Dragan Espenschied, Preservation Director at Rhizome, opened the session with a discussion comparing new methods of creating personalized archives based on user data with more classical archival organization principles such as provenance. Neither method seems to provide meaningful context for online archival objects. The algorithmic connections made by various apps that give their users a week, month or year “in review” are often disappointing (as shown in this video shared by Espenschied), while traditional archiving approaches fail to effectively archive social media (as seen in these captures of Facebook by the Internet Archive). In both cases, the problem of what constitutes the archival object comes to the forefront. At a time when users primarily experience a highly dynamic and personalized view of the web, defining the archival object and its boundaries becomes increasingly challenging. In this context, creating connections between archival records through narration becomes a more effective way to preserve digital social memory. Espenschied provided a number of examples of narrative-based approaches to archive curation, including Rhizome’s response to the White House digital archives initiative, which featured key moments of social media from Obama’s administration recorded with Webrecorder. Other examples included The New Inquiry’s interpretation of a letter from the New York Times’ Editor to staff, a parallel view of liberal and conservative social feeds (6) from the Wall Street Journal, and a personalized annual review website from Chris Barr.
Mehdi Yahyanejad, founder of Net Freedom Pioneers, presented the Toosheh project which uses datacasting via satellite TV as a method for overcoming censorship and limited internet access in countries like Iran and Afghanistan. A team of curators and publishers including The People’s University prepare curated archives of web content, including news, movies, and educational videos, which are then encoded as ordinary mpeg files. The users of the app are able to download the packaged files via their satellite TV receivers and decode the files on their personal computers. Live access to the web is not necessary. Web content recorded with Webrecorder can be replayed via Webarchive Player. Bypassing the government-controlled infrastructure of cable internet access, the Toosheh team are able to provide information to their users on a variety of topics that would otherwise be impossible for them to access, including human rights, sexual health, and LGBTQ issues.
Josh Miller, former Director of Product Management for the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, spoke about his experiences sharing and preserving the digital history of Obama’s administration. He highlighted projects which fostered exploration of the digital archives in an accessible and user-friendly manner, including a search interface from an open archive aggregating social media posts from a variety of platforms, and Rhizome’s aforementioned narrative approach. Miller also discussed data visualization projects from MIT Media Lab, and an archive of both official and unofficial GIFs hosted by GIPHY. He proceeded to present the @Relive44 twitter bot, which will re-tweet all the POTUS account tweets again over the course of the next 8 years. Each of these archival endeavors takes a different approach, highlighting the potential for multiple interpretations to coexist and enrich the experience of digital archives.
Shannon Mattern led the closing discussion, which addressed topics of archive organization, methods beyond the narrative approach, and the performative aspects of web archiving. Questions from the public covered topics such as the new administration’s approach to digital preservation, the future of internet infrastructure in an increasingly regulated and government-censored context, the impact of digital records on personal memory, as well as older methods of memory augmentation preceding digital technologies.
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