Digital Common Wealth

Archiving community responses to major events: The case of Glasgow 2014

Professor David McGillivray, Chair in Event & Digital Cultures, University of the West of Scotland

Jennifer Jones, Project coordinator Digital Commonwealth

www.digitalcommonwealth.co.uk

@digCW2014 @dgmcgillivray @jennifermjones

Established narratives

Ritual and spectacle

Corporate media

Expectations

Macro context: Media and Major Events

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Who owns the narrative?

digital infrastructures offer citizens new channels for speaking and acting together and thus lower the threshold for involvement (Bakardjieva et al, 2012:i)

Digital Dilemma: Producing to preserving?

» Problem of ‘ownership’: third party media providers (Youtube, Audioboo (m), Twitter, Instagram)“The ‘collective allotment’ of Web 2.0 space… is not collectively owned.” (Gauntlett, 2011)

» Accessing the ‘story’ be the making of media artefacts

» ‘Instantaneity and immediacy’ (DIY citizenship) vs long-term relationships

» Community involvement and media literacy (‘permissions’, control, final destination)

» BUT: time & resource constraints = no long term commitment

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Digital Common Wealth

Creative response to the Commonwealth (Games) from across Scotland, involving diverse range of individuals/communities

Community media clusters -community media cafes and digital storytelling workshops

Schools programme - in-school digital storytelling workshops with primary and secondary learners in Scotland’s 32 local authorities

Creative voices - documentary film, creative writing and community songwriting around UWS campuses

#citizen2014 - Games time citizen journalism partnership

» ‘common-weal’ » Common (s)

purpose » Ownership » Collaboration » Sharing » Accessibility » Archiving

Some T&C and FAQs

» Who owns the content that I produce and share with the Digital Commonwealth project?

» What if I want to withdraw my content from the project website?

» How will the content hosted on the project website be decided upon?

» What permissions do I need to get before submitting my content to Digital Commonwealth?

» Are there any restrictions on what content I can produce?

What, why, where and how…?» National Library of Scotland open archive for the XX

Commonwealth Games » Collect publications and archive websites relating to

legacy » Request for projects to submit digital or other

materials created

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Community-based research (Hall, 2014)» Legitimacy

» Power differentials » Who initiates

» Responsibility for outputs

» Trust

» Persistence (boyd, 2014) of digital imprint

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Co-creating archives

» Technical

» Legal/ethical

» Practice

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Concluding thoughts

» Principles and procedures do not replace need for sensitive interactions with participants

» Securing ‘permissions’ can feel invasive and alters the nature of relationships

» Archiving intentions need to be embedded in approach, procedures and practice

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Concluding thoughts

» In ‘project-focused’ activity, ongoing relationships and implications for ‘cultural memory’

» Need for support communities and accessible resources for archiving digital stories

» Ownership of the narrative remains problematic, contested and (always) partial

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More information:

Project website: http://www.digitalcommonwealth.co.ukProject twitter: @digCW2014Handbook of Digital Storytelling: http://www.bit.ly/digCW2014_HB Email: david.mcgillivray@uws.ac.uk, jennifer.jones@uws.ac.uk

Storify from #digarchive event (13th March): http://bit.ly/digCW2014_archive