Historiography in the Digital Age

The typical historiography course provides students with crucial perspectives on the various methods, styles, and motivations of historical writing and why they've changed over time. Yet as a field, historiography can seem rather backward looking, largely neglecting the extent to which social media and digital publishing technologies (Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Instagram, blogging platforms, etc) are reconfiguring the nature of historiography itself. As we all have both celebrated and lamented, the variety of people who can read, write, publish various historical interpretations has exploded, and the extent to which academic historians should be involved with these technologies remains an ongoing debate. While the fields of Digital History and Media Studies have occasionally ventured into historiographical territory, the many new digital processes by which we construct cultural memory and historical awareness have not become significant historiographical considerations. By weaving together various strands of recent theoretical work in media studies, digital history, and of course historiography itself, this poster will present a compelling visual argument as to why and how historiography courses can and should more explicitly engage with contemporary digital media as a unique development that casts many of historiography's traditional concerns in a new and revealing light--and simultaneously gives them new relevance and significance in the 21st century.