Contained in:
Book Chapter

Making social media archives: Limitations and archiving practices in the development of representative social media collections

  • Beatrice Cannelli

Social media has become an important digital space where individuals can participate in ongoing global discussions and document instances of historical events. Social media offers marginalized communities a means to express their identities, voice their concerns, and tell their stories. Archiving institutions have started to include social media in their collections because of its enduring value. However, constraints set by legal and technical frameworks and limited resources available at single institutions can influence the overall representativeness of content archived on social sites. This chapter explores the impact these constraints have on the development of representative social media collections and illustrate participatory approaches that can help to mitigate concerns.

  • Keywords:
  • social media archiving,
  • representativeness of collections,
  • participatory archive,
+ Show More

Beatrice Cannelli

University College London, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0000-0002-8645-9503

  1. Acker, A., & Kreisberg, A. (2020). “Social media data archives in an API-driven world“. Archival Science, 20(2), 106-123. h DOI: 10.1007/s10502-019-09325-9
  2. Aubry, S. (2010). “Introducing web archives as a new library service: The experience of the national library of France“. Liber Quarterly, 20(2). <https://liberquarterly.eu/article/view/10584/11316>
  3. Barrowcliffe, R. (2021). “Closing the narrative gap: Social media as a tool to reconcile institutional archival narratives with Indigenous counter-narratives“. Archives and Manuscripts, 49(3), Article 3. DOI: 10.1080/01576895.2021.1883074
  4. Ben-David, A. (2021). “Critical web archive research. In The Past Web“ (pp. 181–188). Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5
  5. Bergis, J., Summers, E., & Mitchell, V. J. (2018). “Documenting the Now White Paper: Ethical Considerations for Archiving Social Media Content Generated by Contemporary Social Movements: Challenges, Opportunities, and Recommendations. Documenting the Now, Documenting the Now“.
  6. Bingham, N., & Byrne, H. (2021). “Archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data: Challenges and opportunities with curating the UK web archive“. Big Data & Society, 8(1). DOI: 10.1177/2053951721990409
  7. Brügger, N. (2018). “The Archived Web: Doing History in the Digital Age“. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
  8. Bruns, A., & Weller, K. (2016). “Twitter as a first draft of the present: And the challenges of preserving it for the future“. Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science, 183–189. DOI: 10.1145/2908131.2908174
  9. Cannelli, B. (2022). “Mapping social media archiving initiatives: State of the art, trends, and future perspectives“. IIPC Net Preserve Blog. <https://netpreserveblog.wordpress.com/2022/11/30/mapping-social-media-archiving-initiatives-state-of-the-art-trends-and-future-perspectives/>
  10. Caswell, M., Migoni, A. A., Geraci, N., & Cifor, M. (2017). “‘To be able to imagine otherwise’: Community archives and the importance of representation“. Archives and Records, 38(1). DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2016.1260445
  11. Chambers, S., Birkholz, J., Geeraert, F., Pranger, J., Messens, F., Lieber, S., Mechant, P., Michel, A., & Vlassenroot, E. (2021). “BESOCIAL:final report WorkPackage1 an international review of social media archiving initiatives“. 91.<https://www.kbr.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/202012_BESOCIAL_Report_WP1_Review_of_existing_social_media_archiving_projects.pdf>
  12. Clayton, J., & Hoskins, P. (2022, October 28). “Elon Musk takes control of Twitter in $44bn deal“. BBC News. <https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63402338>
  13. Colin-Arce, A., Fernández-Quintanilla, S., Benítez-Pérez, V., & García-Monroy, A. (2023). “Web Archiving en español:Barriers to Accessing and Using Web Archives in Latin America“. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plQURfARGBc>
  14. Cui, C., Pinfield, S., Cox, A., & Hopfgartner, F. (2023). “Participatory Web Archiving: Multifaceted Challenges“. In I. Sserwanga, A. Goulding, H. Moulaison-Sandy, J. T. Du, A. L. Soares, V. Hessami, & R. D. Frank (Eds.), “Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity“ (pp. 79–87). Springer Nature Switzerland. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-28035-1_7
