Social media and digital history workshop--suggestions welcome « Digital Humanities Questions & Answers

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Social media and digital history workshop--suggestions welcome

(4 posts) (3 voices)

Asked 2 years ago by Eric Johnson
Latest answer from Shane Landrum

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Eric Johnson
Member
Hi, all--

If you saw that a digital history workshop was in the offing and, among other things, it offered to address the question of building "communities of interest" and other historical or institutional networks with social media, what kinds of things would you (or perhaps your less-social-media-savvy colleagues) want to learn about?

What questions do your colleagues ask--those who want to understand how they might benefit from using the various tools of social media? Are there social media-oriented projects or tools that you yourself would be sure to mention in such a setting if you were in charge?

I'm helping to run a workshop along these lines and figured I'd check to make sure I don't miss anything that I should be ready to discuss. Any and all thoughts WAY welcome.

Thanks!
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Posted 2 years ago Permalink
Bethany Nowviskie
Admin

Hey, Eric -- lately, I've been mentioning Old Weather a lot, as the best example I know of a project that leverages social media tools and concepts to bring crowd-sourcing to bear on a set of archival materials of both scientific and historical interest. I use this example (including the motivating factor of assigning volunteers to certain ships) to help people understand the fun factor in crowd-sourcing and also the value in finding a sweet spot between or among disciplines.

Also, if my experience from NINES, SCI, and the Scholars' Lab holds true (and if your audience will be humanities faculty and grad students) you can still anticipate getting some angsty questions about gatekeeping, vetting, the intersection of scholarly work with the public humanities, whether it's "safe" for early-career scholars to share content and interact publicly outside of strict peer-reviewed publication environments, etc. etc. (Yawn.)

Now, when this kind of thing comes up, I reference Dan Cohen's lecture and upcoming book on "The Ivory Tower and the Open Web."

Posted 2 years ago Permalink
Eric Johnson
Member

Hi, Bethany--many, many thanks! I remember seeing the mention of Old Weather. That's a fantastic project. I appreciate that recommendation--and the mention of Dan's lecture/book.

I fully anticipate a good deal of angst about all kinds of those issues, or (perhaps worse) a sense that "that stuff's simply not for me." But there are certainly a fair number of citizen humanities and citizen science projects--plus just straightforward examples of things like engaging museum Facebook pages--that show the benefits of connection through social media.

And, of course, I will touch on the beneficial unofficial professional communities (try to say that three times fast) that have arisen on Twitter/FB/Gowalla/etc.

Great stuff.

Posted 2 years ago Permalink
Shane Landrum
Member

Replying to @Eric Johnson's post:

I'd want faculty to be aware that, especially for small scholarly societies, social media tools can be good ways to keep in touch. Show them, for example, the Committee on LGBT History's new website, which includes social media features. They might also read Mike O'Malley's comments on Professional Organizations 2.0.

For something a bit more bleeding-edge as far as historians are concerned, I'd show them something about the connection between social media and open peer review, perhaps Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses, a currently-being-reviewed report by the AAUP Task Force on Economic Models for Scholarly Publishing.

Posted 2 years ago Permalink

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