganda and information in the Swedish postwar era.

The Evolution of the Ethnographic Object Catalog of the Canadian Museum of History, Part 1: Collecting, Ordering, and Transforming Anthropological Knowledge in the Museum, ca. 1879–1960

by Heather MacNeil, Jessica Lapp, Nadine Finlay

p. 169-191

Heather MacNeil is professor and associate dean of research in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her current research focuses on histories and theories of knowledge organization in archives and museums.

Jessica Lapp is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on archival feminist protest collections and the types of labor that trigger their creation and use.

Nadine Finlay is a double master's candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her professional focus is in museum studies and archives, with an emphasis on Indigenous materials and the relationships between institutions and source communities.

Available book reviews for the upcoming issue (Fall 2020)

Documentarity: Evidence, Ontology, and Inscription, by Ronald E. Day
Reviewed by Brian Justie
"A historical-conceptual account of the different genres, technologies, modes of inscription, and innate powers of expression by which something becomes evident." (MIT Press)

Reluctant Power: Networks, Corporations, and the Struggle for Global Governance in the Early 20th Century, by Rita Zajácz 
Reviewed by Jasmine E. McNealy
"How early twentieth-century American policymakers sought to gain control over radiotelegraphy networks in an effort to advance the global position of the United States." (MIT Press)

How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person, by Colin Koopman
Reviewed by Rebecka Taves Sheffield
"Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for how we think of and express our selfhood today." (University of Chicago Press)

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