Participatory Web Archiving: Multifaceted Challenges

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in participatory web archiving in recent years. Indeed, it is widely regarded as a necessary step in the development of web archives. From a theoretical point of view, it has been seen as driven by the “archival turn” in which the origin of archives is critically analysed, and it becomes clear that established power dominates archives while marginalized voices are absent. Web archiving benefits from this “archival turn”, not only in addressing limitations inherited from conventional archives, but also in challenging embedded systemic and selection biases when choosing what to archive from the Web. Through a critical literature review, this paper addresses the need to analyse participatory web archiving practices, the mechanisms and power relations within them through political theories of power and participation.