Duration: 2021-2024
History takes place - also and especially in social media! Public History Hamburg, the history education at the Ruhr University Bochum and Kulturpixel e. V. are exploring together with citizens how history is told on Instagram and TikTok. The project explores forms of visual and participatory historiography on the internet. Together, they will develop analytical tools and test their own practices of representation. The aim is to enable and promote multi-perspective and fact-based historical narratives and a critical and reflexive participation in historical discourses in social media.
Research project in cooperation with the Public History Department at the University Hamburg.
Project website: www.socialmediahistory.de
See here for the latest information on events and publications.
Instagram Channel: @socmedhistory
Project partners #SocialMediaHistory
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Universität Hamburg
Kulturpixel e.V.
Funded by: BMBF
In August 2023, the anthology @ichbinsophiescholl. Darstellung und Diskussion von Geschichte in Social Media was published by the Wallstein Verlag. The title is edited by Mia Berg and Christian Kuchler and is part of the series Historical Education and Public History, vol. 1.
You can find the book here.
On 11 and 12 November 2022, the international conference "#History on Social Media - Sources, Methods, Ethics" took place as part of the joint project #SocialMediaHistory. Further information and the conference recordings can be found here.
In June 2024, WDR5 Scala published a feature on classical cultural mediation, primarily on Instagram and TikTok. In addition to the creators Klaus Willbrand and Susanne Siegert, Mia Berg also enriched the contribution with insights into the research perspective and experiences from the SocialMediaHistory project. The feature sheds light on how social media contributes to the dissemination and communication of cultural content and what role it plays in today's society. The feature compiled by Laura Dresch can still be listened to here at WDR until 26 June 2025.
In the 101 episode of Mittelalter in Social Media History of the podcast about current research from the field of history, Anno-punktpunktpunkt, Philipp Jansen welcomes project coordinator Kristin Oswald of the SocialMediaHistory project and Tobias Enseleit, who launched the Mittelalter Digital project. Together, they talk about historical representations in social media, which topics are covered, how this is done and which topics are not discussed. Listen to the 101 episode from 15 May 2024 here.
Social media such as Instagram or TikTok have become popular platforms for presenting history in multimedia forms. As part of the #SocialMediaHistory project, Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg and his team are investigating the extent to which historical representations on such platforms are preceived by users, to what extent they are distorted or which topics are not even addressed. A detailed interview on this topic between Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg and detektor.fm editor Julia Seegers can now be heard here in the podcast.
In the 12th episode of Spread the Word, the science communication podcast at the University of Hamburg, which was released on 25 May 2023, Mia Berg and Kristin Oswald (Hamburg) talked about the project, the participation of citizens and the challenges of researching the audiovisual platform Instagram and TikTok. You can listen to the podcast here.
An overview of the publications from the project team can be found here.
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Last update: Mar 14, 2025
