Abstract:
Starting from a collaborative writing experience created in 2013 by the University of Salerno together with the online newspaper Fanpage, the author investigates how much Facebook, as a digital archive of biographical memory, influences the common interpretation of history. By examining some public groups, the article illustrates that Facebook reduces historical knowledge to a sum of unintermediated opinions, removed from the memory of the past, the immediate use of which lends itself to the highly emotional experience of an interconnected public.
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19331.
Languages: Italian, English
Fin dalle origini Facebook, proponendosi come una sorta di annuario in tempo reale per l’università di Harvard, si presenta come un collettore di fonti storiche che è possibile commentare e implementare collaborativamente. Nel tempo, il modo in cui il passato, la memoria e le fonti si trovano rielaborate in questo celeberrimo social network si è enormemente complicato. Un caso che dimostra come la digital public history non sia mai solo storia digitale, ma soprattutto storia “con il digitale”.
Storia e memorie
Il primo progetto italiano di digital public history collaborative writings promosso da un’università statale italiana risale al 2013: Fanmemory.[1] L’esperimento nasce dalla collaborazione tra la cattedra di Storia Contemporanea di Scienze della Comunicazione dell’Università di Salerno e “Fanpage”, il primo quotidiano nazionale interamente digitale che, in quell’anno, raggiunge un milione di click al giorno e conquista 5 milioni di fan su Facebook. In occasione del settantesimo anniversario della caduta del fascismo (25 luglio 1943) e dello sbarco a Salerno, con il contestuale armistizio (8/9 settembre 1943), si decide di chiedere ai follower di raccogliere documenti e testimonianze che ri-attivino la memoria dei due anniversari, per contribuire alla scrittura di un racconto collettivo. Dal 5 all’8 settembre 2013 sulla pagina Facebook del quotidiano è apparso, riproposto con cadenza regolare, questo messaggio:
“25 luglio 1943: la caduta di Mussolini. 8 settembre 1943: l’Italia firma l’armistizio. Una data importante nella storia del nostro Paese. Avete ‘ricordi’ di questa giornata storica? Controllate nei vostri cassetti o in quelli dei vostri nonni, chiedete a chi c’era, a chi ha visto. Inviateci foto, video, le vostre testimonianze, partecipate con noi nel ricordare questo evento.”[2]
I post hanno complessivamente raccolto 1336 likes, 237 condivisioni e 526 commenti. Solo il 13% dei commenti risponde alla richiesta di ricostruire i due eventi traumatici. La sperimentazione, però, ha fatto emergere cinque elementi da cui trarre insegnamento:
- la call, riferita a una data storica, attira un consistente flusso di utenti disposti a condividere ricordi e testimonianze familiari e personali;
- si stabilisce tra l’emittente e il ricevente un rapporto fiduciario che stimola la scrittura in forma diaristica (memory blogging);
- si manifesta una “divisione della memoria” sulla caduta del fascismo che amplifica l’uso pubblico della storia;
- affiorano luoghi comuni e stereotipi metastorici dal forte contenuto ideologico;
- si coglie l’assenza di coscienza storica nelle nuove generazioni e il rapporto debole esistente tra l’ambiente scientifico-accademico e la società civile.
