Proposal is in. I decided to look at this new phenomenon (or rather decision) by the Library of Congress to save all past and future Tweets from the popular Twitter website as 'historical data'.
Who decided that everyday tweets held any historical relevance? My first perceptions of Twitter was that the user was the average 'joe' who tweeted about their next meal or which movie they were contemplating seeing next. As I researched though, I found it fascinating how it is being used by people for more academic use. I was particularly interested in how it is being used by the marginalized as a tool to project information. In this case, the use of these tweets may be the only historical telling that we have of certain events. Perhaps tweets will be the source of information for the next chapter in our history books.
At first, the idea seems a bit ridiculous and a sort of farce, however if we really think about it, perhaps our history will now have greater knowledge of what's going on in the world, especially in important events where the formal source of reporting is not permitted. Will this lead to more or a new kind of history? All of those histories that were ignored (or suppressed) in the past by powerful actors. Perhaps Twitter will offer us the tool we need to get history 'from the ground', a history written by the people who are living on the marginalized side of things, rather than a history written by the 'white colonizing elitist'.
That is what I tend to discover...
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