#digital humanities

[medievalistsnet]

Medieval Genealogical Roll Goes Online

A richly illustrated medieval genealogical roll of Edward IV has been digitised and translated for the first time, offering high-resolution images, annotations, and new insights into fifteenth-century political propaganda through the Digital Mappa platform.

Read here

[digitalnewberry]

How's your cursive?

William Ellen Wallace whaling logbook, 1841-1844 (view | transcribe)

Newberry Transcribe -- our crowdsourcing site where you can help with historical research by transcribing handwritten letters and diaries -- is back in action!

From screenwriters to socialists to soldiers, the subjects of our collections left behind a wealth of primary source materials -- such as the above 1840s whaling logbook that includes what some of us thought were whimsical doodles, but turned out to be a much less fun industry convention indicating "how many gallons of oil were procured from each [whale] body."

Libraries lack sufficient staff to transcribe the millions of manuscript pages in our collections, so it used to be up to the user to painstakingly decipher every page, with each individual replicating this work from scratch. Thanks to the magic of crowdsourcing, the public can volunteer to help out by transcribing the page once and for all, allowing researchers to easily find, search, and browse the material.

Plus, figuring out the handwriting can be a fun challenge. Wordle, shmordle -- come solve puzzles while also learning about history and contributing to humanities research!

Visit Newberry Transcribe

Read our project newsletter

Jack Conroy correspondence at Newberry Transcribe

[fjorn-the-skald]

fjorntheskald.com - Learn Norse, Celtic, and Medieval History

Hwæt! From the ashes of Fjorn’s Hall comes a new website for an old skáld—though that’s perhaps not the best phrasing because I don’t think I’m that old? Anyway…

I’ve rummaged through my archives, selected the ‘best’ stuffs, and plastered in on a new website. Most of the content is actually here on Tumblr, but I find it much easier to, well, find on the website. As of writing this, here’s what you’ll find there:

161 posts (230k words)

10 old podcast episodes (5.5 hours)

6 digital maps

7 academic papers (links to Academia.edu)

It’s pretty nice, I think? But it’ll need tweaking over time. This is just the (new) beginning. My next big plan is to reintroduce content from Fjorn’s Hall, which used to be blocked behind a paywall. I’m not interested in that anymore, so it’ll all be free and stay that way. That means we have ~45 videos coming over the next 45 weeks (because I’ll do 1 at a time to pace myself). Those videos will be posted on my YouTube channel but also shared to the website. So yeah, something to look forward to maybe? I hope so.

Let me know what you think. If something is janky, incorrect, or otherwise problematic…please let me know. I’m not perfect.

Many thanks for all the support and love over the years. I’ve had my ups and downs, but I’m very happy to be back :)

— fjörn

[elizabethminkel]

The Disappearing Scrapbook: What happens to the memories captured on obsolete platforms?

Last year, I had the great pleasure of reporting a feature for my (Amherst College) alumni magazine about archives in the digital age. It came out in the winter print issue, and it's up online now!

How should Amherst students and alums of the digital age leave a record of their lives? As the College archivists help faculty and staff shift their practices around record-keeping, can they do the same with students—or does the proprietary, corporate and, most of all, ephemeral nature of digital life today render that task nearly impossible?

The initial seed for this piece was a comment from one of the college's archivists to my editor that he could tell you what a student had for lunch in the 1890s, but not in 2004. *I* ate lunch there in 2004—and I knew exactly what he meant. The ephemerality of our digital lives—whether due to obsolete platforms from the 90s and 2000s, or the deliberate design of social media 2010-the present—means we all have somewhat patchy portraits of the past few decades. I wound up traveling to my alma mater to talk to the archivists about how they approach this challenge, and it was *such* a great conversation; they even made me reconsider the fundamental question of what archives are actually for.

This piece is a bit college-specific, but I do think it will resonate more broadly if you're interested in these subjects!

[eibhlin-dubh]

Today's study setup

[user1244593849209]

The Death and Cancellation of Celebrities' Careers

Digital Humanities 2026

María Pardo, Endika Gutiérrez, Ane Martínez, Zaira Solance, Ava Allen and Leah Nolan

Introduction

In Digital Humanities, Internet Death isn’t about the end of a biological life. It describes the collapse of a person’s social capital and the erasure of their digital presence. It is a symbolic execution carried out through platforms, algorithms and collective user behavior. Instead of mourning, the internet performs a ritual of disappearance.

Traditionally, accountability meant acknowledging harm, apologizing and repairing trust. Online that process has shifted into something sharper and more absolute. The dominant response is now erasure, unfollowing, blocking, mass‑reporting and algorithmic burying. You aren’t corrected, you’re deleted. The community doesn’t wait for growth or reflection. It performs a clean cut, removing you from timelines, feeds and shared spaces. In this framework, “being held accountable” often means being rendered invisible.

