The first CFI Newsletter is published (in Danish). The newsletter is published biannually, and since its launch it constantly has between 140 and 200 subscribers. The Newsletter is edited by Niels Brügger (until March 2004). Later it is edited by Anja Bechmann Petersen (March 2004-June 2006) and Vidar Falkenberg (June 2006-July 2007).
The first member of the Centre joins: Jakob Linaa Jensen, PhD student at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. Fourteen more researchers join the Centre by August 2005 – a total of twenty-eight Centre members is reached. CFI is reorganized in the summer of 2005 after the completion for a number of larger research projects, which brings the membership down to twelve (CFI’s members 2000-2005).
To give the Centre a logo, CFI holds a design competition. The conclusion of the text describing the competition reads ”While the Centre does have boundaries, it does not have any money. The designer of the winning logo will receive unlimited virtual praise and three actual bottles of red wine."
CFI’s Danish-language site continues to grow as new subject headings are added (Examples include ‘On CFI’, ‘Members and projects’, CFI’s network’, ‘CFI’s newsletter’, and ‘About this site’).The site continues to develop in this format until a new layout is phased in between July and August 2000.
The establishment of the Centre is announced in a press release.
Several of the Centre’s members participate in arranging the first international conference on internet research to take place in Denmark, ’Approaches to the Internet – the Humanities in Digital Networks’. (Host: Center for Cultural Studies, Aarhus University).
CFI goes online. The first homepage is literally just a single page. The web address was imv.au.dk/cfi. The web page as well as the subsequent website is edited by Niels Brügger until March 2004. Later it is edited by Anja Bechmann Petersen (March 2004-December 2008) and Vidar Falkenberg (September 2005-December 2008), and Niels Brügger (December 2008-).
A meeting is held at which the final charter is ratified. (Read the most recent version of the charter here). The Board was elected: Dr Niels Ole Finnemann (Director of the Centre and chairman), Dr Niels Brügger and Dr Finn Olesen.
The Centre for Internet Research (CFI) is established in September 2000 in order “to promote research on the social and cultural functions and meanings of the internet”. The Centre is based at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
The Centre is founded on the initiative of Associate Professor PhD Niels Brügger (then Assistant Professor) and Professor Dr Niels Ole Finneman (then Associate Professor). Professors Brügger and Finneman had undertaken a preliminary investigation of the feasibility of providing internet research with an institutional context. Possible bases for the new Centre included a number of research institutions in the Aarhus areas, including the Department of Information and Media Studies.
The preliminary discussions results in the ’Proposal for the establishment of a Centre for Internet Research’, which describes the Centre’s research aims and functions, among which the establishment of a national internet archive is central. The proposal is presented and ratified at a meeting at the Department of Information and Media Studies on September 18 2000. The participants in this meeting become the Centre’s first members: Jørgen Bang, Niels Brügger, Henrik Bødker, Jens Christensen, Mette Birkedahl Christensen, Rune Dalgaard, Niels Ole Finnemann, Per Jauert, Søren Kolstrup, Lars Konzack, Randi Markussen, Frands Mortensen, Finn Olesen (Bo Fibiger not present).
