Sharing authority in online collaborative public history practices

Abstract

Forms of shared authority has become User-generated projects in the digital realm public history practices and projects. New collaborative forms of history making through web technologies are ubiquitous worldwide. User-generated projects democratized the making of history with public historians now engaged in sharing their authority actively with targeted communities. This essay discusses the critical issues related to the concept as it dealt with public historians’ activities, its acceptance as a fundamental method for doing public history in the digital world, and the way Web 2.0 social practices contributed enormously in developing the field of digital public history to intertwine crowdsourcing with shared authority practices.