Digital History 1.5: A Middle Way between Normal and Paradigmatic Digital Historical Research

Abstract

This chapter analyses the impact of digital technology on historical research by identifying some of the critical methodological strands of the new computational digital history using Thomas Kuhn’s research on scientific revolutions. Digital methodologies have been described as posing a potential paradigm shift for historical research. Following Kuhn, the chapter describes the two ideal type responses within history to the challenges of the new computational digital history, where the disruptive digital methodologies are either being domesticated into traditional ‘normal science’ history as ‘digital history 1.0’, or a second revolutionary route where historical practice is radically disciplined into a paradigmatic ‘digital history 2.0’. As an alternative methodological middle way the study outlines ‘digital history 1.5’. This description combines a summary of digital practices already appropriated by most historical researchers with some of the new digital history’s central methodological elements as well as propose conceptualizations of emerging new mixed digital history practices such as search methodologies, digital source and resource criticisms.