Transformations of historical narratives in the digital age A critical analytical study of the impact on the writing and understanding of contemporary history
Abstract
This study seeks to investigate how Social Media networks have changed the criteria of the production, distribution and reception of historical narratives, especially in collective memory in the digital era. It focuses on the way that algorithms of ranking, suggestion and interpretation create different interpretations of historical data. On this basis, this study attempts to investigate in the influence of social media platforms on the forms and the patterns of historical storytelling with short and captivating stories that tend to spread widely than well organized, documented and verified accounts of history. The researcher used the PRISMA 2020 model to apply a guided critical synthetic analysis method on a sample of 18 peer-reviewed studies retrieved carefully from worldwide databases, the main conditions is that they treat the subject of history in digital platforms. The objective is to identify the effects of recommendation/moderation mechanism and algorithms on the vision, the reception and the instruction in cyberspaces as well as the audience participation in prompting repeated stories regardless of the verification defects.
The researcher performed a rigorous and exhaustive review of these according to systematic review criteria that aims to insure robust and accurate finding that nuanced analysis of digital historiography. The study is structured in five interrelated phases that address the flow of information about history. First, it focuses on the production of this kind of narratives within digital spaces. Then, it examines the mediation of algorithms in governing content through ordering and recommendation, followed by a deep analysis of the essential mechanisms through which these stories spread across social platforms, and finally evaluates how they are received and interpreted in our digital collective memory.
The findings freveal notable changes in different criteria of historical data especially in the transition from conventional dependence on contextual and scholarly chain of transmition to digital metrics performance. This emphasizes the engagement, the spread and the domination of short and emotionally appealing stories while archived and well documented ones are dismissed in informational accounts. Besides this, the results shows that algorithmic mediation transcends distribution functions to create news standards for meaning creation, such as suggestions and moderation processes that determine the uses and exposure and alter cognitive legitimacy. This calls for systematic training in the techniques of digital verification, in particular the Cross-Lateral reading that facilitates the critical scrutiny of virtual storytelling in history, in the aim of mitigating cognitive gaps between users and receivers.
Furthermore, the findings highlight the commercial and the legal policy directions of social media hat complicate historiographical processes. This requires the rethinking the production of education strategies by educators and historian.
Keywords: Historical Narratives; Algorithmic Narration; Networked Memory; Lateral Reading.
