Situating the Internet as infrastructure: the case of post-socialist Lithuania

Abstract

Although the Internet is a key global infrastructure, it is still often perceived in an abstract manner by the general public, which tends to disregard how the Internet emerges in different places. In contrast, this paper situates the Internet as infrastructure ­development in post-socialist Lithuania against the backdrop of multi-sited fieldwork within its telecom industry. Drawing on fieldwork material analysis comprised of qualitative interviews, participatory observation and archival research as well as previous research from media studies, this paper contributes to Internet studies via three conceptual motifs that emerged from fieldwork material—infrastructuring practices, geopolitical imaginaries and critical negotiations—that were evaluated in order to research media infrastructures and argue for the situated analysis of infrastructural labour, geopolitics and critique that frame Internet development. It further argues for the need to explore Internet infrastructure developments in post-socialist Eastern Europe that remain unrepresented in media infrastructures research, despite the rich potential of case studies into the simultaneous emergence of the Internet within new nation states.