Ethical Approaches to Youth Data in Historical Web Archives (Dispatch)

My doctoral research focuses on the experiences of young people learning
about and exploring the World Wide Web from Canadian homes, schools,
libraries and community centres between 1994-2004. While there are many
intersecting facets of my research that include federal policy interventions,
public discourse in Canadian media, and oral interviews, I engage
significantly with web archives in order to provide perspectives from young
and marginalized people who were creating websites and community on the
early web. My research has focused on GeoCities, one of the most popular
web hosting platforms between 1996-1999.
GeoCities users, called homesteaders, could build websites for free in
different neighbourhoods that reflected interests and hobbies, like the
WestHollywood (LGBTQ+) or EnchantedForest (Youth) neighbourhoods.
When the platform was removed from the web in 2009, there were significant
archival efforts to preserve the once-thriving online community in the
Internet Archive. For researchers, this archive poses significant ethical,
methodological and epistemological issues. Although it is a valuable resource
for researching a history of the online communities on the early web, it also
creates opportunities for harmful data practices while also calling into
question individuals’ “right to be forgotten” (EU, 2016b). This dispatch
explores some ethical questions that have emerged through my research on
digital experiences of young people throughout the 1990-2000s and the use of
archived web materials created at that time by young people who were under
the age of 18.