Conference topics

Online platforms, especially social media platforms, are both research objects and sources of data for a variety of research approaches in the humanities and social sciences, computer science, and the natural and life sciences. The historical evolution of social media makes them a part of our digital cultural heritage. However, the processes used by institutions to archive and document social media data are still only rudimentary, not least because of their economic, social and aesthetic characteristics and the unique attributes of media technology. Researchers, research institutions and cultural heritage institutions therefore face a wide range of problems in terms of their archiving, indexing and use. Researchers who wish to work with social media data also encounter numerous new challenges, especially when fundamental changes such as the elimination of application programming interfaces (APIs) impact access to specific data from online platforms.

The archiving, indexing and use of dynamic data from social media are therefore fraught with problems which researchers, research institutions, libraries and archives have to tackle in a consistent manner. Ideally, solutions to these problems should be developed cooperatively, since this requires extensive effort which would be beyond the scope of a single data community or discipline.

The aim of the conference is therefore to enable libraries, archives, infrastructural facilities, research institutions and researchers to network and exchange experiences with archiving and the sustainable use of data and digital objects from social media. We explicitly welcome case studies and presentations on solutions and their practical implementation as well as reports on research findings.

We are particularly interested in contributions on the following key topics:

• Sustainable infrastructure for collecting and providing access to social media content
• Interaction between researchers and archiving institutions
• Ethical issues and best practices
• Legal issues and solutions
• Challenges posed by restrictive data access from social media platforms
• Experiences with data access in the context of the Digital Services Act
• Status and preservation of social media from an archival and cultural-historical perspective, e.g. posts, interactions, platform elements
• Consolidation of collections, corpora, holdings
• Metadata, data documentation and indexing social media data
• Use of AI & LLMs for data documentation and indexing purposes
• Initiatives focusing on archiving and access
• Concepts for the provision and use of derivatives (aggregated or derivative formats) from social media
• Experiences with the reusability of available data

Date

The conference will take place from 17 to 19 March 2026 at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main. The main conference language is German. However, contributions can also be submitted in English. We aim to schedule all English-language presentations together in one day, if possible.

Submissions

We look forward to receiving your submissions for presentations and your proposals for tutorials, workshops or interactive formats.

Presentations / posters: Please submit your proposals in the form of abstracts containing a maximum of 500 words (plus bibliographies and max. 1 illustration). Contributions can be based on research findings or personal experience and may be presented in German or English. The programme committee will decide which contributions to accept as oral presentations and which as posters.

Further formats: Proposals for tutorials, workshops, themed sessions and other interactive formats should not exceed two pages and should contain the following information: proposed format and realisation, language, target group (potential number of participants), motivation and goals. In addition, please tell us whether you require special technical equipment or facilities. We will then determine how these can be provided on site.

Please send your submissions as a PDF document to: twarchiv@dnb.de

Timeline

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 31 October 2025

Response by 30 November 2025

Conference: 17.-19.03.2026

Participation

The conference will take place in person at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main. There are currently no plans to stream the event online. The participation fee is approx. 50 euros.

Speakers who do not have their own travel funds may apply for up to 300 euros to cover travel and accommodation expenses (per presentation for max. one person).

Organisation

German National Library Frankfurt am Main

Dr Britta Woldering

twarchiv@dnb.de 

Program Committee

Stefan Dietze (GESIS and HHU Düsseldorf)
Dimitar Dimitrov (GESIS)
Philippe Genêt (German National Library)
Tatjana Scheffler (Ruhr University Bochum)
Claus-Michael Schlesinger (UB der HU Berlin)
Katrin Weller (GESIS and HHU Düsseldorf)
Britta Woldering (German National Library)

Cooperation partners

BERD@NFDI
German National Library
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
NFDI4DataScience
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