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

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

3. GAZA WAR 2014

4. CORBYN SEPTEMBER 2015

5. BREXIT
2016

6. TRUMP
NOVEMBER 2016

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

8. Consider the history

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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)

12. 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

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

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

15. 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

16. 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

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

18. 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

19. 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 …

21. 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

22. 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’

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

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

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