Gabriele Balbi
Biographic Data
| ID | 2141573 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gabriele Balbi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gabriele |
| FAMILY NAME | Balbi |
| SIGNATURE | BALBI G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Università della Svizzera italiana |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7752-277X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
More Than a Label
This article examines the process of naming the World Wide Web that took place at CERN between 1989 and 1996 to argue that naming was not a secondary act of branding or representation but a constitutive part of technological development. Drawing on archival records, press coverage, and interviews with early web actors, it reconstructs how a nameless internal project evolved through provisional, contested, and unstable designations before "World W…
Toward a media maintenance approach (Mema)
This paper introduces and discusses a theoretical approach for media scholars: the media maintenance approach (MEMA). Maintenance is not a new subject of study in social sciences and humanities, but it has been rarely addressed by media studies so far. After reviewing literature about maintenance in history of technology, philosophy of technology, and STS, and defining the concept of “maintenance”, the paper turns to media studies and examines ho…
Stop calling the Web the Internet
The terms ‘Internet’ and ‘Web’ are often mistakenly used interchangeably in everyday discourse. This article investigates the communication strategies employed by CERN, the birthplace of the Web, and by Robert Cailliau, one of its “inventors”, to differentiate between the Web and the Internet during the early 1990s. Using the marketing concept of brand confusion, which occurs when consumers confuse one brand with another that is apparently simila…
Change and resilience in Swiss newspapers and broadcasting, 2002 and 2022
This paper examines and compares the Swiss broadcasting and newspaper markets in 2002 and 2022, before and after digitalization transformed traditional media markets. It analyses differences and continuities over the two decades, the loss of relevance of national companies, and the increasing weight of foreign companies. Also, it focuses on the dynamics of media concentration and proposes a comparative historical approach to better capture its mu…
Theorizing failure in digital media. Four eclectic theses
This article focuses on the concept of 'failure' in relation to digital media, their development and appropriation in social contexts. In the first part, the article provides an overview of the category of failure for understanding digital media, addressing some of the most relevant contributions from several fields of study, including Science & Technology Studies (STS), History of Communication, Media Archaeology, and Post-Digital Art Aesthetics…
Roundtable Discussion of Emerging Technology Companies and Transcultural Challenges
The conference and special issue of The Trajectory of Emerging Media and Technology Companies at the Journal of Transcultural Communication explore how transnational media and technology corporations transform global communication. We leveraged various analytical tools to examine the companies’ structure, the country-specific advantages, regulation methods and development dynamics, media system models, and the transcultural implication for busine…
Genealogy of an archive. The birth, construction, and development of the World Wide Web collection at Cern
Web and Internet historians have never been able to consider the sources preserved at CERN because of a 30-year closure law. The WWW collection is of major importance not only because it is located where the Web was born but, more importantly, because it preserves documents produced during the early and little-known stages of its development. Our study has a qualitative approach and is based on in-person discussions, e-mail exchanges, and a focus…
Media persistence
Despite the fact that new media are continually seen as “natural born killers” of old media, old media rarely die and very often persist. In what is alternately called the “age of the Internet,” the “digital revolution,” the “metaverse,” the era of “artificial intelligence,” old media such as books, cinema, radio, television, analogue photography, and several others are still in use. Moreover, there is a kind of re-emergence of “the analogue” in …
Digital Roots
As media environments and communication practices evolve over time, so do theoretical concepts. This book analyzes some of the most well-known and fiercely discussed concepts of the digital age from a historical perspective, showing how many of them have pre-digital roots and how they have changed and still are constantly changing in the digital era. Written by leading authors in media and communication studies, the chapters historicize 16 concep…
When the ‘Messiah’ went to ‘Mecca’
At consumer and tech fairs, the future of digital technologies has always been imagined. In this study, we investigate how the annual CeBIT tech fair (held in Hanover, Germany, from 1986 to 2018) and a keynote speech given there by Bill Gates in 1995 have been constructed, framed, and substantiated through media coverage and in mediated memory. Thanks to a qualitative content analysis, based on more than 500 articles published in general interest…
History of the International Telecommunication Union
The path to WeChat
This article contributes to the literature on WeChat, providing a historical perspective on the long-lasting culture of its mother company, Tencent. Through a corpus of primary and secondary sources, the article retraces four constitutive choices which characterized Tencent’s culture from 1998, when the company was founded, to 2011, when the first version of WeChat was launched. We argue that Tencent’s market strategy has always been based on fou…
Radio studies beyond broadcasting
Examining radio development over a long time span from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, in this article, we claim that radio history is broader than the history of broadcasting only. We suggest looking at radio history through the perspective of intermediality and inter-technology, drawing on five different examples: radiography, radiotelegraphy/radiotelephony, radar and satellites, radiomobile/mobile phones with regard to r…
