I spoke to Dr Beatrice Cannelli, Curatorial and Policy Research Officer at the Bodleian Libraries. Beatrice recently completed a PhD at the School of Advanced Study, where she conducted research on the development of social media archives. In this interview, she discusses the importance of social media preservation and some of the challenges facing practitioners in this area.
(Archivoz) Could you tell me a little bit about your research?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) My PhD thesis focussed on the obstacles, practices and opportunities related to the development of social media archives. In particular, it offered a comparative analysis of the legal, socio-technical contexts and practices at twelve national memory institutions. The ultimate aim was to compile a set of guidelines that could guide diverse institutions through the maze of concerns and obstacles related to social media preservation.
(Archivoz) A PhD is quite a commitment. Why did you decide to focus on social media?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) Oh yes, absolutely! I always think of a PhD as a kind of research marathon, where it’s crucial to focus on a topic that one finds genuinely important—not only for oneself but also for the research community. During my training as Archivist in Italy, I developed a keen interest in digital archiving practices, which eventually led me to pursue an MA programme in Digital Curation at King’s College. It was there that I began to explore the numerous challenges related to preserving born-digital content. Social media platforms, in particular, are notoriously difficult to capture due to a variety of legal, ethical, and technical reasons, yet they remain largely understudied.
(Archivoz) Why do you think social media preservation is so important?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) In the past two decades since their emergence, social media platforms have become a fundamental means of communication, enabling people from diverse backgrounds to engage in global discussions about contemporary events and phenomena. These platforms offer a unique opportunity to capture collective memory and preserve what was once fleeting conversation, holding significant cultural and historical value. Given their importance, preserving this material is essential for understanding our contemporary age.
(Archivoz) What are some of the barriers to preserving social media content?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) Preserving social media platforms is very complex. It involves navigating the threshold between legal constraints imposed by national legal frameworks, social media policies, ethical considerations, and the technical challenges of capturing content that is in constant flux. It is within this narrow space carved between what is allowed and what is feasible to archive that memory institutions have to operate, all while managing this significant endeavour with often very limited resources. Also, it is important to underscore that national memory institutions only archive content that is made publicly available on social platforms (i.e. no private messages or accounts with restricted privacy settings), mostly focussing on public figures and organisations’ official accounts.
(Archivoz) Is there an ethical dimension as well? Social media users understand that whatever they post publicly is in the public domain but not necessarily in web archives.
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) The ethical implications are crucial and must always be considered when preserving this specific type of born-digital material. Often, users are not fully aware or adequately informed about how their information and content are used or can be reused. While users may have some control over their digital footprint, it is important to highlight that social media platforms are private companies to which users grant permission to manage their content upon signing up. The blurring boundaries between what is truly private and the contentious definition of ‘public/published’ on social media raise several concerns for archiving institutions, which can be difficult to disentangle.
(Archivoz) What did you discover about best practice in social media preservation?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) Well, one of the leitmotivs that has emerged through my research, is the importance of producing thorough documentation, not only to describe archiving practices and decision-making processes but also to track the ever-evolving complexity of social media and the context in which the content was originally embedded. It is essential to consider the needs of future researchers who may approach these collections in twenty years, and provide them with the necessary context to understand how these platforms functioned and what it meant to interact on them, as certain aspects may not be fully preserved or replayed for different reasons.
(Archivoz) Are you aware of organisations providing access to preserved social media or using them in any way?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) There are a few web and social media archiving initiatives that are freely available online, such as the Internet Archive or Arquivo.pt, to name just a couple. However, most social media archive collections are, for legal reasons, only available to be accessed on-site. So, to browse these collections one will have to visit the reading room of the archiving institution and use the terminals provided there.
(Archivoz) Was there anything you learned that surprised you?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) Honestly, what has always amazed me is the incredible work that social media archiving initiatives have achieved despite the myriad challenges, constraints, and the continuous evolution of platforms and the social media archiving landscape in general. This is particularly impressive given the limited resources available to support these efforts, whether it’s scaling up the collection of materials, developing new tools that can adapt to the periodic changes implemented at the platform level, or considering the environmental sustainability of preserving such collections over the long term.
(Archivoz) Can you recommend resources for practitioners who want to learn more?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) There are several interesting resources, often freely available online, that can introduce people to web and social media archiving and keep them up to date. For example, the International Internet Preservation Consortium’s YouTube channel features numerous videos providing information about the latest developments in this field. Additionally, conferences such as the upcoming Born-Digital Collection, Archives and Memory, which will take place this April at the beautiful Senate House (University of London), offer excellent opportunities for learning and networking.
(Archivoz) Finally what advice would you give practitioners who want to preserve social media but don’t know where to start?
(Dr Beatrice Cannelli) My advice is, don’t be afraid to ask! Archiving social media is a complex endeavour, and setting up a plan for its preservation can feel like a Herculean task. Networking, going to conferences and reaching out to other archivists who are already archiving social media are, in my opinion, the perfect starting points.
Header image is a photograph of a phone showing social media apps, Jason Howie, 2013, used under the terms of CC-BY 2.0
Interviewee:
Dr Beatrice Cannelli
Curatorial and Policy Research Officer for the Algorithmic Archive Project at the Bodleian Libraries (University of Oxford)
Dr Beatrice Cannelli is a Curatorial and Policy Research Officer for the Algorithmic Archive Project at the Bodleian Libraries (University of Oxford). In 2024, she completed her doctorate with a thesis titled “Archiving Social Media: A Comparative Study of the Practices, Obstacles, and Opportunities Related to the Development of Social Media Archives”. She is a trained Archivist who has collaborated in various projects such as the Web ARChive studies network (WARCnet). Her research interests include the preservation of born-digital cultural heritage, web and social media archiving practices, platform governance and digital history. Her most recent publications include Making social media archives: Limitations and archiving practices in the development of representative social media collections (Firenze University Press, 2024) and Social media as part of personal digital archives: exploring users’ practices and service providers’ policies regarding the preservation of digital memories (Archival Science, 2022).
Interviewer:
Ayah Al-Rawni
Content Editor for Archivoz
Ayah is the Archivist for the Human Cell Atlas Consortium, and is based at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Her professional interests include digital preservation, scientific archives, advocacy and public engagement.
