NFDI4Culture Metadata API

Long-term archiving, cataloguing, and provision of dynamic data from social media – Twitter and beyond

Conference from 19 to 20 March 2024 at the German National Library (Frankfurt am Main)

Social media is both a source of data for and the focus of a range of research approaches in the humanities, social sciences, IT, sciences and life sciences. The development of social media over time makes it a part of our digital cultural heritage, but the process for institutions to archive and document these in ways which fully reflect its detail and complexity is still only rudimentary. One key reason for this is the unique characteristics of the data in terms of media technology, economics, social factors and aesthetics. This confronts researchers, research institutions and cultural heritage institutions with many different challenges in terms of how to archive, catalogue and provide the data for later use. One example of this is Twitter (now known as “X”). The monetisation of the platform’s internal archive (part of ongoing restructuring of the platform) has had a radical impact on research and archiving. While flexible APIs and access opportunities before early 2023 led to a boom in research activity and the creation of comprehensive collections, access for research and archive has been made increasingly difficult since then.

Archiving, cataloguing and providing dynamic data from social media present challenges which affect researchers, research institutions, libraries and archives in equal measure, and the best way to solve these problems is through collaboration and partnership. This requires wide-ranging efforts which would be impossible for a single data community or discipline.

The aim of the conference is to facilitate networking between libraries, archives, research institutes and researchers in German-speaking countries who are involved in archiving and long-term use of data and digital objects from social media.

PROGRAMME (external Link)

further information (DNB)

CONTACT / REGISTRATION

Dr. Britta Woldering, Letitia Mölck, German National Library

twarchiv(at)dnb(dot)de

dnb.de/twittertagung

The event will be mainly held in German at the Lecture hall of the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main. On 21/22 March 2024, there will also be a Datasprint in which participants will work with a long-term corpus of 'German' Twitter data.

REGISTRATION (external Link / deadline 8 March)

PARTNERS

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
BERD@NFDI
KDH UB HU Berlin
KonsortSWD
NFDI4Culture
NFDI4Data Science
NFDI4Memory
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