As guest editors of a thematic section on “Early Digital Multimedia in Motion” in Studies in Communicaton Sciences (SComS), we accept submissions until 5 October 2025. We aim to examine the convergence and migration of technologies, standards, content, and practices that underpinned the digital transition and the emergence of multimedia in the 1980s and 1990s.
First, we are first particularly interested in the multiple layers that made this configuration possible, from standards to services, middleware and software and their usages. A second key interest lies in the reconfigurations in media and IT companies and markets, the historicization of convergence but also divergence (and deconvergence, see Balbi, 2017) through multimedia reconfigurations. The emergence of new jobs, marketing strategies, and targets, as well as changes in the professional world (including producers, consumers, and datafication practices), are also fully part of this second axis. Our third key axis is related to users’ experience, design, interfaces, early UX experience, as well as the connected discourses, imaginaries, and communication surrounding the development of multimedia devices, software, and content. Finally, papers related to the preservation, heritagization, and archaeology of early multimedia, as well as the stakeholders, communities, and challenges at stake, would also be very welcome.