“The Deep Dark Secret of oral history is that nobody spends much time listening to or watching recorded and collected interview document”– Michael Frisch With this quote, Michael Frisch captures the main issue of oral history; a problem which Steven High highlights in his article Public History. Telling Stories: A Reflection on Oral History and […]
Author: Public History Student
Sine nobilitate: the lack of enthusiasm for historical games
Perhaps it is because of what I studied. It is hard, for most people, to find common ground in studying Latin syntax, or in trying to memorize names of ancient kings like ‘Suppiluliuma’. It can get a bit lonely at times, being an ancient historian. So imagine my excitement about meeting people who could relate […]
A day in the past?
Democratizing history by popular history Historians have positioned themselves as gatekeepers to the past in a world were more and more popular outings of history are being established. Popular media such as television would not be able to convey the complexity of history and the production and interpretation of history should therefore be controlled by […]
What is your story?
ORAL HISTORY GOES DIGITAL Oral history, although critiqued by some academics, is an unique way of enriching the history we know with exciting and compelling stories from people ‘who were there’, or at least from their parents or other family members who were there. Living in an era where digital environments are becoming the main […]
The world wide web as Lieu de Mémoire?
In 2006 Jeff Howe used the word ‘crowdsourcing’ for the first time in his article for the technology magazine WIRED entitled ‘the Rise of Crowdsurfing’. Ten years after Howe published his article, crowdsourcing has not only shown to be very useful, but also more and more common in our ever growing digital world. Through crowdsourcing projects such […]
Serious Sharing: Crowds to Count on
Crowdsourcing: what about it? Crowdsourcing nowadays is a popular, widely applied phenomenon. Popular examples are Wikipedia, 99designs, and Kickstarter. There is plenty of online discussion about the functionality of this tool, stemming from a variety of online forums. Here you can find an extensive overview of the various ways in which crowdsourcing is applied and different […]
The ‘guide on the side’ no one asked for
History is never unbiased and can become the centre of, sometimes, heated debate. Leslie Madsen-Brooks proves this point very clearly in her article ‘‘I nevertheless am a historian’: Digital Historical Practice and Malpractice around Black Confederate Soldiers’. The increase of digital tools for people to do their own research has made it possible for everyone […]
The Crowds of Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing has become a prominent business model used in today’s market economy. In this age of technology, and more specifically digitization, crowdsourcing is just one of the many offspring that has arisen in the last decade. Although communal knowledge has existed long before crowdsourcing was adopted, it is however the participatory aspect in crowdsourcing that […]
What every Dutchman has to know
Strolling through the aisles of the supermarket, semi-bronzed legs in shorts and my thoughts on the last week of summer. I stop to be embarrassingly pleased by the sight of pepernoten. This delicious treat appears earlier every year and so does the debate around Black Pete, the controversial right hand of Saint Nicolas, to whom […]
Mapping controversies in Wikipedia articles, useful or not?
Wikipedia it is the largest platform for societal controversial content and also the sixth most trafficked website, that is exactly why Erik Borra together with other researchers choose this website as their experimental field. Their article ‘Contropedia – the analysis and visualisation of controversies in Wikipedia articles’ describes the on-going project Contropedia. In Wikipedia, Borra […]