The first reading deals with different projects that used a form of social media. The first was the Veterans' History Project, which I looked into, personally, and found it to be a site of storytelling. The article calls it this and it did not fail to deliver, especially when I read about a Japanese-American soldier from Hawaii who witnessed the Pearl Harbour bombing. This type of site uses social media to put a certain story or interpretation across, such as the history groups on Facebook which allow you to tell your own story. I recently posted a couple of old photographs of my great-grandfather in the British Army during the First World War on a First World War Centenary page. Others had stories to tell, and these sometimes included facts that were previously unknown to me. The second example was the exceedingly interesting Water Conflict Map. This was a Google Map which had bubbles that told of different battles and conflicts over water, all around the world and across history. This is useful in that one could pinpoint a certain conflict in a certain region and could even use this technology to solve border wars or to at least fix them temporarily. This article gave a beginner's insight into history and social media.
The next reading was an article about the social media listening centre at Clemson University. The centre is an important event in the university's history in that it is the first of its kind. The statement from Jason Thatcher, the associate professor in the centre's management department, sums up the main use and importance of the centre: ''My students are learning to listen to the online conversations around private, non-profit, and public organizations. By learning how to listen and what to listen for, they can understand how to better engage in the civil discourse around different parts of our society.'' This statement from Professor Thatcher directly states the importance of the centre. This centre shows, as well, that history and social media can be used to help humans understand each other and themselves, both past and present.
The final work was Professor Burton's project proposal. Professor Burton wishes to use social media to ''further enhance'' history and its studies. His first example was the causes of the Civil War, a conflict that is, sadly, inaccurately studied by many. He states that the use of social media, such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram and others would give us more knowledge on the Civil War by, through my reckoning, taking all of the stories told of this particular war and putting them together under one roof, digitally speaking. Then one could study these stories and find the variations in them through certain subjects, such as Professor Burton's graph of Civil War Southern gender stereotypes. This usage would be quite useful when trying to gather resources and ease some tensions between two parties. This could also be done with the Spanish Civil War, only on a more careful scale as the tension between Nationalists and Republicans seethes and smolders even now. This usage of social media in this way in history would take history to another level, a level that is more human and more personal than it is now. The internet is the campfire and the users of this technology are the campers swapping stories. This is how I see it.
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