In the past years, there has been a growing scholarly attention given to “digital rights contention”, that is political conflicts related to the expansion or restriction of civil and political rights exerted through, or affected by, digital communications technologies. Yet, when we turn to history to inform contemporary debates and mobilisations, what we often find are singlesided narratives that have achieved iconic status, studies focusing on a handful of over-quoted contentious episodes and generally over-representing North America, or scattered accounts that have so far escaped the notice of internet researchers. How can we explain these gaps in internet histories? How can we go about overcoming them to build a more fine-grained understanding of past socio-legal struggles around human rights in the context of media and communications? This essay calls for advancing the political history of the internet in order to empower scholars, activists and citizens alike as they address current (and future) controversies around internet politics.

中文翻译：

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互联网政治史上的空白

在过去的几年中，学术界越来越关注“数字权利争用”，即与通过数字通信技术施加或受其影响的公民权利和政治权利的扩展或限制有关的政治冲突。然而，当我们转向历史为当代辩论和动员活动提供信息时，我们经常发现的是具有标志性地位的单方面叙事，针对少数被过度引用的有争议情节，通常对北美的代表性过高的研究，或分散的叙述，到目前为止，已经摆脱了互联网研究人员的注意。我们如何解释互联网历史中的这些差距？我们如何克服这些障碍，以便在媒体和传播的背景下对过去围绕人权的社会法律斗争有更深入的了解？本文呼吁推进互联网的政治历史，以增强学者，活动家和公民的能力，使其能够解决当前（以及未来）围绕互联网政治的争论。