Preserving Social Media: A Case Study at LTU Archives

Abstract: Nowadays, digital preservation is one of the most important issues in human history, culture, educational institutions, government and non-government agencies as well as the development of our civilization. Social media technologies have already taken important role among the means of communication between the users and the government agencies. Besides, government agencies have to preserve the important communications between the users and the agencies through social media because of future research and future generations. Additionally, the purpose of this thesis is to suggest an acceptable preservation strategy for preserving the social media contents in perspective of government agencies. In addition, the thesis discusses the importance of preserving the social media communication in digital preservation for government agencies. Moreover, the thesis highlights the need and longevity of digital information in digital preservation with the successful adoption of open source tools in this global digital world. The thesis also discusses some of the important preservation strategies and format identification of digital preservation. Therefore, the thesis uses qualitative method as methodology, case study and semi-structured interview for getting the result. Different preservation strategies are feasible for different types of digital materials. Furthermore, several preservation strategies, such as emulation, migration, encapsulation, and open source tools have been discussed in this study. Government agencies can choose any of them due to the demand, usability, preservation planning and technical infrastructure. Finally, this thesis suggests to the government agency to use harvesting as a suitable part of preservation strategy in perspective of social media communication. However, government agencies can also decide to use emulation and migration as preservation strategy depending on their different needs and purposes.