UNARCHIVING SOCIAL MEDIA Assoc. Professor William Merrin Media & Communication, University of Swansea

A Structural Revolution In societal communication… ‘Social media’ central to this Social media’s personal importance … And social significance

GAZA WAR 2014

CORBYN SEPTEMBER 2015

BREXIT 2016

TRUMP NOVEMBER 2016

Social media Need to be Archived Or we won’t understand history

Consider the history

Bennett The Birth of the Museum Mid 19th C movement from private to public collections, expanding public information Museums, exhibitions, zoos … 4 elements: Public ownership, public access, public visibility, public good

Rise of broadcast media Mid-late 19thC Industrialization of press, then rise of radio, cinema, music industry, and television A ‘culture-industry’, factory-scale mass-production of public information

High public visibility Cheap public access Private ownership of copyright but public’s ownership of copies Produced for private good, but aided public good Supported by public provision (BBC, education/libraries)

The internet Appeared to part of this process of the expansion of public information Visible, accessible, ‘free information’, serving a public good Underneath it all, a re-privatization: connection services and platforms all private

A Great Reversal With ‘Web 2.0’ we became producers and the technology companies who enabled this became our audiences

INSTEAD OF LINEAR, BROADCAST MODEL MEDIA COMPANIES MAKE CONTENT MASS DISTRIBUTE IT TO CONSUMERS WHO RECEIVE IT

A CYCLICAL MODEL CREATE PRODUCTIVITY TECHNOLOGIES AND PLATFORMS USERS EMPLOY THESE TO PRODUCE OUR ACTIVITIES ARE MONITORED AND HARVESTED BY THESE COMPANIES WHO BECOME OUR AUDIENCE, USING THEM TO IMPROVE THEIR BUSINESSES TECH COMPANIES CREATE PRODUCTIVITY TECHNOLOGIES AND PLATFORMS

Public Visibility? Social Media are mostly public (Many require joining the site, or receiving individual permissions to view. Also allow individual blocking or suspension) Overall a massive expansion of public information to include personal information, opinions and productions

Public ownership? A reversal … Now control IPR, but not copy itself

Public Access? Access to approved parts, not to the whole The archive – is privatized, privately-owned, existing on company servers A reversal of a historical process

Public Good? And a reversal… from public to private knowledge and public to private good Informational archive aids business model of private companies For their own experimentation …

WHAT SHOULD BE ARCHIVED? THE ALGORITHMS THAT PRODUCE THE OBJECT? THE SYSTEMS THAT FEED ‘THE FEED’? JONATHAN ALBRIGHT ON THE ALT-RIGHT NETWORK AND VELES, MACEDONIA

A democratic problem Democracies depend on public knowledge and systems of gathering it for public good Post-2008 anti-politics suspicion of mainstream politics whilst its polls and assumptions have failed The power of private companies and their information increases… ‘Stasi Capitalism’

The weaponisation of data Cambridge Analytica Datamining Data analysis And Strategic Communications Used by Trump

And by Governments Social media ‘archive’ Is available to governments DRIPA (2014) and IPA (2016) passed without opposition

To protect democracy… Should our aim be to destroy or delete the archive?