"In 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn'

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Historical Research and the Internet

How do academics use the internet for historical research?

      Academics use the internet for historical research in two key ways: to gain information regarding cultural contexts of words, phrases and customs allowing them to find the answers to some of their questions in places that they would not have otherwise thought to look (Leary) and, as in the case of many students, as a means of accessing sources in a convenient way in addition to a place to store these sources where they are easily accessible (Broussard). Database and google searches allow one to find references to the answers they are seeking in articles and places that they would not have thought were relevant based on the title of the work and the abstract that may exist or the thesis. This is particularly useful in a situation where the historian is looking for an explanation of a cultural aspect that they would otherwise have to spend hours or maybe even days scouring sources trying to find its explanation in order to better understand the time period and its implications (Leary). On the other hand, the ability to bookmark a source for later reference or simply re-searching the source in question makes sources easily accessible but this also comes with its own problems regarding the availability of these sources in the future as a result of a change in database formatting or what have you causing the link to change and even the way in which one searches these sources (Broussard).

How do historians teach history using the internet?

      In the beginnings of the use of the internet in scholarly research, historians were skeptical about this idea of the internet and the ability for anyone to publish anything rather fact based or not meaning that the information could be false and, therefore, would not make good sources for academic writing. As a result, historians largely ignored the existence of internet sources focusing more on the written and physical sources giving really no instruction on internet sources. Now, things have changed. The focus is internet sources and using them to teach students about critically analyzing sources for their biases and usefulness as historians have traditionally done for centuries in regards to physical sources (Jacobs and Nelson). The internet provides a new way of learning that should not be swept aside but should be embraced and used to better the study of history (The Digital Humanities Manifesto).

What is the connection between the library and the internet?

      The connection between the library and the internet is an important one. The library was the first to recognize the importance of internet sources for academic research and was the first to promote the use of such sources. The library, particularly university libraries, are the ones who determine which sources are accessible to its students and, therefore, affects the availability of sources. They make the important decision about which databases are most beneficial to its faculties and students and makes them accessible to them through the purchasing of subscriptions. This is an asset to students as much as it is a disadvantage. Making these sources accessible is great but the decision itself of which databases should be made available is a detriment in itself. Choosing one database over another means that those sources that the two do not share are now inaccessible to students and can affect the paths that they take on the topics that they choose. This is a necessary evil as funding is limited but it is one that librarians have to be aware of when choosing these sources (Broussard).

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Twitter Analysis Reflection

The Twitter Assignment was an eye-opening experience but one that I am glad I had. In academic writing, you are always told that it is necessary to screen your sources because blogs, for example, are not considered credible sources including social media. As a result, this assignment conflicted with all of my historical instincts. To my surprise, I realized that social media is a source similar to any other traditional source with its own advantages and disadvantages and is going through the same process as other non-traditional sources have gone through such as oral history, which was originally highly frowned upon but is becoming increasingly accepted as a historical source. Going into this assignment, I had two initial thoughts: 1) that narrowing thousands of tweets down to only 100 for the assignment was going to be impossible because I was going to have too many useful sources and 2) that I was going to conclude that Twitter was as useless and unreliable as school has been teaching me all of these years. The first thought was dispelled pretty quickly when I found it difficult to find 100 useful tweets with so many of them providing the same information and others being questionable in their accuracy. In short, I found myself being extremely critical and picky when choosing my tweets.

The second thought was a slow realization to the contrary and really only developed when I found my secondary sources discussing the usefulness of Twitter as a source. When sorting through all these tweets, the common questions came to mind: How to do I know that this information is reliable? How am I going to go through all of these tweets? Are there other hashtags pertaining to my subject that I could be missing? What I did not realize is that it is relatively easy to determine which tweets are reliable based on the comments on that tweet, the source they are citing their information from and just generally knowing what to look for. It is a skill that my generation has become accustomed to developing and one that is not all that different from that of traditional sources. In terms of sorting through all of the tweets, I never did make it to the bottom of the main hashtag I was following even after hours of scrolling down the page and narrowing the search down to one day. So, this is a problem that will remain for future historians. As for trying to find all of the hashtags that pertained to my topic, it was quite difficult. I started by using the hashtag that I would have used in that situation and branched from there finding other hashtags in posts that contained the hashtag I was searching for but there is still the possibility that I may have missed some. It is the same concept as the importance of archivists, everyone categorizes items differently and it is the job of the archivists to navigate that problem and make it easier to find the sources that their clients are looking for. Maybe in the future there will be a digital archivist that catalogues the different hashtags used for different events but for now it is up to the historian to fill that role. On the other hand, Twitter is a great way to attain first hand accounts of events. In the process of sorting through my tweets regarding the Bataclan attack in Paris, I did find first hand accounts of events unfolding in the Bataclan. I found a tweet from a victim that stated that he was hiding in a closet and from a quick look at his twitter page, I can tell that he survived the attack. In addition, I found other tweets mentioning or retweeting first hand accounts from witnesses interviewed by the media. If tweeting your location while still in an unsafe situation is a smart idea can be debated nonetheless it is still a useful source to historians. In addition, Twitter provides a space for everyone to express their opinion including those that have been traditionally lost in history such as the working class. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On one hand, it allows for historians to gain insight into all perspectives of a subject while on the other hand (as bad as this sounds) uneducated people a voice as well which is a voice that is not really helpful.

