Collecting Middle-Class Memories? The Pandemic, Technology, and Crowdsourced Archives

Abstract

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, many groups initiated crowd-sourced archives that invite members of the public to upload personal mate-rial connected to the pandemic. By archiving and publishing how “ordinary” people experienced and perceived the pandemic, these platforms influence how the pandemic is remembered and how historians will write about it. This article presents the example of covidmemory.lu and compares contributions to this platform from Luxembourg with others from German speaking coun-tries. Analyzing users’ thoughts about empty streets and skies and their expe-riences with computers and phones for work and leisure at home, this article discusses the potential and the limitations of crowdsourced archives for future historians of technology.