Il senso comune della storia
Questo esempio ci aiuta a comprendere quanto Facebook, in quanto archivio digitale delle memorie biografiche, sia sempre più influente nella definizione del senso comune della storia. La piattaforma, infatti, conserva i dati condivisi, ricreando e riplasmando il rapporto tra il presente e il passato; seleziona i ricordi per mezzo degli algoritmi; rende accessibili le tracce e i documenti registrati al suo interno. I social stanno ristrutturando la cognizione di passato e presente. In Facebook il sapere storico, ridotto a una somma di opinioni disintermediate, è stato rimosso dalla memoria del passato, il cui uso immediato si presta all’esperienza emozionale dei pubblici interconnessi. Il minimo comune denominatore dei contenuti pubblicati nei gruppi Facebook è l’immaginario della memoria. Gli utenti/testimoni aprono lo scrigno dei ricordi condividendo foto, video od oggetti digitalizzati: un montaggio del passato, senza distinzione di fonti né contestualizzazione storica, presentato come un’opportunità per integrare, e spesso contrapporre, le piccole storie delle comunità locali con le narrazioni ufficiali degli storici professionisti.[3]
Proviamo a lanciare una ricerca con la parola Storia nella query della sezione gruppi.[4] Tra i primi quindici solo tre sono chiusi. Guardiamo i numeri: si va dai 6337 membri di “Historia Regni – Storia d’Italia e d’Europa” ai 274.643 membri del gruppo “Alessandro Barbero: la Storia”.[5] Scorrendo le regole d’ingaggio emergono due fattori deontologici: la censura dell’hate speech e il divieto di usi pubblici/politici della storia. I criteri di condivisione dei contenuti sono connessi alla partecipazione degli utenti. Il meccanismo “funziona” grazie alle interazioni degli utenti che contribuiscono alla discussione con la scrittura dei commenti sotto il post pubblicato da un altro utente. Il disclaimer più chiaro in tal senso è quello di “Storia contemporanea – studiosi, appassionati, lettori”: “Uno spazio pubblico su Fb dove confrontarsi sui temi della storia contemporanea, postando libri, link, immagini, saggi, filmati, eventi di presentazione”.[6] Il confronto auspicato serve a innescare un rapporto di reciprocità tra condivisione e collaborazione, tipico dell’attivismo dei prosumer.
Crisi e controversie
Le figure più controverse e i momenti di crisi della storia nazionale attirano il maggior numero di commenti. Facciamo un paio di esempi. Sul gruppo “Historia Regni – Storia d’Italia e d’Europa” il 29 agosto 2021 è condivisa una citazione di Mussolini sull’operato dei «leninisti»: pugnalatori alle spalle della democrazia in Russia, divenuta un’autocrazia peggiore dello zarismo. Al termine della citazione l’utente aggiunge: “il futuro duce si spostò a destra nel 1920 anche a seguito di questi eventi”. Nei 14 commenti annessi, 8 utenti scambiano messaggi sulla figura di Mussolini senza entrare nel merito dell’interpretazione proposta. Nonostante ciò, si attua una pratica di scrittura collaborativa che avvicina le posizioni attraverso la condivisione di un’ipotesi controfattuale: se Mussolini non avesse partecipato alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale il fascismo avrebbe avuto la stessa evoluzione del franchismo in Spagna.[7]
Un altro esempio riguarda il gruppo “Storia moderna e contemporanea. Spunti e riflessioni”. Il primo settembre 2021 un utente condivide il video “Partigiani contro partigiani, l’eccidio di Porzus 75 anni dopo” realizzato dal “Messaggero Veneto” con l’analisi dello storico Andrea Zanini. Il post ottiene solo 28 reazioni ma ben 215 commenti. Intervengono 37 utenti sviluppando 19 blocchi di discussione con una media di 11 commenti ognuno. Subito prende quota la polemica sul ruolo dei partigiani comunisti pronti a tradire la Patria in favore del regime sovietico. A suffragare l’interpretazione si condividono link, documenti digitali e testimonianze di partigiani cattolici. La seconda linea tematica è la supposta negazione dell’eccidio di Porzus. In opposizione molti commentatori pubblicano materiali che dimostrano quanto l’argomento in questione sia soggetto a uno sfacciato uso pubblico della storia.[8]
Un caso esemplare
Un caso esemplare di storia locale collaborativa è il gruppo “Comune di Aspra”, frazione di Bagheria – un tempo comune autonomo. Il gruppo è organizzato come una comunità cooperante che si ritrova intorno al «nostro album fotografico» per creare un comune “senso di appartenenza”. Gli aderenti condividono “le vecchie e ingiallite foto” allo scopo di osservare e commentare insieme il “passaggio inesorabile del tempo” che dà vita a “un archivio consultabile” da trasferire alle nuove generazioni.[9] Gli utenti pubblicano commenti con foto di familiari o riproduzioni di oggetti antichi che rimarcano la malinconia per i tempi andati. La storia, in questo caso, scompare dietro un coagulo di ricordi che presentificano un passato immaginario: genitori, fratelli, sorelle, parenti, comitive di amici che attraversano il ’900 con uno sguardo volutamente parziale; ma anche paesaggi e luoghi perduti che proiettano la memoria del locale in una dimensione globale.[10]
Motivati a condividere
La storia raccontata nei gruppi di Facebook sembra seguire la formula della fanzine: una rivista digitale gratuita per appassionati, prodotta in maniera indipendente grazie ai servizi “editoriali” offerti da Facebook. In realtà queste esperienze sono dei collaborative innovation networks nati da una motivazione condivisa e dalla necessità di collaborare per divulgare sapere. Gli utenti sono automotivati dal poter analizzare insieme un argomento attraverso la condivisione virtuale di testimonianze, interpretazioni e documenti. Partecipando a un gruppo tematico ci si trova di fronte ai vantaggi e agli svantaggi tipici di un confronto pubblico tra pari (soggetto alla deriva polemica), ma allo stesso tempo si contribuisce a disseminare conoscenza e ad amplificare il tema d’interesse collettivo.
