Ethical Approaches to Youth Data in Historical Web Archives (Dispatch)

Abstract

My doctoral research focuses on the experiences of young people learning about and exploring the World Wide Web from Canadian homes, schools, libraries and community centres between 1994-2004. While there are many intersecting facets of my research that include federal policy interventions, public discourse in Canadian media, and oral interviews, I engage significantly with web archives in order to provide perspectives from young and marginalized people who were creating websites and community on the early web. My research has focused on GeoCities, one of the most popular web hosting platforms between 1996-1999. GeoCities users, called could websites for free in different that and hobbies, the the were significant archival efforts to preserve the once-thriving online community in the Archive. For researchers, this archive poses significant ethical, methodological and epistemological issues. Although it is a valuable resource for researching a history of the online communities on the early web, it also creates opportunities for harmful data practices while also calling into question individuals’ “right to be forgotten” (EU, 2016b). This dispatch explores some ethical questions that have emerged through my research on digital experiences of young people throughout the 1990-2000s and the use of archived web materials created at that time by young people who were under the age of 18.