Do you think the Internet (and well documented reports of current events) make it easier or harder for future historians?

by PeterP_

In most cases, historians have the issue of not having enough written records to go off of. Some cultures don't leave written recorded behind and some records were destroyed or deteriorated due to time. As such, historians often speculate about historical events based on limited information that they do know.

Now, with the Internet and all the documents that are stored within it, would future historians have the opposite problem of having too much information? Many news reports or tweets are technically primary sources from a historical perspective, but they are often bias and sometimes present contradictory views depending on who wrote it. So, would it be more difficult for historians since they have to comb through all the information to minimize bias within the primary sources recorded in the Internet?

(Not sure if this was asked before. If so, sorry.)

Alf321

I think it will depend on how big the scope of the future research will be. Cristopher Dawson said, in the intro of his book about Religion and Western Culture, that the problem study Christianity (for example) was that the sources were so vast that was forcibly split in more and more specifics subfields.

The same happens with the current status of humanity (liberal studies). For example if you want to make a research about the impact that brexit has, you can check sources from the mainstream media to memes. In that way, the material is so huge that trying to make a general study about it will be considered just biased cherry picking or not enough representative data.

For that matter, the study has to specialize and specialize: a study of the Brexit impact in British internet communities, or in the 25 biggest Media sources in the UE, and goes on an on.

Going back to Dawson, to study a time with too much info available is as difficult as study a time (Early Middle Ages for example) when you have to rely too much in interpretation because of the lack of credible recorded history.