  15. Ferré-Pavia, C., Zabaleta, I., Gutierrez, A., Fernandez-Astobiza, I., & Xamardo, N. (2018). “Internet and social media in European minority languages: Analysis of the digitalization process“. International Journal of Communication, 12, 22. Available at: <https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7464>
  16. Fondren, E., & Menard McCune, M. (2018). “Archiving and Preserving Social Media at the Library of Congress: Institutional and Cultural Challenges to Build a Twitter Archive“. Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, 47(2). DOI: 10.1515/pdtc-2018-0011
  17. Gebeil, S., & Schafer, V. (2020). “Exploring special web archives collections related to COVID-19: The case of the French National Library (BnF)“. WARCnet Papers.
  18. Goldsmith, L. P., Rowland-Pomp, M., Hanson, K., Deal, A., Crawshaw, A. F., Hayward, S. E., Knights, F., Carter, J., Ahmad, A., Razai, M., Vandrevala, T., & Hargreaves, S. (2022). “Use of social media platforms by migrant and ethnic minority populations during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review“. BMJ Open, 12(11). DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061896
  19. González-Bailón, S., Wang, N., Rivero, A., Borge-Holthoefer, J., & Moreno, Y. (2014). “Assessing the bias in samples of large online networks“. Social Networks, 38, 16–27. DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2014.01.004
  20. Good, K. D. (2012). “From scrapbook to Facebook: A history of personal media assemblage and archives“. New Media & Society, 15(4). DOI: 10.1177/1461444812458432
  21. Graham, M., Hale, S. A., & Gaffney, D. (2014). “Where in the world are you? Geolocation and language identification in Twitter“. The Professional Geographer, 66(4), 568–578. DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2014.907699
  22. Harris, Verne. “The Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa.” Archival Science 2, no. 1–2 (March 2002): 63–86. DOI: 10.1007/BF02435631
  23. Hegarty, Kieran. 2022. “The Invention of the Archived Web: Tracing the Influence of Library Frameworks on Web Archiving Infrastructure.” Internet Histories 6 (4): 432–51. DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2103988
  24. Henninger, Maureen, and Paul Scifleet. 2016. “How Are the New Documents of Social Networks Shaping Our Cultural Memory.” Journal of Documentation 72 (2): 277–98. DOI: 10.1108/JD-06-2015-0069
  25. Hino, Airo, and Robert A. Fahey. 2019. “Representing the Twittersphere: Archiving a Representative Sample of Twitter Data under Resource Constraints.” International Journal of Information Management 48 (October):175–84. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.01.019
  26. Jackson, T. (2020). “‘I’ve never told anybody that before’“ In S. Popple, A. Prescott, & D. H. Mutibwa (Eds.), Communities, Archives and New Collaborative Practices (1st ed., pp. 93–106). Bristol University Press; JSTOR. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvx1hvvd.13
  27. Jimerson, Randall. 2006. “Embracing the Power of Archives.” The American Archivist 69 (1): 19–32. DOI: 10.17723/aarc.69.1.r0p75n2084055418
  28. Littman, Justin, Daniel Chudnov, Daniel Kerchner, Christie Peterson, Yecheng Tan, Rachel Trent, Rajat Vij, and Laura Wrubel. 2018. “API-Based Social Media Collecting as a Form of Web Archiving.” International Journal on Digital Libraries 19 (1): 21–38. DOI: 10.1007/s00799-016-0201-7
  29. Lutz, C. (2022). “Inequalities in social media use and their implications for digital methods research“. The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods, 679–690.
  30. Maemura, Emily. 2023. “Sorting URLs out: Seeing the Web through Infrastructural Inversion of Archival Crawling.” Internet Histories 7 (4): 386–401. DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2023.2258697
  31. Masanès, Julien, Daniela Major, and Daniel Gomes. 2021. “The Past Web: A Look into the Future.” In The Past Web, edited by Daniel Gomes, Elena Demidova, Jane Winters, and Thomas Risse, 285–91. Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_22
  32. Messens, F., Birkholz, J. M., Chambers, S., Geeraert, F., Michel, A., Mechant, P., Vlassenroot, E., Lieber, S., Dimou, A., & Watrin, P. (2021). “BESOCIAL–Towards a sustainable strategy for archiving and preserving social media in Belgium“. Digital Humanities Benelux 2021 Conference.
  33. Pehlivan, Z., Thièvre, J., & Drugeon, T. (2021). “Archiving Social Media: The Case of Twitter“. In D. Gomes, E. Demidova, J. Winters, & T. Risse (Eds.), The Past Web: Exploring Web Archives (pp. 43–56). Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_5
