Glasgow University has announced an interesting research project looking at social networking of today in comparison to the social networking of the 19th century - conducted through the post office instead of the internet. 

The introduction to the project explains, “Social networking employs the whole range of available communications technologies to a fault; but communication has always exploited available technologies as soon as they become affordable.  From the eighteenth century diaries and correspondence increasingly contained non-textual features or were accompanied by parallel series of commonplace books and albums…. Social networks are certainly more tractable than correspondence by our contemporary postal services, but that is no good reason for concluding that they are novel.  In the nineteenth century Gladstone wrote to his wife three times a day, probably as many times as we in our 24/7 culture would wish to communicate with our partners.  Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria all conducted vast correspondence with their extended families and friends.  Social networking takes place within a public space in contrast to the apparent private space of diaries and letters; but in some contexts there are reasons to question the nature of such privacy.  Some diaries and letters seem to have been written explicitly with publication in view or at least to be read by others than the author or the intended recipient.”

The research will concentrate on a large archive in the National Library of Scotland of correspondence between an 19th-century Edinburgh family and their sister who lived in India. The correspondence includes both letters and sketches of family events, rather like the photos that people put on their blogs and Facebook/MySpace/Bebo sites today. Then the researcher will select comparable social networks and blogs operating now and compare the two.

Among the aims are to find out “Is [it] just a question of the technology employed or does the technology radically alter behaviour?  What type of content is most commonly posted to networks and how does this differ, if at all, from content kept in the analogue and will this have ramifications for future preservation strategies?  Does the apparent abandoning of ‘form’ in the digital communication reduce the trust that users place in social networks?”

 More details on the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute website.

Lucy Crichton

Learning and Teaching Scotland