The historian and a method: the social memory of a disaster via hashtag

Abstract

Cyberspace is an operating environment of civil society of extreme importance in contemporary urban activities. Digital objects in cyberspace are potential historical sources. The objective of this study is to explore a possible way to produce these sources. Here, one can find methodological issues identified along a path followed by a historian, a laywoman in digital technologies, who explored a method of producing historical documents about a disaster using a search engine and a hashtag. The article provides a brief history of hashtags, justifies the use of this tool, and suggests important resources to observe when defining keywords. It indicates the action protocol used to deal with the hypertextuality of the collected and saved objects. Finally, it provides an overview of the content present in the documentation produced, which is accessible via a link and points out the complications and potentials identified in the employed method.