Social Media as a New Form of Ephemera

1. Social Media as a New Form of Ephemera In 1847 a $200 Reward flyer was issued for the capture of five runaway slaves - a man, Washington Reed, his wife Mary and their three children, Fielding, Matilda and Malcolm.

2. In 1847 a $200 Reward flyer was issued for the capture of five runaway slaves - a man, Washington Reed, his wife Mary and their three children, Fielding, Matilda and Malcolm. No story on their lives as fugitives has ever been written and many more stories like these have passed undocumented. Ephemera like reward flyers, playbills, political broadsides are the only records of these events that will ever exist.

3. For a long time, ephemera were used to give a snapshot of the everyday life of a society, a country, or a county or a social movement. They were used to capture the types of information or atmosphere that books or accounts of events from that time, would consider too trivial to be included in the literature. But these little pieces of information can prove invaluable in capturing the everyday life of the people.

4. And just like those printed ephemera could be used to capture the society at the time they were created, digital documents created through social media can be used to capture society today.

5. Ephemera, information created for immediate consumption, has been used for centuries to disseminate information through leaflets, brochures and other pieces of print and now, in the digital age, social media can be considered a new source of ephemera.

6. Ephemera have been defined by the Library of Congress as things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time. They can consist of pamphlets, business cards and postcards, leaflets, bulletins and newsletters, posters and broadsides.

7. Broadsides are just single sheets of low quality paper printed on one side only, crudely and in large numbers, and distributed freely in public places to capture the eye of the public and discarded right after. They are still one of the most prevalent forms of ephemeron today.

8. They were first recorded as being printed in the 15th century. In fact, broadsides were printed by Gutenberg in 1454, before the Gutenberg Bible was printed. Ephemera spread across Europe and into the Americas to inform the populace of a myriad of contemporary topics and Library of Congress has ephemera from as early as 1640.

9. Some of the kinds of information that were passed on by ephemera were political views, reward notices - not just for runaway persons, but runaway pets as well, anti-slavery and civil war propaganda, education and health information, labour concerns, and on a lighter side poetry and verse.

11. Social media has grown as a way to communicate ideas with others since 1979 when Usenet, an early bulletin board was created. Social media became popular at the end of the 20th century with blogs, wikis and podcasting establishing themselves. By 2010 the Internet was recognised as the third most popular news platform.

12. Today the public uses social media to inform through websites, image and video sharing, memes, web pages, message boards, blogs, micro blogs, pod casts and wikis. And people have been using these media to inform each other about:

13. Natural disasters – after the 2011 Japan tsunami social messaging like Facebook and Twitter helped families find missing members and helped coordinate relief efforts.

14. Political events - social messaging like BBM, email, Facebook and Twitter played major parts in Obama’s Presidential Campaigns of 2008 and 2012. Another example is the protests of Spring 2011 that led to the toppling the Egypt government where Facebook and Twitter helped in organising protests and informing the press of what was going.

15. Social issues - Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012” campaign helped mobilise the world to try to capture Joseph Kony and stop his army. This campaign was so successful that up to this year, 2014, the US has contributed funding and troops to aid in the search for his army.

16. Cultural events - Soca Monarch 2013 – Machel vs. Superblue where social messaging and memes were created to express support for one side or the other.

17. Commercial information - digital flyers and catalogues are used to inform customers of what is available for this month or this year or during this sale.

18. Social events – ecards and digital invitations like Evite Postmark and Paperless post are popular ways of inviting and getting RSPVs immediately.

19. The Library of Congress in 2010 started to archive all tweets "in the belief that each of the mini-messages reflects a small but important part of the national narrative."

20. These different types of ephemera will give future generations an idea of the social, political and cultural events that have engaged people during this time and used this information to look at how our present, their past, would have influenced our future, their present.

21. Ephemera, those pieces of paper, pictures and cards, have preserved the history of past generations and allowed us to better understand the stories of the people who lived at the time they were created. Social media will offer future generations the same opportunity to take a look into the way we live today and how we have influenced our world.

22. Ephemera, print created for immediate consumption, has been used for a long time to disseminate information and now, in the digital age, social media will be considered a new source of ephemera.

23. Blogs, tweets, e-vitesand message board posts are current items intended to be deleted or disregarded once they have been consumed, but these are the pieces of information that will give future researchers a clear idea of the society and time in which they were created.

24. Like the reward for the runaway family that tells of the struggles of a people trying to find a place in a world that has no place for them, these accounts will be preserved only in the ephemera that captures their story.