About the Journal
Internet Waste Studies is a pioneering, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the critical examination of waste, excess, by-products, and residues generated by digital cultures, infrastructures, and economies. As the first journal to consolidate scholarship on the ecological, cultural, material, and epistemic dimensions of digital waste, it foregrounds the often-overlooked detritus of the internet ranging from data debris, obsolete devices, and platform pollution to memetic noise, attention economies, and the socio-environmental afterlives of online activity.
Situated at the intersection of digital humanities, media archaeology, STS, environmental humanities, critical infrastructure studies, and platform studies, Internet Waste Studies investigates how waste is produced, circulated, hidden, valued, and contested within digital systems. The journal embraces interdisciplinary approaches that illuminate the entanglements between digital excess and broader structures of power, including capitalism, coloniality, surveillance, extraction, and global inequities. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: data decay, algorithmic inefficiency, e-waste ecologies, toxic technocultures, meme garbage and virality, platform moderation overflow, digital noise, abandoned online spaces, the environmental impact of AI and cloud infrastructures, and the aesthetics and politics of digital refuse. The journal encourages empirical, theoretical, speculative, creative, and multimodal forms of scholarship. Internet Waste Studies aims to establish waste as a central analytic for understanding the internet’s cultural and material operations. By exposing the hidden costs, residues, and consequences of digital life, the journal provides an essential venue for researchers, practitioners, artists, and policymakers working to critically rethink sustainability, value, and futurity in an age defined by exponential production and accumulation of digital waste.
