Report: “Research Applications with Web Archives: Collaboration Among Archives Unleashed Cohorts”

From an Archives Unleashed News Post by Samantha Fritz:

Over the lifespan of the Archives Unleashed project, we’ve heard so often, “how do you do web archival research?”, “where do you start”? Even the primary step of selecting a topic of study can be overwhelming. Initially, we ran a series of datathons to train scholars and provide a hands-on approach to working with archived web content. However, while datathon events contributed to skill-building (cite CE paper), their short (two-day) intensive model meant a loss of momentum for projects, with teams unable to go beyond exploratory discovery, and a missed opportunity for comprehensive analyses or publication development.

In addition to our collaboration with members from Internet Archive’s Archive-It team to develop a platform for generating web archive derivatives (ARCH), our combined teams seek to support and facilitate research engagement with web archives.

Building off past successes of community building and engagement, the inaugural Archives Unleashed Cohort Program was launched in July 2021.

Five teams were selected to take part in a year-long collaboration and provided with additional resources, support and mentorship to conduct focused research while using web archives as scholarly objects.

These teams, spanning across North America and Europe, have selected a wide range of topics to study, including crisis communication, health misinformation, pandemic discourse, comparative feminism media activism, and the development of online commenting systems. They truly highlight the innovative applications of web archive research within and adjacent to the digital humanities field.

Learn More About Each Team and Project in the Complete Blog Post (2152 words)

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