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.
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