Archiving in the era of online activism : challenges and practices of collecting and providing access to activist social media archives

Abstract

In the era of digital and online activism, archivists have taken on the challenge of collecting and preserving the records of activist groups on social media.Social media offers users a number of tools for organising and spreading political messages, making it an effective tool for activism.The strength of social media as a political tool can be illustrated by #MeToo and the Black Lives Matter movements, as well as the use of social media during the "Arab Spring" in 2011.Archiving of activist social media is a fairly new phenomenon.Despite this, a variety of individuals and institutions with or without archival functions are involved in preserving this unique type of material.Attempts at collecting this material, including digital collections of a number of political movements present on social media, suggest a growing interest in this type of archive.Due to the uncertain nature of digital records and social media as commercial platforms, these records run the risk of being lost unless active collecting is done.Furthermore, archivists and other professionals are faced with a number of challenges when collecting and providing access to social media, including privacy and security concerns, copyright, and consent and permission-seeking.This study seeks to expand on the limited amount of previous research on the topics of challenges and practices in activist social media archives.Using semi-structured interviews with archivists and other professionals involved in projects on archiving activist social media, this study explores the decisions made and practices chosen during collection and when providing access to this type of collections.The study finds that, despite representing a variety of different projects and institutions or organisations, professionals working with activist social media archives largely share the same ethical, legal and sometimes technical concerns.However, while many of the challenges are shared, the study concludes there is a variety of different approaches to archiving of activism that occur on social media, as well different interpretations of and solutions to the same challenges depending on the mission and function of the represented institution, the purpose of the project, as well as the content of the collected data.

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