Archiving Reproductive Health: Archiving sensitive social media material

Recorded December 5th, 2024. A hybrid seminar by Dr Lorraine Grimes (Maynooth University) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Bio: Lorraine Grimes is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Applied Social Studies at Maynooth University. Lorraine has a PhD from the National University of Ireland Galway. Her thesis is forthcoming in the form of a monograph with Bloomsbury Academic in 2025 titled ‘Single mothers in Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, migration and institutionalisation’. Lorraine previously worked with the Digital Repository of Ireland on the Archiving Reproductive Health project which is the subject of this talk. Abstract: Archiving Reproductive Health (ARH) is a Wellcome-funded project coordinated by the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), working to preserve digital material created by grassroots organisations working for reproductive justice in Ireland, especially during the 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Irish constitution. The project was the first in the world to archive Facebook social media posts. A key part of the project was the archiving of stories posted on a Facebook page called “In Her Shoes”, where people anonymously shared their experiences of being refused abortion care, having to travel or illegally order pills online, and the emotional impact of these experiences. These stories often contained details of traumatic experiences such as sexual assault, obstetric violence and domestic abuse. This talk will introduce the Archiving Reproductive Health Project and archiving sensitive social media material. We will talk about anonymization procedures, coding/cataloguing and developing a self-care protocol and an ethics protocol for the project. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub