Within the last two decades, the Internet has become one of, if not the most important medium for gathering information and facilitating communication in times of war and crisis. By drawing on the example of the Kosovo War in 1999, which is often described as the “the First Internet War”, this essay shows how the World Wide Web did not only serve as an important tool of information, communication and intervention, but also how it functioned as an archive for the individual and collective experiences of war. In analysing the virtual archive of the Syndicate and the Nettime mailing lists, I show how media artists and activists contributed to the idea of Deep Europe as an imagined (online) community which overcomes the binaries of ‘East’ and ‘West’, a community which experienced its first major rupture during the Kosovo War. Not only do I discuss how, at the time, the Internet served as a form of shelter in times of crisis, in the face of censorship and cyberwarfare, but also as an emerging social platform, sharing reports on everyday events, war diaries and video material, providing historians with new and valuable sources for contemporary European history. Lastly, contributing to the field of digital humanities, I discuss the potential and the challenges of Deep Europe and the Digital East.
Die wirtschaftliche Stagnation in Jugoslawien in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren wirkte sich negativ auf die Situation auf dem jugoslawischen Arbeitsmarkt aus. Im Jahr 1980 waren rund 800.000 Jugoslawen auf Stellensuche. Der Druck auf den jugoslawischen Arbeitsmarkt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren sowie der im Vergleich zu Westeuropa niedrigere Lebensstandard trieben Hunderttausende Jugoslawen in die Emigration. Die überwiegende Mehrheit der jugoslawischen Arbeitsmigranten ging damals nach Westeuropa. Diese Emigration erreichte ihren Höhepunkt in der ersten Hälfte der 1970er Jahre. [...]