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About the Project
Preserving Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis: The Role of Social Media
Planning Grant
Social media applications, including Facebook, Instagram, and Tripadvisor, have become essential platforms for displaced communities seeking to commemorate their lost homes and remain connected. This project will identify and survey virtual cultural heritage collections, seen as commemorative community archives, created by Aleppians and other Syrians who have been forcibly displaced from their homes.
Project Leads
- Kristin Parker, Boston Public Library (US)
- Rasha Kanjarawi, Museum for Islamic Art, Berlin (Germany)
Host Institution
Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship
More Information
Read the Summary Report
Preserving Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis: The Role of Social Media
A Summary Report (January 2022)
By
Kristin Parker (USA) - Principal Investigator
AlHakam Shaar (United Kingdom) - Co-Researcher
Introduction
Facebook Groups provide spaces for commemoration and responsive community documentation by Syrians who have been forced into migration (“muhajjar”), immigrants (“muhajer”) and refugees (“laje”). Individuals communicate shared memories of their country, villages and neighborhoods, including their respective cultural practices. Facebook groups are used to hold space for places and communities that have been lost and impacted by the war. Due to the ongoing war in Syria, which began in 2011, over 6.8 million people have been displaced from their home country. Ten years of war have destroyed Syria's economic, social, and cultural structures. According to the United Nations 2018 Cultural and Education Report, in Aleppo, one of the country’s most beloved cities, most of the historic buildings south of the ancient Citadel were destroyed or severely damaged, including the New Serail, Madrasa al-Sultaniyya, Hammam Yalbougha al-Nasiri and the city’s Great Mosque.* In response, several Facebook groups have emerged as a tool by “citizen archivists” to communicate the knowledge of the city’s cultural history. How might archivists contribute to the efforts of citizen archivists who instinctively work to preserve information about their communities dramatically impacted by war?
Through survey and personal interviews, the authors compiled results that illuminated the motivations behind the creation and maintenance of these Facebook groups. We reviewed the social/commemorative importance of, and legal, ethical conditions surrounding of "archiving the archives”. We probed five technical possibilities - manual and automated methods - to archive the Facebook groups, and, using unconventional methods, preserved selections of the content of one Facebook group, in order to make possible ongoing access for future researchers.
* United Nations. (n.d.). First Full Satellite Survey of devastated ancient Aleppo raises recovery hopes UN news. United Nations. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2...
Download the full report exploring potential avenues for archiving this unique digital archive >