  34. Pendergrass, Keith L., Walker Sampson, Tim Walsh, and Laura Alagna. 2019. “Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation.” The American Archivist 82 (1): 165–206. DOI: 10.17723/0360-9081-82.1.165
  35. Pietrobruno, S. (2013). YouTube and the social archiving of intangible heritage. New Media & Society, 15(8), Article 8. DOI: 10.1177/1461444812469598
  36. Richardson, Allissa V. 2020. “The Coming Archival Crisis: How Ephemeral Video Disappears Protest Journalism and Threatens Newsreels of Tomorrow.” Digital Journalism 8 (10): 1338–46. DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2020.1841568
  37. Ringel, Sharon, and Roei Davidson. 2022. “Proactive Ephemerality: How Journalists Use Automated and Manual Tweet Deletion to Minimize Risk and Its Consequences for Social Media as a Public Archive.” New Media & Society 24 (5): 1216–33. DOI: 10.1177/1461444820972389
  38. Schafer, V., & Els, B. (2020). “Exploring special web archive collections related to COVID-19: The case of the BnL“. WARCnet Papers.
  39. Schafer, Valérie, Gérôme Truc, Romain Badouard, Lucien Castex, and Francesca Musiani. 2019. “Paris and Nice Terrorist Attacks: Exploring Twitter and Web Archives.” Media, War & Conflict 12 (2): 153–70. DOI: 10.1177/1750635219839382
  40. Schafer, Valérie, and Jane Winters. 2021. “The Values of Web Archives.” International Journal of Digital Humanities 2 (1–3): 129–44. DOI: 10.1007/s42803-021-00037-0
  41. Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. 2002. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2 (1–2): 1–19. DOI: 10.1007/BF02435628
  42. Simon, R. I. (2012). “Remembering together“. In Heritage and Social Media:Understanding Heritage in a Participatory Culture (pp. 89–106). Routledge.
  43. Sinn, Donghee, and Sue Yeon Syn. 2014. “Personal Documentation on a Social Network Site: Facebook, a Collection of Moments from Your Life?” Archival Science 14 (2): 95–124. DOI: 10.1007/s10502-013-9208-7
  44. Statista.com. (2023). “Monthly Active Users by Social Media Platform (in millions)“. <https://web.archive.org/web/20231210153436/https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/>
  45. Storrar, T. (2014, May 8). “Archiving social media“. The National Archives Blog. <https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archiving-social-media/>
  46. Thomson, S. D. (2016). “Preserving Social Media (16–01; DPC Technology Watch Report)“. <https://www.dpconline.org/docs/technology-watch-reports/1486-twr16-01/file>
  47. Tromble, Rebekah, Andreas Storz, and Daniela Stockmann. 2017. “We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know: When and How the Use of Twitter’s Public APIs Biases Scientific Inference.” SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3079927
  48. Van Dijck, José. 2011. “Flickr and the Culture of Connectivity: Sharing Views, Experiences, Memories.” Memory Studies 4 (4): 401–15. DOI: 10.1177/1750698010385215
  49. Wu, Siqi, Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, and Lexing Xie. 2020. “Variation across Scales: Measurement Fidelity under Twitter Data Sampling.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 14 (May):715–25. DOI: 10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7337
  50. Yakel, Elizabeth. 2003. “Archival Representation.” Archival Science 3 (1): 1–25. DOI: 10.1007/BF02438926
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2024 Author(s)

XML
  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2024 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Making social media archives: Limitations and archiving practices in the development of representative social media collections

Authors

Beatrice Cannelli

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0413-2.08

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Exploring the Archived Web during a Highly Transformative Age

Book Subtitle

Proceedings of the 5th international RESAW conference, Marseille, June 2023

Editors

Sophie Gebeil, Jean-Christophe Peyssard

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

362

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0413-2

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0412-5

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0413-2

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0414-9

Series Title

Proceedings e report

Series ISSN

2704-601X

Series E-ISSN

2704-5846

45

Fulltext
downloads

156

Views

Export Citation

1,361

Open Access Books

in the Catalogue

2,368

Book Chapters

3,870,371

Fulltext
downloads

4,536

Authors

from 942 Research Institutions

of 66 Nations

67

scientific boards

from 357 Research Institutions

of 43 Nations

1,249

Referees

from 381 Research Institutions

of 38 Nations