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