Academic traditions in communication
The main conference topic for the ECREA conference in Lugano addressed the many ways in which centers, cores and peripheries, and also mainstreams and alternatives are dealt with in academic media and communication research. The premise of this panel was to apply this general outline of the conference for academic introspection and to recount the many shifting centers and peripheries of communication research over time and discuss the redrawing o…
Towards a telephonic history of technology
This special issue aims to start a new phase in the historiography of the telephone. This medium has been approached narrowly both by scholars in media studies and technology1 and, when studied, ma
The rise of corporational determinism
This paper proposes a new theoretical concept, corporational determinism, to describe narratives by which digital media corporations are presented as the main or only agency informing socio-technical change. It aims to unveil how digital media corporations employ such narratives to reinterpret the past of digital media, to underline their leading role in present societies, and to show their ability in predicting and shaping the future. Drawing on…
The Mediatization of the Air
Airspace today is densely penetrated by Wi-Fi networks, GPS services, and broadcasting and mobile phone signals. This process, what we call the mediatization of the air, is not so new, as it began in the first two decades of the 20th century, with the advent of wireless telegraphy. Based on archival research, this paper shows that wireless telegraphy mediatized the air and made it a matter of common interest for formerly-disconnected internationa…
A History of Digital Media
From the punch card calculating machine to the personal computer to the iPhone and more, this in-depth text offers a comprehensive introduction to digital media history for students and scholars across media and communication studies, providing an overview of the main turning points in digital media and highlighting the interactions between political, business, technical, social, and cultural elements throughout history. With a global scope and a…
Deconstructing “Media Convergence”
Media Convergence and Deconvergence
"This edited volume explores different meanings of media convergence and deconvergence, and reconsiders them in critical and innovative ways. Its parts provide together a broad picture of opposing trends and tensions in media convergence, by underlining the relevance of this powerful idea and emphasizing the misconceptions that it has generated. Sergio Sparviero, Corinna Peil, Gabriele Balbi and the other authors look into practices and realities…
How the Web was told
The essay investigates the evolution of the “narratives of invention” used by the founding fathers of the World Wide Web in a selected corpus of papers written by Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues from 1989 up to 1993 and later in the books of James Gillies and Robert Cailliau and of Berners-Lee himself in 2000. Thanks to a textual analysis that cross these sources, we identify three main sets of common keywords that did not change and three couples…
Network Neutrality
Media and the Imaginary in History
This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, …
Il Concilio in diretta
Verso la Modernità
Reviewed by: Verso la Modernità: I bresciani e le esposizioni industriali 1800–1915 Gabriele Balbi (bio) Verso la Modernità: I bresciani e le esposizioni industriali 1800–1915. By Sergio Onger. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2010. Pp. 442. €45. Modernity is a broad concept, differently defined in diverse scholarly perspectives. It was a movement of transition from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, and the nati…
The rise of corporational determinism
This paper proposes a new theoretical concept, corporational determinism, to describe narratives by which digital media corporations are presented as the main or only agency informing socio-technical change. It aims to unveil how digital media corporations employ such narratives to reinterpret the past of digital media, to underline their leading role in present societies, and to show their ability in predicting and shaping the future. Drawing on…
Media and the Imaginary in History
This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, …
The history of Fininvest/Mediaset’s media strategy
In this article we will analyse Fininvest/Mediaset’s strategies in the media sector from its foundation to the present, considering four variables: politics, the market, technology and society. In particular, we will try to establish if, and to what extent, these four factors have affected and, in turn, have been affected by the company’s strategies. Our interest in studying Mediaset stems from the pivotal role the company plays in the Italian te…
How the Web was told
The essay investigates the evolution of the “narratives of invention” used by the founding fathers of the World Wide Web in a selected corpus of papers written by Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues from 1989 up to 1993 and later in the books of James Gillies and Robert Cailliau and of Berners-Lee himself in 2000. Thanks to a textual analysis that cross these sources, we identify three main sets of common keywords that did not change and three couples…
The path to WeChat
This article contributes to the literature on WeChat, providing a historical perspective on the long-lasting culture of its mother company, Tencent. Through a corpus of primary and secondary sources, the article retraces four constitutive choices which characterized Tencent’s culture from 1998, when the company was founded, to 2011, when the first version of WeChat was launched. We argue that Tencent’s market strategy has always been based on fou…
Media persistence
