Always Already Social
Social Media in Archives
Ed Summers
edsu@umd.edu
@edsu
slides ➜ https://bit.ly/edsu-arxius19
I. Ferguson, MO
II. Documenting the Now
III. #1o
IV. Challenges
I.
Ferguson, MO
% twarc search ferguson > tweets.json
13,480,00 tweets
August 10, 2014 - August 27, 2014
Not just 140 280 characters:
- time
- hashtags
- geo coordinates
- places
- images
- video
- urls
- retweet
- reply
- user
- profile
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation
II.
Documenting the Now
Critical Race Theory techniques of evidential rectifying could be useful to archival discourse in terms of broadening notions of what constitutes a record, the role of human subjects documented as co-creators of the record, and assumptions about archives and archivists as neutral third parties in the preservation and use of the record and other forms of historical evidence.
– Anthony Dunbar (2006)
- Build tools that help archivists assemble archival collections using social media.
- Develop a community of practice around the ethics of archiving social media.
% twarc filter ferguson > tweets.json
% twarc hydrate ids.csv > tweets.json
III.
#1o
8,410,431 tweets
September 19 - October 5, 2017
- #CatalanReferendum
- #CatalonianReferendum
- #Catalonia
- #1oct
- #1o
- #votarem
Top three videos hosted in:
#1 (9,619)
#2 (5,144)
#3 (1,387)
#1 (204)
#2 (194)
#3 (60)
#1 (49,311)
#2 (34,298)
#3 (31,791)
- 4,012 unique videos
- 45 video providers
- 772,602 seconds
- 214 hours
IV.
Challenges
An archival judgement made some time after the documents' creation ought to consider contemporary opinion important and significant. The documentary heritage should be formed according to an archival conception, historically assessed, which reflects the consciousness of the particular period for which the archives is responsible and from which the source material to be appraised is taken.
Hans Booms (1972)
Consent is broken on the Web
- Individuals are not able to read all the policies they are exposed to every day.
- Policies are very difficult to write clearly and completely so that people can understand them.
- Even if people can read the policies, it is very difficult (if not impossible ) to predict all the ways your data could be used.
Daniel Solove (2013)
We must build consentful & participatory archives for social media. Can ideas from Human Data Interaction help? (Hutton & Henderson, 2017)
- Legibility: make content creators aware of our collecting.
- Agency: allow them to participate in and benefit from our collecting.
- Negotiability: recognize that dataflows & context change over time.
(Greg Rolan et al.'s work on models for participatory archives are relevant here.)
Gràcies!
- https://www.docnow.io
- https://bit.ly/docnow-slack
- edsu@umd.edu