Comments on: Archiving Social Media

By: More Thoughts on Social Media » The History Shack

More Thoughts on Social Media » The History Shack — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:50:50 +0000

[...] with social media sites. There were rumblings of a conference on these issues coming from CHNM late last year, but I don’t know if these plans are still on track. I hope so; it’s a conversation that I’d [...]

By: Tom Scheinfeldt

Tom Scheinfeldt — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:50:35 +0000

@Ryan, @Pete: Good points. All things that need to be hammered out. I certainly can’t do that on this blog, which is exactly why we’re getting the conversation started and workshop planned.

By: Pete Watters

Pete Watters — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:52:07 +0000

One of the problems government entities may face when using social media is how to preserve the record. For example, if a state historical society creates a Facebook fan page, is it obliged to archive what the public posts on the fan page’s wall? Do state retention schedules for correspondence apply to such records? This isn’t to dissuade government from making use of what is becoming an important communication tool, but policies on social media use should reflect statutory concerns.

By: Ryan Shaw

Ryan Shaw — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:07:28 +0000

Tom, you’ve made an important clarification in your last comment. You specified that you’re talking about public social media, i.e. things anyone with a web browser can see. That is quite different from Parr’s vision of all interactions being archived. For example, most of Facebook is not public and should be considered off-limits to archiving. Twitter, on the other hand, is mostly public, and as such I have no problem with efforts to archive it. But this then raises the question of why representatives from these services need to be involved in an archiving discussion at all: if we’re talking about the public web, isn’t this a matter of web archiving rather than something specific to social media?

It’s true that our archives contain documents like letters and diaries not originally intended for public consumption. But we should consider how those documents ended up there. In most cases, it is because the author or someone personally connected with the author took it upon themselves to preserve those documents, and then made a conscious decision to give them to an institution. They didn’t get there because the post office made copies of every letter mailed. Integrating an archiving process at the level of social networking services sounds more like the latter than the former.

Finally, it’s worth considering that anything which makes it easier for historians to access and use archived social media will also make it easier for less sympathetic characters to access and use it. Spammers and criminals already troll social media services for usable data, and would be thrilled if it were easier to do so.

By: Tom Scheinfeldt

Tom Scheinfeldt — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:12:04 +0000

@niels: Thanks for this comment. I absolutely agree that these are very important concerns, which is the main justification for the workshop. It is important that we get this right.

However, I’m not willing to concede that just because the creators of these public social media never intended them to be preserved. and just because they aren’t government documents, that we somehow can’t or shouldn’t ever archive them. Archives, libraries, and museums are full of materials never intended for preservation—letters and postcards, as you say, but also posters, pamphlets, recordings, and public announcements of all kinds, church bulletins, graffiti, protest signs, etc. They are also full of unofficial, non-governmental records. Indeed, this is the very definition of ephemera, without which whole sub-disciplines of history would be impossible, including social and cultural history.

So, yes, I definitely agree we have to be cognizant and respectful of creators’ rights and sensitivities in choosing what, how much, and when to archive social media. But doing so doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t save anything of this important piece of the unfolding historical record.

By: niels

niels — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:25:35 +0000

Hi, as historian and ethnologist and last but not least professor in documentation studies, one should expect that I should turn into hurra mode and be so happy, but I completely agree with my former student Ryan, and would like to add two more moments:
social media like facebook are public media, but not official media ! they are not governmental documents supposed to be stored in order to ensure that officials are doing what they are supposed to do and we can check them not do something wrong and thats why Cheney and other guys in the near past should not have used their private email account while doing governmental stuff, but they should have used governmental accounts supposed to be stored ! private emails as well as christmas cards and love letters are not supposed to be stored for ever, it is going into absurdum like Paul Otlet 100 years ago was dreaming about building a parallel world in order to document it completely, because what about what we are saying to each other without texting or skyping ! and one last thing: who are representative stakeholders for all the users of facebook ???

By: Ryan Shaw

Ryan Shaw — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:30:57 +0000

Tom, who will represent the millions of users of social networking services? If you don’t have anyone specific in mind, I would recommend Michael Zimmer.

By: Tom Scheinfeldt

Tom Scheinfeldt — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:41:20 +0000

@Ryan: These are precisely the issues—ownership, user intentions, selection—we hope to address among a representative group of stakeholders in the workshop. Thanks for the comments.

By: Ryan Shaw

Ryan Shaw — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:30:16 +0000

Social Media Won’t Improve History…

“Perfect” archives of social media services won’t result in a more perfect history. social media will simply add to the possible stories that can be told about the past. History will continue to become less unified, less certain, less…

By: Ryan Shaw

Ryan Shaw — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:13:02 +0000

I hope your workshop will consider the fact that most people don’t want their social media interactions to be “permanently recorded.” While I’m sure the social networking services would love to have a “scholarly” excuse for keeping their logs forever, there are strong privacy arguments against doing so. For me, those arguments trump the interests of tomorrow’s historians. When will we stop pursuing the chimera of a “perfect historical record” and recognize that more data won’t make the writing of history any more scientific?