Feminist commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising and the ethics of Twitter as data

Abstract

The 1916 Easter Rising was a rebellion against British colonial rule in Ireland, and it set in motion a renewed military and political campaign for Irish independence. The centenary of this pivotal event was celebrated in 2016, the centrepiece of a decade-long programme of national remembrance, the ‘Decade of Centenaries,’ in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Marked by digitality and widely declared a success for public engagement with history, the centenary also represented a turning point in feminist re-appraisal of the Irish revolution, one that has been reflected in wider societal shifts concerning the position and freedoms of Irish women today. Drawing upon the primary author’s doctoral research, this article demonstrates the methods, code, and collaboration involved in collecting ‘historical’ tweets from the 1916 Rising centenary via the Twitter Premium API in order to interrogate Twitter as it is embedded in the mediation of collective memory and identity in this late-modern authorised commemoration. Data was collected and cleaned using Python programmes, collaboratively designed for this specific project, but which may be adapted to future research needs. It further considers the ethical considerations and methodological challenges of such research. Lastly, and based on qualitative thematic analysis of the data collected, it briefly illustrates this feminist discourse of remembrance that was carved out online, one that reflected a renewed and expanding historical consciousness of the women who shaped the course of Irish history and a present-centred discourse of equality.