Oral history in a digital era: experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article aims to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing digitalization of everyday life on Oral History methodology. The pandemic experience accelerated the already established process of accession of the most varied spheres of human life to the internet due to the need for social isolation, strengthening ties between
historians and the digital world. The migration of usual activities from the physical environment to cyberspace was an emergency alternative to replace in-person, established with the aim of containing the transmission of the virus, but which significantly affected the ways of working,studying, researching, accessing information and communication permanently. Oral History was also affected by this context, finding itself forced to revisit its traditional positions on the use of remote interviews. In this way, this work seeks to highlight the new relationships between the context of the present time - of a digital era - and the methodology of oral history, with the pandemic as a milestone for the rapprochement between
orality and the digital. To this end, it is based on the development of the project “Documenting the Covid-19 Experience in Rio Grande do Sul” at PUCRS, research that was dedicated to recording the new coronavirus pandemic from oral sources digitally, between 2020 and 2023.