Abstract

The evolution in both content and storage of information will change the way in which future media historians approach their task: in order to study the history of the mass media, telecommunications and new media of the late twentieth century, scholars will have to interact with digital sources, giving rise to a whole new series of concerns and questions. It is not clear if, how and in what format digital data will be available. What is the relationship between old and new sources? Who should be responsible for preserving the digital heritage? What should be preserved? How should digital data be preserved? All these questions are crucial for preservation strategies now and, above all, for studying media history in 2050.

Keywords: preservation, media history, late twentieth‐ and early twenty‐first‐century communication, future media historians, digitalization

How to Cite:

Balbi, G., (2017) “Doing Media History in 2050”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 8(2), 133-157. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.188