Journalism Professor Discusses Twitter's Institutional Failures to Archive its Data on Wired.com

Dr. Elisabeth Fondren, Assistant Professor of Journalism in the Division of Mass Communication for The Collins College of Professional Studies was recently interviewed by Wired.com for an article discussing Twitter's institutional failures to archive its data, and the use of social media as a digital heritage. In the article, Dr. Fondren talks about how the failure to archive has proven to be a huge missed opportunity for preserving a rich data set of political discourse and communication trends. However, hosting a public square on the servers of a private company can be a precarious situation.

“If it had been successful, we would now have it,” says Fondren. “It really undermines researchers’ attempts to assess the social impact of media on society.”

The article discusses the challenges of preserving social media data and whether or not it is worth saving. Click here to read the full article.