Despite the fact that new media are continually seen as “natural born killers” of old media, old media rarely die and very often persist. In what is alternately called the “age of the Internet,” the “digital revolution,” the “metaverse,” the era of “artificial intelligence,” old media such as books, cinema, radio, television, analogue photography, and several others are still in use. Moreover, there is a kind of re-emergence of “the analogue” in …
Genealogy of an archive. The birth, construction, and development of the World Wide Web collection at Cern
Web and Internet historians have never been able to consider the sources preserved at CERN because of a 30-year closure law. The WWW collection is of major importance not only because it is located where the Web was born but, more importantly, because it preserves documents produced during the early and little-known stages of its development. Our study has a qualitative approach and is based on in-person discussions, e-mail exchanges, and a focus…
Radio studies beyond broadcasting
Examining radio development over a long time span from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, in this article, we claim that radio history is broader than the history of broadcasting only. We suggest looking at radio history through the perspective of intermediality and inter-technology, drawing on five different examples: radiography, radiotelegraphy/radiotelephony, radar and satellites, radiomobile/mobile phones with regard to r…
Academic traditions in communication
The main conference topic for the ECREA conference in Lugano addressed the many ways in which centers, cores and peripheries, and also mainstreams and alternatives are dealt with in academic media and communication research. The premise of this panel was to apply this general outline of the conference for academic introspection and to recount the many shifting centers and peripheries of communication research over time and discuss the redrawing o…
Studying the Social History of Telecommunications
This article proposes a methodology for studying the social history of telecommunications grounded in the interrelations and contaminations between Anglophone and Continental literature; its originality lies in the fact that it presents and discusses both traditions. Before tackling the central theme, the reasons for studying the history of telecommunications will be discussed and three different approaches will be considered. The first is the co…
Studying the Social History of Telecommunications
This article proposes a methodology for studying the social history of telecommunications grounded in the interrelations and contaminations between Anglophone and Continental literature; its originality lies in the fact that it presents and discusses both traditions. Before tackling the central theme, the reasons for studying the history of telecommunications will be discussed and three different approaches will be considered. The first is the co…
The history of Fininvest/Mediaset’s media strategy
In this article we will analyse Fininvest/Mediaset’s strategies in the media sector from its foundation to the present, considering four variables: politics, the market, technology and society. In particular, we will try to establish if, and to what extent, these four factors have affected and, in turn, have been affected by the company’s strategies. Our interest in studying Mediaset stems from the pivotal role the company plays in the Italian te…
Radio before Radio
Concepts and structures of broadcasting did not suddenly appear during the 1920s with radio, but were inherited from the so-called "circular telephone." Between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, the telephone was used as both a point-to-point and a broadcasting medium in France, Britain, Hungary, the United States and Italy. This paper focuses on the Italian case, the so-called Araldo Telefonico. Appearing …
Verso la Modernità
Reviewed by: Verso la Modernità: I bresciani e le esposizioni industriali 1800–1915 Gabriele Balbi (bio) Verso la Modernità: I bresciani e le esposizioni industriali 1800–1915. By Sergio Onger. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2010. Pp. 442. €45. Modernity is a broad concept, differently defined in diverse scholarly perspectives. It was a movement of transition from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, and the nati…
Network Neutrality
Media and the Imaginary in History
This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, …
Il Concilio in diretta
How the Web was told
The essay investigates the evolution of the “narratives of invention” used by the founding fathers of the World Wide Web in a selected corpus of papers written by Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues from 1989 up to 1993 and later in the books of James Gillies and Robert Cailliau and of Berners-Lee himself in 2000. Thanks to a textual analysis that cross these sources, we identify three main sets of common keywords that did not change and three couples…
Deconstructing “Media Convergence”
Media Convergence and Deconvergence
"This edited volume explores different meanings of media convergence and deconvergence, and reconsiders them in critical and innovative ways. Its parts provide together a broad picture of opposing trends and tensions in media convergence, by underlining the relevance of this powerful idea and emphasizing the misconceptions that it has generated. Sergio Sparviero, Corinna Peil, Gabriele Balbi and the other authors look into practices and realities…
The Mediatization of the Air
Airspace today is densely penetrated by Wi-Fi networks, GPS services, and broadcasting and mobile phone signals. This process, what we call the mediatization of the air, is not so new, as it began in the first two decades of the 20th century, with the advent of wireless telegraphy. Based on archival research, this paper shows that wireless telegraphy mediatized the air and made it a matter of common interest for formerly-disconnected internationa…
A History of Digital Media
From the punch card calculating machine to the personal computer to the iPhone and more, this in-depth text offers a comprehensive introduction to digital media history for students and scholars across media and communication studies, providing an overview of the main turning points in digital media and highlighting the interactions between political, business, technical, social, and cultural elements throughout history. With a global scope and a…
