The Politics of Women’s Digital Archives and Its Significance for the History of Journalism

Abstract

This article explores the politics of digital archives focused explicitly on women journalists and their work. A key question is here the wider implications and value for journalism historiography. A qualitative analysis is conducted of the online presence of two illustrative archives, one an oral history project called Women in Journalism and the other a women’s history database called Kvinnsam. The analysis finds that whereas the archives do not lend themselves to participation as agency in co-constructing history, they give access to otherwise nonsearchable, nonvisible, and nonaccessible material of relevance to the history of women journalists and their work. The agency and political power of the archives are dependent on institutions, first, to simply materialize as online archives and, second, to (potentially) affect political matters and express political acts of resistance. For journalism history studies, this means engaging with the archives that exist, what forms they have, and how they are used. For digital journalism, this also implies a discussion of how archival experimenting could develop the field.