Facebook dimostra quanto il passato sia un fattore interpretativo del presente, ma soprattutto ci pone davanti a una novità: la digital public history non è mai solo storia digitale ma anche sempre storia con il digitale. Se da un lato usa e domina le tecnologie con le pratiche cognitive specifiche degli storici, dall’altro implementa la ricerca, l’insegnamento e la comunicazione dei risultati scientifici. Nell’esercizio della digital public history lo storico non deve necessariamente confrontarsi con analisi di tipo quantitativo; il più delle volte si trova, come un qualsiasi utente, a fare “storia con il digitale”. Chi fa storia digitale impiegando i social deve innanzitutto conoscere e governare il mezzo: usare i social non significa compiere solo un lavoro computazionale, ma anche veicolare informazioni, collaborare con gli utenti e, infine, compiere ricerche i cui esiti interessano tanto la comunità scientifica quanto la rete dei contatti.
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Per approfondire
- Boyd, Danah. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. London: Yale University Press, 2014.
- Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc, 2013.
- Kokswijk, Jacob van. Hum@n: Telecoms & Internet as Interface to Interreality. Hoogwoud: Bergboek, 2003.
Siti web
- Digital & Public History @sergenoiret: https://dph.hypotheses.org/ (last accessed 1 September 2021).
- org. Didattica della storia in rete: https://www.novecento.org/tag/digital-public-history/ (last accessed 1 September 2021).
- LabCD – Laboratorio interdipartimentale di Cultura digitale: https://www.cfs.unipi.it/dipartimento/laboratori/labcd-laboratorio-interdipartimentale-di-cultura-digitale/ (last accessed 1 September 2021).
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[1] https://www.fanpage.it/attualita/fanmemory-25-luglio-9-settembre-1943-fanpage-e-la-memoria-dell-italia/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[2] https://www.fanpage.it/attualita/fanmemory-25-luglio-9-settembre-1943-fanpage-e-la-memoria-dell-italia/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[3] Stefania Gallini, and Noiret Serge, „La historia digital en la era del Web 2.0. Introducción al dossier Historia digital,” Historia Crítica 23, no. 43 (2011): 31-32.
[4] La ricerca è stata lanciata dal profilo dell’autore di questo articolo nel settembre 2021.
[5] Alessandro Barbero è docente universitario di storia medievale che grazie alle sue qualità di divulgatore ha raggiunto un notevole successo mediatico.
[6] https://www.facebook.com/groups/409708786055312/about (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[7] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1069699399823839/posts/4095582887235460/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4I1M-0xKGw (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[9] https://www.facebook.com/groups/168061696630169/about/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[10] https://www.facebook.com/groups/168061696630169/photos/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
_____________________
Image Credits
Server Room © 2014 SparkFun Electronics CC-BY 2.0 via flickr.
Recommended Citation
Ravveduto, Marcello: Facebook Between Past and Present. In: Public History Weekly 10 (2022) 1, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19331.
Editorial Responsibility
From the beginning, Facebook, as a sort of real-time yearbook for the University of Harvard, has presented itself as a collector of historical sources that can be collaboratively commented on and implemented. Over time, the way in which the past, memory and sources are re-elaborated in this celebrated social network has become enormously complicated. It is a case that shows how digital public history is never just digital history, but above all history ‘with the digital’.
