Testing methods to explore the evolution of ‘stream’-related terms in the Danish Web archive

Abstract

This article uses Internet archives to explore the emergence and spread of terms with the stem ‘stream’ in the Danish Web domain from 2006 to 2021, focusing on the actors that contributed to its evolution. I test three proposed methods for investigating the Web pages and Web sites that employed a given term. My findings highlight temporal developments in the use of ‘stream*’, ‘streamingtjeneste’, and ‘streaming service’ with diverse actors using it, though news Web sites clearly dominated. This research attends to challenges in working with Web archive data, and evaluates methods with regard to large datasets, that others can use to engage empirically with Internet archives, which remain vast, but largely under-exploited resources.