But the internet complicates death. Unlike the physical world, the digital space refuses to let anyone fully disappear. Even after a person is socially “killed” their digital remains like cached posts, archived screenshots and resurfacing content can still be found. The most familiar example is the resurfacing of old celebrity tweets years later, long after the original context has dissolved. The past is never truly past online; it still lingers and is searchable and screenshot‑able, creating a strange form of data immortality where the internet remembers even when people don’t want it to.

This tension between erasure and permanence is at the core of Internet Death. It’s not about whether someone is gone but about who has the power to decide what remains.

Methodology

We don’t need complex software to understand digital death; we witness it on our social media feeds every day. Cancellation always follows a clear pattern: public sentiment instantly flips from support to a massive wave of hate, and then comes the cancellation. We can see this unfolding right before our eyes as comment sections become toxic, likes shift towards dislikes, and users begin to report the account massively. This negative reaction is quickly reflected in the numbers: on sites such as SocialBlade, the creator's follower count abruptly drops, marking the end of their career. By observing how this hatred spreads, we can see the online crowd connect like a giant spider's web, spreading a single hashtag or clip like a virus, until the creator is completely isolated. Ultimately, these everyday examples of viral cancellations and mass unfollowing turn our regular social media experience into clear evidence of how an online execution is achieved.

Cancel Network

To truly understand how an influencer is erased, we must examine the anatomy of the cancel network itself. Social media algorithms are explicitly designed to reward high-arousal emotions, among them, moral outrage. When users feel outraged, they interact, and this outrage generates hyper-engagement, which in turn triggers massive algorithmic amplification. The platform prioritizes keeping users hooked, making anger an incredibly profitable metric. This massive wave of moral outrage is not an accident; it is a structural symptom of corporate platforms utilizing "algorithmic violence" and engineering a "war of all against all" to manipulate attention and maximize their own profit (Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group, 2023). 

In this digital environment, modern cancel culture has been effectively recategorized as a normalized lynching culture. Heavy aggression directed at a target is frequently disguised as offensive humor, sharp satire, or just spilling tea. The hostility becomes socially acceptable, and even encouraged, just because the people making the jokes are laughing. It turns public execution into a collaborative form of digital entertainment.

However, a cancellation cannot sustain itself on rumors alone; it requires a burden of proof. This is where the digital archive becomes a dangerous tool. Screenshots, screen recordings, and Wayback Machine links are quickly surfaced to serve as undeniable digital evidence. These artifacts act as a weaponized reminder of the past, strategically stripping context from old mistakes to execute the cancellation.

Case Studies

Case Study A

On the one hand, we have divided the cancellation into two types. The first case study we have called it the “slow fade”. This is when an influencer loses their platform gradually. It does not happen because of one single new mistake; rather, it is triggered when a creator’s past is suddenly revealed and used against them in the present.

We have seen this exact pattern dismantle multiple high-profile figures. Think of Ellen DeGeneres, whose "be kind" empire wasn't destroyed overnight, but slowly eroded by a steady drip of old clips and employee testimonies. Look at Shane Dawson, whose cancellation required the internet to act as digital archeologists, digging through thousands of hours of uncensored early-YouTube footage to build an undeniable case file. We see it in Blake Lively’s past interviews being harshly re-examined or even J.K. Rowling’s legacy facing systematic deconstruction. The mechanism connecting all these downfalls is the digital archive. In the context of Digital Humanities, curation implies holding custodial responsibilities over these remains of the past, as well as an interpretive role in the present (Presner et al., 2009). Because the internet acts as a permanent database, modern users take these archived remains and maliciously "re-curate" them to build an argument for an influencer's downfall.

In Digital Humanities, there is a concept called “context collapse”. This happens when data created ten years ago, under those specific social norms, is suddenly dug up into the present. It is stripped of its original framework and judged entirely by today’s moral standards. A tweet that was culturally acceptable, or just ignored, in 2014 becomes a career-ending controversy in 2026. This highlights a reality of our digital age: the internet acts as a permanent, perfectly searchable database of our past. We are allowed to grow, but our data is frozen in time.

Furthermore, we have to recognize that the slow fade is not just a result of human outrage, it is a highly profitable technological process. The algorithms powering platforms like TikTok, YouTube and X are designed to push whatever keeps people scrolling. Instant removals actually cut off engagement. But a slow fade? That generates weeks of reaction videos, multi-part video essays, apology breakdowns and endless debate threads. The algorithm quickly detects that moral outrage is a goldmine for user retention, so it actively amplifies these old, problematic discoveries, pushing them onto millions of screens.