History and Memories
The first Italian public history collaborative writing project to be promoted by a state university dates back to 2013: Fanmemory.[1] The experiment arose out of the collaboration between the Chair of Contemporary History of Communication Science at Salerno University and Fanpage, the first entirely digital national newspaper which, in that year, reached one million clicks per day and had gained 5 million fans on Facebook. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the fall of fascism (25 July 1943) and that of the Allied landings at Salerno, that coincided with the signing of the armistice (8-9th September 1943), they decided to ask their followers to collect documents and first-hand accounts that could bring the historical memory of these two anniversaries to life, contributing to the writing of a collective story. Between the 5th and the 8th of September 2013, the following message was posted and reposted regularly on the Facebook pages of the site:
“25th July 1943: The fall of Mussolini, 8 September 1943: Italy signs the Armistice. An important date in the history of our country. Do you have any ‘memories’ of this historic day? Check in your drawers or those of your grandparents, ask those who were there, those who saw the events unfold. Send us your photos, videos, your first-hand accounts; join us in remembering this event.”[2]
The posts collected a total of 1,336 likes, 237 shares and 526 comments. Only 13% of the comments were in response to the request to reconstruct the two traumatic events. The experiment, however, brought to light five elements from which lessons can be learned:
- calls relating to historical events attract a steady flow of users willing to share memories and their own first-hand accounts or those of their family;
- a relationship of trust is formed between the author of the post and the responder, which encourages the writing of a form of diary (memory blogging)
- regarding the fall of fascism, a “division of memory” is evident that amplifies the public use of history;
- meta-historical stereotypes and commonplaces with strong ideological contents emerge;
- the new generations’ lack of historical knowledge and the weak relationship that exists between the scientific-academic world and civil society become evident.
A Common Sense of History
This example helps us to understand the extent to which Facebook, as a digital archive of biographical memory, is becoming increasingly influential in the definition of the common interpretation of history. The platform, in fact, preserves the data being shared, recreating and remodeling the relationship between the present and the past; it selects memories by means of algorithms; it allows access to the documents and the digital traces within it. Social networks are restructuring our cognition of the past and the present. In Facebook, historical knowledge, reduced to a sum of unintermediated opinions, has been removed from the memory of the past, the immediate use of which lends itself to the highly emotional experience of an interconnected public. The lowest common denominator of the content published in Facebook groups is imaginary memory. Users/eyewitnesses open the treasure chests of their memories by sharing photos, videos, or digitized objects: a montage of the past, with no distinction between sources or historical contextualization, presented as an opportunity to integrate – and often contrast – the little stories of local communities with the official narratives of professional historians.[3]
Let’s try doing a search for the word “history” in the Facebook groups section.[4] Amongst the top fifteen, only three are closed. If we take a look at the numbers, we see they range from 6,337 members of the “Historia Regni – Storia d’Italia e d’Europa” group, to 274,643 members of the group “Alessandro Barbero: la Storia”.[5] Scanning through the membership rules, two deontological factors emerge: the censorship of hate speech and the prohibition of the public/political use of history. The criteria for the sharing of contents are connected to the participation of the users. This mechanism “works” thanks to the interactions between the users who contribute to the discussion by writing comments under the posts published by other users. The clearest disclaimer is that of the group “Storia contemporanea – studiosi, appassionati, lettori” which states that it is: “A public space on Facebook to discuss contemporary history subjects, by posting books, links, pictures, essays, film clips and presentations”.[6] The hope is to trigger a reciprocal relationship between sharing and collaboration, which is typical of prosumer activism.
