Jessica Schwarz

Cambodia joined the Internet revolution in 1997, nearly three decades after the global network’s creation and four years after the World Wide Web made it accessible to anyone with a computer and modem.

Despite its relatively late start and initially poor telecommunication infrastructure, Cambodia rapidly embraced the digital age. Today, the country has e-commerce companies and influencers, smartphone apps, Facebook celebrities, and social media drama like any other country. The destruction and savagery of the Khmer Rouge as well as the sluggish development in the 1980s and 1990s under the did not keep the people of Cambodia from eventually developing their own net culture.

This web exhibition delves into the fascinating stories behind some of the most significant Khmer websites, blogs, social media channels, and homegrown apps developed over the last two decades. Students of the Department of Media and Communication (DMC) at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Tilman Baumgärtel have researched some of the most relevant offerings that the internet has to offer today.