Affordances of Digital Archives: The Case of the Prozhito Archive of Personal Diaries

Abstract

With regard to increasing politicization and instrumentalization of history in Russia and the development of digital tools allowing public access to previously non-available historical documents, analysis of digital platforms exhibiting potential for engagement with the past becomes of relevance to Russian and Digital Media Studies. Therefore this chapter focuses on a Russian case study Prozhito, a digital archive of personal diaries created by a community of volunteers. Being an example of public engagement with the past, Prozhito, nevertheless, has a number of constraints that raise ethical, political and techno-methodological questions concerning archival composition and affordances of the platform for participation. Therefore the aim of this chapter is to study Prozhito’s affordances to learn more about the potentials of such platforms for the production of historical knowledge.

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