Despite its disadvantages, Twitter and social media in general is a useful source as long as you are trained to use it as with any other historical source. In time, I am sure that social media will be accepted as a source just as oral history has been. It is just a matter of time for it to gain credibility, become part of the skill teaching process and of, potentially, solving some of its problems.

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Twitter Analysis Project

For the assignment, I have chosen to do the Paris attacks of 2015 specifically the attack of the Bataclan Concert Hall. I am not well versed in the uses of Twitter as I am not one that uses it myself so until I discovered the magics of the advanced search option did I get a proper look at the tweets surrounding this event. Before this discovery, there was a lot of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments along with quite a few mentions of Trump using this event in his arguments about gun laws. There was also those that did not seem related to the event at all and others that used the event to reveal conspiracy theories and political gains of their own. These tweets were more associated with the broader hashtag related to the Paris attacks themselves revealing all of the negative aspects of using tweets as a source such as the relevance and having to read through thousands of tweets and all of the negative outlooks though it could lead to an analysis of the development of these sentiments. However, when I discovered the advanced search function, I was able to find the tweets from the event itself. This revealed that some tweets are not useful to a historian simply because it does not mention any of the details of the event but shows support to the country which could be an analysis all its own. Others are only a string of hashtags which could be useful for finding other tweets but otherwise give no information regarding the event itself. Others include links to articles, videos and pictures that may not be available in the future. On the other hand, the videos and pictures provide good first-hand accounts of the events. Still others, provide a good amount of information in a short character range and over a series of a few tweets as events unfolded at the Bataclan. Overall, at least so far, tweets seem to be a mixed bag in terms of using them as historical sources. I intend to look at a sampling that includes tweets from the event and tweets that followed the event in the final version of the assignment to show how ideas changed over time and how it could be difficult to find the relevant tweets.

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For the project, my group chose to do Historic Downtown and I have chosen to do the François Baby House as my building. The building is a museum now but it is the oldest house in Downtown Windsor dating back to the War of 1812 when the British forces camped in the orchard, which is now where a parking building stands, and the general stayed in the house. The house has a rich history of many renovations, a fire and eventually its restoration to be used as a museum to the family and Windsor’s history in general. I chose it because I am interested in delving deeper into its history and because I feel that as a volunteer of the museum that I can provide those small insights into the building such as the only part of the house that is still original or the significance of the pear tree outside that other historians may miss.

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Tsarevich Alexei of Russia

The Wikipedia article I have chosen is an article on Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. Alexei was the only son of Tsar Nicolas II of Russia who was assassinated along with the rest of his family during the Russian Revolution which took place at the end of World War I.

1)  Based on the main contributors to the article, the editors of this article break the average description of an editor to a small degree. Certainly, most of the contributors are male with only one editor confirmed to be female and most of the editors were from North America particularly the United States meaning that they also mostly speak English and are of the white persuasion; however, a fair amount of the editors speak multiple languages in addition to the fact that most of the editors showcased a high degree of experience being involved with editing Wikipedia articles for eight or more years on average as well as some indicating that they are not in their mid-twenties as Noam Cohen's article in the New York Times suggests but are in fact upwards of the age of thirty based on their personal profiles. In terms of audience, the article seemed to represent them effectively based on the fact that the article is successful in maintaining a good degree of neutrality while also mentioning the different theories that are still up for debate such as if Nicolas II was legally capable of abdicating the throne on behalf of his son when he had already abdicated in favor of his son and would have had no power to later instate his son's abdication. However, the article is mostly written by North Americans and though they may speak Russian, their backgrounds do not suggest Russian descent though they seem to have a particular interest in Russian history meaning that, in some ways, they are incapable of representing the Russian population.