In conclusion, the “slow fade” proves that modern cancellation is a collaborative effort between human psychology and corporate algorithms. The creator is systematically brought down, with their own permanent digital footprint serving as the weapon.

Case Study B

On the other hand, we examine what we have determined as case study B: the “instant death”. This occurs when a platform is instantly removed; overnight or over the span of a few days. Here, we have several examples of people who have undergone this process. Firstly, the case of Andrew Tate, a streamer banned in 2022 from platforms like Instagram or X for promoting extreme misogyny and violence against women. In other words, he made use of his platform to radicalize men, especially young men, toward violent sexism. However, he moved to other available platforms like Telegram.

In addition, the singer D4vd is a clear example of instant death. He was charged with murder in 2026, and as a consequence, his music was removed from some streaming platforms and gaming sites (like Fortnite). Also, his tour was cancelled and was demonetized from Youtube. His Instagram account still has over 1,6 million followers, however.

In addition, these examples clearly reshape online communities. Instant death cases also disrupt datasets, which lead to network reconfigurations. The followers of the “cancelled” person do not simply vanish, but they scatter in dozens of smaller and more radicalized nodes, in other words, the community reconfigures itself on other nodes. Moreover, these changed nodes are really hard to track or analyze.

DH studies often examine power structures in digital spaces. Many people wonder about who has the power to decide what is and what is not dangerous in platforms, and what is “cancellable”. Also, the bias in the algorithm must be mentioned: who does it protect, and who does it delete first? Instant removal raises questions about authority, bias, and the social responsibility of platforms as digital gatekeepers. When a platform suddenly de-platforms an influencer, they are acting as the absolute authority; this highlights how platforms hold creators and audiences hostage within "walled gardens," locking them in to exploit them before the platform inevitably decays (Doctorow, 2023). In addition, de-platforming may reduce visibility on mainstream sites (Instagram, Tiktok, X, etc.), but as seen in Andrew Tate’s case, alternative platforms, like Telegram or private servers on Discord, often allow harmful networks to persist. This shows a tension between immediate public safety and long-term cultural shifts, a key concern in digital humanities research.

Additionally, many researchers describe the instant death of celebrities’ platforms as a data integrity crisis. Digital Humanities scholars are interested in tracing digital traces over time. Instant removals can erase primary sources from mainstream platforms, complicating research into cultural trends, online discourse, or radicalization patterns. In other words, if a researcher is interested in analyzing discourse trends or network connections, losing larger nodes overnight creates gaps in the historical record. That is why the following question arises: does removing content help society or does it hurt researchers who want to study radicalization and how this starts?

Conclusion

After everything we’ve discussed the punishments of the algorithm, the public outrage and the way the Internet decides when someone should be labelled “cancelled”. We're left with the strange realisation that an online death isn’t a complete disappearance, but actually it is being pushed out of the spotlight while your past remains available for everyone to continue criticising. We are reminded that the internet remembers everything even if we don’t want it to.

And this leaves us wondering whether the digital guillotine even works. We've studied some controversial figures like James Charles. An influencer who lost millions of followers overnight, apologised in a way that many people felt was more for his survival rather than sincerity, and is now still trying to rebuild himself regardless of these scandals. This reminds us that the digital punishment is never fully final, some people manage to be redeemed, while others don’t.

People aren’t just cancelling influencers anymore, instead they are now questioning the whole system. They are tired of constant ads, fake authenticity and endless overconsumption. This frustration feeds into de-influencing, and when trust breaks down like this, forgiveness becomes something people struggle to give and struggle even more to trust.

So, we end up here stuck in a system that never forgets but still expects people to grow. A system that demands accountability but still traps people inside their worst moments. A system where redemption might be possible but is never guaranteed.

We are going to leave you with this question: In a world that remembers everything can anyone truly be forgiven?.

References

Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group. (2023). Algorithmic sabotage manifesto. https://algorithmic-sabotage.github.io/asrg/manifesto/  

Doctorow, C. (2023, January 23). The ‘enshittification’ of TikTok. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/  

Presner, T., Schnapp, J., & Lunenfeld, P. (2009). The digital humanities manifesto 2.0. UCLA. https://www.humanitiesblast.com/manifesto/Manifesto_V2.pdf

[mxcottonsocks]

Reading Like A Victorian

A while ago, I discovered the website 'Reading Like a Victorian', a digital humanities project from The Ohio State University and collaborators.

Since tumblr's been going through a bit of a serial-literature revival, I thought I would share...

Here are some extracts from the website's 'About Us':

RLV is an interactive timeline of the Victorian period. It focuses on serialized novels [...] and adds volume-format publications for context. 