Crisis and Controversies
The most controversial people and times of crisis in Italian national history attract the highest number of comments. Let’s have a look at a couple of examples. In the group “Historia Regni – Storia d’Italia e d’Europa”, a quote from Mussolini was shared on August 29, 2021 regarding the activities of the “Leninists”: those who stabbed democracy in Russia in the back, allowing it to become an autocracy worse than that of Tzarism. At the end of the quote, the user adds: “The future Duce moved to the right in 1920 also as a result of these events”. Of the 14 comments below the post, 8 users exchanged messages regarding Mussolini himself, without entering into the merits of the interpretation previously proposed. Despite this, a form of collaborative writing takes place that brings the two positions closer together through the sharing of a false hypothesis: that if Mussolini had not participated in the Second World War, fascism would have evolved in the same way as Francoism in Spain.[7]
Another example can be found in the group “Storia moderna e contemporanea. Spunti e riflessioni”. On the first of September, one of the members shared the video “Partigiani contro partigiani, l’eccidio di Porzus 75 anni dopo” (“Partisans against Partisans, the Porzûs massacre 75 years later”), created by the newspaper “Messagero Veneto” with an analysis by the historian Andrea Zanini. The post got only 28 reactions, but no fewer than 215 comments. Thirty-seven users made contributions, developing 19 discussion blocks with an average of 11 comments in each one. The controversy regarding the role of the communist partisans who were prepared to betray their own country for the Soviet regime immediately gains ground. Links, digital documents and first-hand accounts of Catholic partisans are used to support this interpretation. The second theme that emerges is the supposed denial of the massacre of Porzûs. In opposition to this, many commentators publish materials that demonstrate how the topic in question is subject to a brazen public use of history.[8]
An Exemplary Case
One example of collaborative local history can be found in the group “Comune di Aspra” – a village in Bagheria – at one time an autonomous municipality. The group is organised as a collaborative community that meets around their own “photograph album” to create a common “sense of belonging”. The members share “their old and yellowed photos” in order to observe and comment on “the inexorable passage of time” that forms a “consultable archive” to pass on to the new generations.[9] The users publish comments with family photos or reproductions of antique objects that emanate nostalgia for times gone by. History, in this case, disappears behind a coagulation of memories that present an imaginary past: parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, groups of friends that move through the 1900s with a deliberately partial view; but also landscapes and lost places that project local memory into a global dimension.[10]
Motivated To Share
The history that is told in the Facebook groups seems to follow the formula of the fanzine: a free digital magazine for fans, produced independently thanks to the editorial services offered by Facebook. In reality, these experiences are those of collaborative innovation networks born from a shared motivation and from the necessity to collaborate in order to divulge knowledge. The users are self-motivated by being able to analyze an argument together virtually through the sharing of first-hand accounts, interpretations, and documents. Participating in a thematic group, one finds oneself with the advantages and disadvantages typical of a public discussion between peers (subject to controversy), but at the same time it is possible to generate awareness and amplify subjects of collective interest.
Facebook demonstrates how the past is an interpretative factor for the present, but above all, it confronts us with something new: digital public history is never merely digital history, but is always history together with the digital world. While on the one hand, it uses and dominates the technology with the specific cognitive practices of history, it implements the research, teaching and communication of scientific results on the other hand. In the exercise of digital public history, the historian does not necessarily have to deal with quantitative analyses, but they almost always find themselves, just as any other user, creating “history with the digital”. Those who undertake digital history using the social networks must, above all, know and govern the means: using social media does not involve simply doing computational work, but also conveying information, collaborating with the users and, at the end, carrying out research, the results of which interest the scientific community as much as the network of contacts.
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Further Reading
- Boyd, Danah. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. London: Yale University Press, 2014.
- Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc, 2013.
- Kokswijk, Jacob van. Hum@n: Telecoms & Internet as Interface to Interreality. Hoogwoud: Bergboek, 2003.
Web Resources
- Digital & Public Hisotry @sergenoiret: https://dph.hypotheses.org/ (last accessed 1 September 2021).
- org. Didattica della storia in rete: https://www.novecento.org/tag/digital-public-history/ (last accessed 1 September 2021).
- LabCD – Laboratorio interdipartimentale di Cultura digitale: https://www.cfs.unipi.it/dipartimento/laboratori/labcd-laboratorio-interdipartimentale-di-cultura-digitale/ (last accessed 1 September 2021).
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[1] https://www.fanpage.it/attualita/fanmemory-25-luglio-9-settembre-1943-fanpage-e-la-memoria-dell-italia/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[2] https://www.fanpage.it/attualita/fanmemory-25-luglio-9-settembre-1943-fanpage-e-la-memoria-dell-italia/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[3] Stefania Gallini, and Noiret Serge, „La historia digital en la era del Web 2.0. Introducción al dossier Historia digital,” Historia Crítica 23, no. 43 (2011): 31-32.
[4] The search was carried out by the author of this article in September 2021.
[5] Alessandro Barbero is a university professor of medieval history who, thanks to his skills as a narrator, has achieved notable success in the media.
[6] https://www.facebook.com/groups/409708786055312/about (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[7] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1069699399823839/posts/4095582887235460/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4I1M-0xKGw (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[9] https://www.facebook.com/groups/168061696630169/about/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
[10] https://www.facebook.com/groups/168061696630169/photos/ (last accessed 19 January 2022).
_____________________
Image Credits
Server Room © 2014 SparkFun Electronics CC-BY 2.0 via flickr.
