This essay proposes an analytical approach that conceptualises internet policy as a field of struggle which emerges through processes of discursive institutionalisation. By combining field theory and selected Science and Technology Studies (STS) concepts, the essay highlights the performative function of discourses in the field. It does so by showing how actors entered the policy field through the creation of expertise and regulatory competences and uncovers key conflicts that have shaped internet policy. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, the essay illustrates the proposed research approach via three selected examples which demonstrate how international discourses materialised in internet-related organisational structures and regulatory competences in German ministries.

Zusammenfassung Neue Politikfelder entstehen auch in alten Institutionen. Der Beitrag zeichnet am Beispiel der Internetpolitik in Deutschland die Institutionalisierung eines Politikfeldes nach. Auf der Grundlage einer Kombination von soziologischer Feldtheorie und diskursivem Institutionalismus und gestützt auf Organigramm-Historien, Interviews mit Ministerialbeamten und Behördenpublikationen nimmt er die Entstehung von internetpolitischen Abteilungen in zwei Ministerien in den Blick: dem Wirtschaftsministerium und dem Innenministerium. Der Aufbau von Abteilungen für Internetpolitik ist zugleich eine Form von Diskursinstitutionalisierung und eine Positionierung der Ministerien im Politikfeld, die sich um die Etablierung und Auslegung neuer gemeinwohlrelevanter Schutzgüter dreht. Neben der Wirtschaft und der nationalen Sicherheit tritt nun auch das Internet als Schutzgut hervor, das von den Ministerien im Kontext der bereits bestehenden Schutzgüter semantisch unterschiedlich, jedoch aufbauorganisatorisch ähnlich ausgelegt und als partiell autonomes Politikfeld institutionalisiert wird.

The history of the Internet has been narrated many times. However, political histories of the Internet with a non-US-centric focus are still an uncharted research area. This paper contributes to closing that research gap. It reconstructs the Internet's history in Germany through the lens of semantic changes in press coverage on politics. In our investigation, we sought to analyse semantic change as a political history by drawing on insights concerning the relationship between semantic change and political conflict from the perspective of discourse theory and theoretical reflections on politicisation. The study follows our intuition that semantic struggles of the past leave traces in word contexts. Conversely, it uncovers semantic change by following the traces of semantic struggles in these contexts. In line with this rationale, we conducted a 'blended reading' of word contexts that relied on a quantitatively assisted qualitative text analysis. The study finds that the Internet has long been understood predominantly as a tool for politics in the political public. In the late 2000s, its perception as a highly politicised object of governance also became dominant. While the Internet was always associated with a medium and a public sphere, its characterisation changed from 'web 1.0' to a 'web of corporations'.

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