Blogging from the ground up: Active history and working against ‘post-truth’ discourses

Fionnuala Braun

This post is part of a series, Essays on the Future of Knowledge Mobilization and Public History Online.

In August 2024, I had the privilege of being able to attend a two-day workshop on the place of blogs like Active History in the current media landscape. Against the humid backdrop of UWO’s Huron College, we spent hours discussing just how disheartening it feels to be blogging history these days. People access most of their information through minute-long videos, and trust in more conventional outlets is at an all-time low. It would be easy, listening to our conversations, to think that maybe history blogging is a thing of the past.

In the months that followed this workshop, I spent a long time reflecting on that thought. It made me disheartened. How are we meant to spread history to a disengaged and uninterested public? Do we need to reduce complex analyses to soundbites simply to remain relevant? Amidst all this confusion, what’s the place of writers like myself, who value nuance and integrity? I wondered if I should simply stop writing. After all, who would read it? Would they care for the hours I had spent researching, crafting, honing a complex argument into something readable?

Interestingly enough, the answers to this personal crisis came to me during the period of incredible instability in which we currently find ourselves. Because while it’s true that more misinformation is flooding our algorithms with every passing day, it’s much more difficult for that misinformation to wind its way into complex, well-researched work. Amidst all the falsity that pollutes our social channels, perhaps blogging, for historians, can become a form of resistance against that tide.

It seems like it’s impossible to know what’s ‘real’ in the news these days. In the past two months alone, mainstream sources like the New York Times and the Globe and Mail highlighted the arrest and subsequent incarceration of US green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil after his participation in protests calling for a halt to the genocide in Gaza, all while far-right media sites like Breitbart News claimed that, with Trump’s support, Benjamin Netanyahu will ‘destroy’ Hamas. Even as I’ve come back to writing this piece over the course of the month, it seemed that news events I included were no longer ‘current’ mere days after they first headlined. How can we be expected to keep up with what is reliable or ‘true,’ when it seems like it’s barely possible to keep up with what’s happening – true or otherwise?

As historians, we often find ourselves at the intersections of these conversations. We are privileged in that our knowledge of the past allows us, to a certain degree, to contextualize the present. Historical engagement allows us to engage with media critically, even empathetically. Where the public sees a lack of education and a descent into right-wing conspiracy, we see legacies of pent-up anger at being unheard, polarizations in discourse that have been happening since before the pandemic. Of course, this doesn’t mean that conspiracy and ill intent don’t play a role in misinformation. Rather, they are shaded with nuance, embedded in cultural frameworks of discourse. We can disagree with the conspiracy, but still deconstruct how it came to be.

Of course, this also means historians are being asked to help contextualize misinformation more frequently. Days after Elon Musk’s Seig heil (or “uncomfortable gesture,” depending on who you ask), the New York Times ran a piece analyzing the historical context of the so-called ‘roman salute,’ how it was adopted by the Third Reich, and the implications of Musk’s actions. Since the October 7^th attacks by Hamas and consequent ground and air assault waged by Israel, most major news outlets have run a story analyzing the history, and the history of misinformation, of the conflict. TikTok also saw a massive uptick in both informative and propaganda posts about the history of the region after October 7^th, resulting in calls for the company to begin censoring pro-Palestinian content.

The public is asking for more information on history. They want to know how these conflicts and events occurred, and what they mean for us today. They’re also faced by a seemingly impenetrable wall of misinformation and ‘post-truth’ facts. With access to peer-reviewed articles often blocked by paywalls and readability, it seems like there’s a big disconnect between where and how historians position their research, and where it’s most needed.

This brings us back to the perpetual disciplinary and personal crisis of the historian: does all the work we do on sites like Active History really matter? Is there a place for us in the changing digital landscape?

As is perhaps apparent by this point, my answer to this would be a vehement yes. How the public interacts with media is absolutely changing. But it’s changing in a way that makes more room for misinformation, mistrust, and uncertainty. Amidst all of this, many of us, myself included, look to the past for answers. We want to see how things were resolved before, maybe to find some hope that they can be resolved again.

That’s where Active History comes in. To combat misinformation, to have those conversations that Donald Trump and Elon Musk don’t want us to be having, we must be active. We must be on top of things. And we must provide reliable, accurate, and trustworthy historical information to people looking for answers.

In the current moment, I would argue that the kind of blog work that Active History does, putting out accessible historical information, is a radical act. When we write, we send a message to those who don’t want truth to exist anymore: we refuse the erasure of history.

To be very clear: we can’t allow our society to become any more ‘post-truth.’ We have to reject the very idea of ‘post-truth’ and instead immerse ourselves in resistance. When we blog history accessibly, we do just that.

Fionnuala Braun is an MA candidate at Carleton University.