Recommended Citation
Ravveduto, Marcello: Facebook Between Past and Present. In: Public History Weekly 10 (2022) 1, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19331.
Editorial Responsibility
Copyright (c) 2019 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact the editor-in-chief (see here). All articles are reliably referenced via a DOI, which includes all comments that are considered an integral part of the publication.
The assessments in this article reflect only the perspective of the author. PHW considers itself as a pluralistic debate journal, contributions to discussions are very welcome. Please note our commentary guidelines (https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/contribute/).
Categories: 10 (2022) 1
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19331
Tags: Collaboration, Digital Change (Digitaler Wandel), Language: Italian, Popular History (Populäre Geschichte), Social Media
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OPEN PEER REVIEW
Facebook’s Broad Present
What is Facebook’s régime d’historicité (Hartog)? How do past, present and future interact on social media? I see Facebook between past and present as a fair but not always convincing attempt to answer this difficult question, in particular through an investigation of posts and comments by a number of history-oriented Facebook groups.
Why “not always convincing”? The author asserts that “Facebook […] has presented itself as a collector of historical sources”. It seems to me that this sentence leads to an overestimation of Facebook’s self-conception as a historical source. Facebook is anchored in the present because the big data and advertising system its business model is based on can only consider the present – old data are not useful for advertising. It is therefore a system (including a set of algorithms that orders posts in each user’s newsfeed) that encourages a perspective grounded in our very present, even when discussing the past. In this sense, Facebook is not “between past and present”; rather, it implements a broader present (Gumbrecht) that consumes past and future. That is what I believe characterises Facebook’s regime of historicity.
Determining Facebook’s regime of historicity might appear to be a point of detail, but it will ultimately shape the framework within which discussions on the past will occur via this network. Although the cases that the author develops are intriguing and interesting, what seems to be lacking is a link between the characteristics of the platform and the ways in which discussions and controversies play out on this same platform. To my mind the fanzine metaphor is limited because it does not give a clear idea of the specific nature of what the author calls “the editorial services offered by Facebook”. Furthermore, I find it unfortunate that the author did not conduct a more systematic analysis of Italian-speaking history groups – rather than cherry-picking some of them – to verify whether the patterns identified in the cases developed in this article can be generalised or not.
I also regret the author’s use of implicit elements. Many of the concepts used are not defined. What is meant by “division of memory”, for instance? Several notions are stated without further explanation. For instance, the author does not prove that Facebook is “…becoming increasingly influential in the definition of the common interpretation of history.” To do so would require firstly a comparison with the techniques used by other social networks to mediate between their users and the past, and secondly a comparison with people’s relationship with the past before the creation of Facebook. This affirmation is in fact a (very interesting) hypothesis, but to my knowledge it is not a proven one. The author also refers to an “imaginary past” that evokes Benedict Anderson’s imaginary communities – and it would be a great idea to analyse Facebook history groups in this regard. I must admit, though, that the format of PHW articles does not allow the author to develop their argument fully, as this is not the aim of such articles.
I also have some doubts regarding the author’s conclusion about the differences between digital public history and digital history. The author’s implicit definition of digital history is that it is quantitative history. This could undoubtedly be discussed at length, but to my mind, defining digital history as quantitative history (i.e. as a set of distant reading techniques) is far too limited. For example, digital history can be defined not only as history based on distant reading but as history based on multi-scale reading, from close to distant readings.
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A response in a constructive manner
As Co-director in-charge of the article by Marcello Ravveduto, here I will try to respond to Frederic Clavert’s critique in a constructive manner.
To start, the Ravveduto article is scientifically innovative based on the topic and vision, particularly for the length and style dimensions by PHW. Ravveduto will publish a more substantial and documented article about the same topic, which could not be appropriately summarized and discussed here.
We can find, of course, articles related to the “difficulties” of conducting systematic searches of all sorts on this famous and widely used social platform (Guadagno et alii 2013) or about how challenging it is to discern how digital platforms and data can inform social enquiry (Gangneux 2019). But here the author tries to reason on a peculiar aspect of the historical writing on Facebook: the collaborative dimension.