Towards a telephonic history of technology
This special issue aims to start a new phase in the historiography of the telephone. This medium has been approached narrowly both by scholars in media studies and technology1 and, when studied, ma
The rise of corporational determinism
This paper proposes a new theoretical concept, corporational determinism, to describe narratives by which digital media corporations are presented as the main or only agency informing socio-technical change. It aims to unveil how digital media corporations employ such narratives to reinterpret the past of digital media, to underline their leading role in present societies, and to show their ability in predicting and shaping the future. Drawing on…
When the ‘Messiah’ went to ‘Mecca’
At consumer and tech fairs, the future of digital technologies has always been imagined. In this study, we investigate how the annual CeBIT tech fair (held in Hanover, Germany, from 1986 to 2018) and a keynote speech given there by Bill Gates in 1995 have been constructed, framed, and substantiated through media coverage and in mediated memory. Thanks to a qualitative content analysis, based on more than 500 articles published in general interest…
History of the International Telecommunication Union
The path to WeChat
This article contributes to the literature on WeChat, providing a historical perspective on the long-lasting culture of its mother company, Tencent. Through a corpus of primary and secondary sources, the article retraces four constitutive choices which characterized Tencent’s culture from 1998, when the company was founded, to 2011, when the first version of WeChat was launched. We argue that Tencent’s market strategy has always been based on fou…
Radio studies beyond broadcasting
Examining radio development over a long time span from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, in this article, we claim that radio history is broader than the history of broadcasting only. We suggest looking at radio history through the perspective of intermediality and inter-technology, drawing on five different examples: radiography, radiotelegraphy/radiotelephony, radar and satellites, radiomobile/mobile phones with regard to r…
Academic traditions in communication
The main conference topic for the ECREA conference in Lugano addressed the many ways in which centers, cores and peripheries, and also mainstreams and alternatives are dealt with in academic media and communication research. The premise of this panel was to apply this general outline of the conference for academic introspection and to recount the many shifting centers and peripheries of communication research over time and discuss the redrawing o…
Digital Roots
As media environments and communication practices evolve over time, so do theoretical concepts. This book analyzes some of the most well-known and fiercely discussed concepts of the digital age from a historical perspective, showing how many of them have pre-digital roots and how they have changed and still are constantly changing in the digital era. Written by leading authors in media and communication studies, the chapters historicize 16 concep…
Roundtable Discussion of Emerging Technology Companies and Transcultural Challenges
The conference and special issue of The Trajectory of Emerging Media and Technology Companies at the Journal of Transcultural Communication explore how transnational media and technology corporations transform global communication. We leveraged various analytical tools to examine the companies’ structure, the country-specific advantages, regulation methods and development dynamics, media system models, and the transcultural implication for busine…
Genealogy of an archive. The birth, construction, and development of the World Wide Web collection at Cern
Web and Internet historians have never been able to consider the sources preserved at CERN because of a 30-year closure law. The WWW collection is of major importance not only because it is located where the Web was born but, more importantly, because it preserves documents produced during the early and little-known stages of its development. Our study has a qualitative approach and is based on in-person discussions, e-mail exchanges, and a focus…
Media persistence
Despite the fact that new media are continually seen as “natural born killers” of old media, old media rarely die and very often persist. In what is alternately called the “age of the Internet,” the “digital revolution,” the “metaverse,” the era of “artificial intelligence,” old media such as books, cinema, radio, television, analogue photography, and several others are still in use. Moreover, there is a kind of re-emergence of “the analogue” in …
Theorizing failure in digital media. Four eclectic theses
This article focuses on the concept of 'failure' in relation to digital media, their development and appropriation in social contexts. In the first part, the article provides an overview of the category of failure for understanding digital media, addressing some of the most relevant contributions from several fields of study, including Science & Technology Studies (STS), History of Communication, Media Archaeology, and Post-Digital Art Aesthetics…
Stop calling the Web the Internet
The terms ‘Internet’ and ‘Web’ are often mistakenly used interchangeably in everyday discourse. This article investigates the communication strategies employed by CERN, the birthplace of the Web, and by Robert Cailliau, one of its “inventors”, to differentiate between the Web and the Internet during the early 1990s. Using the marketing concept of brand confusion, which occurs when consumers confuse one brand with another that is apparently simila…
Sociology (18 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Media studies (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Media Studies and Communication (9 works) · Telecommunications (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Digital Games and Media (6 works) · Economics (6 works)