When we read Victorian novels today, we do not read them in the form in which they originally came out. Most Victorian novels appeared either as “triple deckers,” three volumes released at one time, or as serials published monthly or weekly in periodicals or in pamphlet form. Serialized novels’ regularly timed, intermittent appearance made for a reading experience resembling what we do when we are awaiting the next weekly episode of Game of Thrones, watching installments of other TV serials in the meantime. Whenever we pick up a Penguin or Oxford paperback of a Victorian novel today, we are engaged in the equivalent of binge-watching a series that has already reached its broadcast ending [and is] a very different experience from what Victorian audiences were doing with novels. Reading Like a Victorian reproduces the “serial moment” experienced by Victorian readers [...]

More info and screenshots and so on below the cut:

[...] if reading serial installments at their original pace is valuable, it is even more valuable to read them alongside parts of novels and of other kinds of texts that Victorian readers could have been following at the same time [...] [...] a reader who, in 1847, had been following the part issues of both Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and then picked up Jane Eyre, published in volume form in October of that year, might notice in Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp, and Jane Eyre a pattern of motherless or orphaned girls trying to negotiate a hostile world on their own. While this figure is well known to be a character type in Victorian fiction perfectly embodied by Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp does not often emerge among the heroines who fit that type; reading the novels simultaneously foregrounds parallels between Becky, Florence, and Jane that are not at all obvious if their storylines are experienced separately

I find that, for browsing, the website is easier to use on a computer or tablet than a phone, but it's ok on phone to search for something specific.

The timeline:

Here's what the timeline looks like:

It shows 12 months at a time, and using the left and right arrows will move you back or forward by a month. You can use the 'Jump To Date' function to navigate to a different twelve-month period. Or you can use the 'Author Search' function to navigate to particular works if you know the author's name.

In the above screenshot of the timeline, which shows the period January to December 1852, there are several works shown, including:

ongoing serialised works which had at least one installment published prior to 1852;

works which began serialisation during 1852;

works published in three-volume format during 1852;

other works published during 1852

Details about each work:

You can click on the bar that represents a book's publication to get a drop-down that provides information about that book, its publication, and links to help you read the relevant serial parts.

Here's what happens if you click on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford:

On the left of the drop-down, there's some general information about the work, its publication history, and how to use the links.

On the right, there's information and links to help you experience the book in its serial parts: it separates out the parts, indicates the month and the year they were published, and what chapters of the work were published in that part. It also provides notes on each part where helpful. There is a scroll-bar at the right of the drop-down, so you can scroll down to the later installments of the work.

[I chose Cranford as an example as it helps demonstrate the value of the Reading Like a Victorian website... From what I understand, Gaskell initially wrote 'Our Society at Cranford' as a standalone piece of short fiction, but was encouraged to write more, so further pieces also set in the fictional town of Cranford were published intermittently in the same magazine over the next year or so. While a particularly dedicated Gaskell fan who wanted to 'read along' with Cranford following the original publication could probably search 1.5-years-worth of a weekly magazine to find the 9 issues which included the material which would later be published as Cranford, the Reading Like a Victorian website has already done that work for them... and also for anyone else who might be interested, but not quite that interested.]

The links

You can then click on an individual chapter to get links to various places to read it online:

When available / where possible, the website tends to include links to:

a facsimile copy of either the relevant serial part in the original publication, or in an 'annual' or similar volume collecting together the content of that publication, or a volume-form edition of that work if the work was not published serially or if facsimile copies of the original serialised publication are not available. [Most of the facsimiles are hosted by either the Internet Archive or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, but some are hosted as part of smaller, more specific collections, such as - in the case of Cranford - Dickens Journals Online which provides online access to the journals/magazines edited by Charles Dickens);

the text, usually on Project Gutenberg (this is usually the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be different than originally published in serial parts; the Reading Like A Victorian website will generally explain when this is the case);

audio recordings, usually volunteer recordings from Librivox (again, the recordings are usually based on the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be slightly different than originally published in the serial parts).

So yeah, I just thought it was a cool website and worth sharing. I believe the website is already used as a resource by some University courses and for academic research, but it can also be used by book clubs and to aid personal reading, etc. I'm using it to inform a personal reading project for 2024-26 where I follow along with six or seven novels serialised in 1864-66.

To save a scroll to the top, here's the link to the RLV website again: Reading Like A Victorian (osu.edu)

[If you want to join an already-planned read-along based on the original serialisation schedule, @dickensdaily will be doing Charles Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty from mid-February 2024 to late-November 2024, to follow along with the original weekly publication of the novel in Master Humphreys Clock from February 1841 to November 1841. I personally found Barnaby Rudge a really engaging, thought-provoking read, and I'm really looking forward to reading it again. (Anyone with particular triggers or other reasons to be wary of the content or language used in older books may find it helpful to look up content warnings for the book before making a decision to read it.)]

[vivien1]

Luka — Alien Stage.