Inside this question, Ravveduto’s excursus enlightens, in my expertise for the first time, how the historical interpretation of the past could be perceived, built and modified in a Facebook group. The conclusion – «the Facebook groups (ndr. whose related to history topics) seem to follow the formula of the fanzine: a free digital magazine for fans, produced independently thanks to the editorial services offered by Facebook» – it seems too me not only true, but extremely well expressed. To the point that I would also like to relaunch on the poker table of “the future of history in social media” and predict the physiognomy of the new Digital Public Facebook Historian, an “historical influencer”, with all the deontological problems that this entails and with the need (for us) to write down a specific deontology from scratch.
Furthermore, FB historical influencers already exist. They may not be conscious of the presence of the History related adjective: for Italy I think manly to Lorenzo Tosa, a professional journalist formerly close to the Italian Movimento Cinque Stelle (5 star) party, who noisily resigned from the party when it approached the racist and right side of the Italian Parliament. The noise was produced by the farewell written directly on FB: this has opened for Tosa a season of continuous and pounding publications, mainly done on this social platform, where he actually “tells stories”. These stories – almost all viral- have a declared aim: to propose an alternative narrative (i.e. an alternative history) to suprematism, hate speech, racism and to valorize common sense, sense of state, good behavior, inclusion, collaboration, morality.
But let’s see now Clavert’s objections.
He thinks the article overestimates Facebook’s self-conception as a historical source and stress Facebook’s presentism.
If I agree that in FB the connection to the present is undoubted and very strong (for a market issue), I agree totally with Ravveduto: the platform is from the birth just a collector of stories, a “yearbook”, that allows you to present yourself, your history, your pictures (past and present). It is a collector – than an archives – of memories (pictures, text, post) whose algorithm is able to pick up (randomly) from the “bag” (album) of the past e make them present again.
So, FB is actually a big, messy, chaotic archive of sources in which the archivist (the algorithm) is out of our control but allows users to have fun by aggregating and disaggregating memories (fanzine).
Out of control means that no one could do a «more systematic analysis of Italian-speaking history groups»: there is no way to do a systematic analysis, unless the scholar would set a specific research (for instance on all groups related to the topic “Fascism”) and then spends at least a year of his entire existence trying to get into them (joining a FB group is not automatic) and studying their posts and behaviors. For the aim asked to this article, the examples given could only be few and subjective, as well as exemplifying the author’s opinion.
Even the third objection seems to be excessive, spendable for a full scientific essay, and not on this ground. Regarding the fact that «the author does not prove that Facebook is ‘…becoming increasingly influential in the definition of the common interpretation of history!» I agree, he does not prove it, and the statement needs a scientific research, but we know very well that in Italy, 50% of population use FB and the users are mostly adult. Among the Youngs (i.e. between 13 and 18 years of age) “only” 58% are registered on Facebook, while the age group between 19 and 29 is fully represented on the social network. As in the rest most users are around 35, with the following percentages: 30-35 years: 98% 36/45 years: 78% 46/59 years: 59% (source https://www.oberlo.it/blog/statistiche-facebook, last accessed 2 Feb 22).
Given these conditions, and considering the fact that the groups dealing with history are very numerous on FB, could or could not we validly hypothesize that FB is becoming increasingly influential about history topic?
In the end, I must only partially agree with Clavert about the differences between digital public history and digital history. But we have to contextualize the statement in the Italian scientific environment, where the characteristics of the digital history are currently being discussed and where there is a strong “computational” concept of digital history.
The author did not even mean implicitly to state that «digital history is that it is quantitative history», on the contrary: the very condition of history on social networks and in particular on FB shows that the digital historian must learn the computational methods but he/she needs analyze data mainly on a qualitative level.
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– Guadagno, Rosanna E., Tonio A. Loewald, Nicole L. Muscanell, Joan M. Barth, Melissa K. Goodwin, e Yang Yang. 2013. «Facebook history collector: A new method for directly collecting data from Facebook». International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies (IJICST) 3 (1): 57–67.
– Justine Gangneux, Rethinking social media for qualitative research: The use of Facebook Activity Logs and Search History in interview settings, The Sociological Review, July 4, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119859742
– Borghi, Roberto. 2020. «Chi è Lorenzo Tosa, da sconosciuto a outsider dei social». Primaonline(blog). 30 novembre 2020. https://www.primaonline.it/2020/11/30/316619/lorenzo-tosa-da-illustre-sconosciuto-a-outsider-dei-social-centinaia-di-migliaia-follower-e-like-non-danno-pero-da-mangiare/ (last accessed 2 Feb 22).