2) The sources used for this article are not the best by any standards. The first problem is a lot of the links are linked to the Wikipedia article itself instead of to an exterior source. The second problem is that some of the sources are in Russian which, as wonderful as that is for the representation of the Russian people, it makes it inaccessible to those that cannot read Russian though this problem can easily be fixed by Google's translate function to at least get a basic understanding of the source. The third problem is that some of the sources do not link you to the source that they say they do as in the case of the archives of the Russian Scouts. The final problem is that the article seems to rely heavily on one particular website entitled Alexander Palace Time Machine. Upon analyzing the source, I have been unable to reach a conclusion as to if it is in fact a reputable source or not. According to the “About Us” section of the website, the creator of the website is a dedicated individual to Russian history particularly to the restoration and preservation of the royal palace who has written many newspaper articles and has done a few interviews on the subject. He has helped with the creation of other author's works in the field and the website is apparently used by many universities as a resource. I am no expert on Russian history to be able to judge his articles for accuracy but two of the articles that are mentioned link to an error message which may be because they were written in 1997 but it is not often that newspaper articles are taken down. The third link actually links to the article it is supposed to, which was written in the same year, but it is specifically about the restoration efforts of the palace. The concerning part is that the website has a forum portion which is full of a lot of “I thinks” and not enough actual sources to make at least that portion credible despite the fact that the article specifically references it. This main source seems like it could be credible but sometimes looks can be deceiving. The rest of the sources seem to be newspaper articles and books on specific bits of information such as the body that was found that matches the Romanov DNA and has been confirmed to be Alexei despite the fact that his body, along with one of his sister's, was missing from the original grave of the rest of their family. On the bright side, all of the sources were accessible though not necessarily credible in all cases. Bias in the sources does seem to be present since some of them are primary sources that offer the bias of the author and some are translated which offer the bias of the author and the translator in addition to the fact that some details get lost in translation. Newspaper articles generally hold some degree of bias simply because rather intentional or not, the opinions of the author tend to slip in somewhere.

3) I originally chose this article because I believed there would be contention about whether Alexei and one of his sisters was still alive or not since that was a leading theory and since many people have come forward claiming to be Alexei or either his sister Anastasia or Maria but there was surprisingly no contention there since recently it has been scientifically proven that their bodies have been found. Interestingly, the point of contention is about Alexei's title being Tsarevich or Tsesarevitch. The first means that he is the son of Nicolas but not the heir and the second means that he is both the son of Nicolas and the heir, if the editors are to be believed. Tsarevich is the English term commonly used to indicate Alexei as being the heir though it does not mean the same in Russian and is usually used because it is the easier of the two to pronounce and because it is the name that has been used for years. The debate on this amongst the editors is civil at first with one mentioning the difference and asking if it should be changed and others replying with nos because the actual term is too unfamiliar and may confuse some people. Someone else then brings up the point that it would be an educational experience for readers to learn the proper term which was answered with more nos because it is an English article and not a Russian one. From this point on, the discussion gets pretty heated with one side saying that the only way Wikipedia can be considered an encyclopedia is if they are willing to use proper terminology and facts instead of conforming to the norms with the other side refusing to agree resulting in a bit of an edit war and a formal submission to the Wikipedia board requesting a change to the proper terminology which was denied, interestingly. It gets even more heated than that at the end where one editor is claiming that the second term is not in the English dictionary so the name should remain the same and the other arguing that they are both Russian words so there is no reason that they should not both be in the dictionary and that this needs to be changed both within the article and within the English language. This may sound civil but it is not considering the one editor is verbally attacking the other by saying that they are not civilized based on their word choice with a subtle implication that they are not only wrong but also unintelligent in some ways. Based on their profile pages, it is hard to tell who is more credible in this case since one hardly has anything on their profile relating to themselves and the other seems to be highly credible. An interesting side note is that one of these editors states she is female on her profile page and the other does not specify gender which may be playing a role in this discussion as well though that is my own speculation.

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Introductory Explanation

I have chosen these images to depict history and how it is reflected in different forms of media. The first image is from an anime called Hetalia in which each nation is personified as a single character that follows its stereotypes (such as America wearing a military uniform and holding a hamburger). The second image is from the BBC television series Doctor Who from an episode depicting the struggles of London during the Battle of Britain. In addition, these images reflect my own interests.