Twitter archive at Library of Congress could help redefine history's scope
When the Library of Congress announced this month that it had recently acquired Twitter's entire archive of public tweets, the snarkosphere quickly broke out the popular refrain "Nobody cares that you just watched 'Lost.' " Television tweets are always the shorthand by which naysayers express how idiotic they find Twitter, the microblogging site on which millions of users share their thoughts and activities in 140 characters or fewer.
"If tweets are in, how about craigslist.org postings?" one poster wrote on the library's blog in response to the announcement. Because "all of that information is just as culturally vacant."
The purview of historians has always been the tangible: letters, journals, official documents.
The purview of Twitter, on the other hand, is the ephemeral: random spewings that some argue represent the degeneration of society. Would a Founding Father ever have tweeted his crush on Evangeline Lilly?
But on the other hand, says Michael Beschloss, historian and author of "Presidential Courage," "What historian today wouldn't give his right arm to have the adult Madison's contemporaneous Twitters about the secret debates inside the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia?"
The 21st-century equivalent might already be happening: When Kitty Kelley was researching her new Oprah Winfrey bio, Kelley's assistant spotted a tweet from Winfrey about attending a gala and hugging Whoopi Goldberg. The throwaway shout-out was significant to Kelley, who knew that there had been tension between the women and viewed the tweet as a subtle olive branch. "If you believe that God is in the details -- and all biographers do," Kelley says, "then Twitter will be a godsend!"
Although the library's acquisition might seem to be a capitulation to frivolity and short attention spans, historians say, it's actually about how digital archives such as this are shaping the future of history....
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"If tweets are in, how about craigslist.org postings?" one poster wrote on the library's blog in response to the announcement. Because "all of that information is just as culturally vacant."
The purview of historians has always been the tangible: letters, journals, official documents.
The purview of Twitter, on the other hand, is the ephemeral: random spewings that some argue represent the degeneration of society. Would a Founding Father ever have tweeted his crush on Evangeline Lilly?
But on the other hand, says Michael Beschloss, historian and author of "Presidential Courage," "What historian today wouldn't give his right arm to have the adult Madison's contemporaneous Twitters about the secret debates inside the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia?"
The 21st-century equivalent might already be happening: When Kitty Kelley was researching her new Oprah Winfrey bio, Kelley's assistant spotted a tweet from Winfrey about attending a gala and hugging Whoopi Goldberg. The throwaway shout-out was significant to Kelley, who knew that there had been tension between the women and viewed the tweet as a subtle olive branch. "If you believe that God is in the details -- and all biographers do," Kelley says, "then Twitter will be a godsend!"
Although the library's acquisition might seem to be a capitulation to frivolity and short attention spans, historians say, it's actually about how digital archives such as this are shaping the future of history....