In view of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, we are continuing to engage with and research the digital dimensions of this war with the support of the CRC Media of Cooperation. Following the lecture series Memory under Fire, we’ve recently collaborated with Sociologica journal to edit and curate a special feature with a lead essay by Miglė Bareikytė and Yarden Skop (“Archiving the Present. Critical Data Practices During Russia’s War in Ukraine”) and guest articles by activists and scholars from Ukraine and beyond (The full feature can be found here: https://sociologica.unibo.it/issue/view/1090).

The Centre for Urban History in Lviv has been archiving selected Telegram channels since February 2022. In collaboration with the Centre for Urban History, we are organizing an upcoming three-day data sprint on 16-18 December, which will focus on the research of the digital Telegram archive curated and archived by the Center for Urban History. The data sprint is organized by Taras Nazaruk (Center for Urban History in Lviv), Yarden Skop (CRC MGK Ph.D. student), and Miglė Bareikytė (Postdoc, Digital Media and Methods team, CRC associate).

During the data sprint, we will introduce the Telegram archive, its archiving process, and potential research tasks, discuss data analysis methods, and work hands-on with the data in small teams. In light of our collaboration with the developers of the TG Search tool (https://tgsearch.com.ua/), we are preparing an accessible pilot tool to access the archive in a user-friendly way.

S C H E D U L E (All hours are in CET – Central European Time)

16/12/22 Day 1, Friday: 

09:30 – 10:00: Opening and welcome by organizers, round of introduction
10:00 – 10:45: Taras Nazaruk, “Telegram Archive of the War. General Context of the Archiving Effort”

— Coffee Break —

11:00 – 12:00: Dmytro Serbulov, “Telegram features: What Should We Know About the Platform Before Using Archive”
12:00 – 13:00: Oksana Avramenko “Telegram Archive of the War. Export and Metadata”

— Lunch break —

14:30 – 15:30: Dmytro Roi, “Introduction to TGsearch – the Telegram publics data analysis app”
15:30 – 16:30: Yevhenii Monastyrskyi, “Online Posts as an Egodocument: Ethical Limitations of Creating and Maintaining a War Archive”
16:30-17:30: Division into small work groups, introduction within groups, beginning individual group work

17/12/22 Day 2, Saturday:

10:00 – 10:30: General Meeting: Opening of the day
10:30 – 13:30: Individual group work with data

— Lunch break —

14:30 – 17:00: Individual group work with data
17:00 – 17:30: General Meeting – Summary of the day

18/12/22 Day 3, Sunday:

10:00 – 10:15: General Meeting: Opening of the day
10:15 – 13:00 Individual group work with data 

— Lunch break —

14:00 – 16:00: Preparing group presentation 
16:00 – 17:00: Presentations
17:00 – 17:30: Final discussion – where do we go next?