Archiving and preserving social media

A challenge for archivists

Abstract

In the last years it has become increasingly clear that digital material produced by users on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other forms of social media are of incredible potential importance to scholars and others who aim to understand the world of the early 21st century. How will future historians, political scientists, geographers, sociologists, humanists write the history of significant events (or the history of daily life) if these digital materials are not preserved? This paper aims to explore these questions providing an overview on the state of the art and beginning to formulate some answers.