Life Narrative and the Digital

Archiving Uncertainty: Leveraging Crowdsourcing Methodology in Documenting Personal Experiences of COVID-19

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.14.42325

Keywords:

pandemic diaries, crowdsourcing, digital archive, documentation of crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, declared a global crisis by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, dramatically altered society’s daily routines, social interactions, and digital media consumption. This paper aims to evaluate how leveraging crowdsourcing techniques in combination with digital archiving strategies can effectively capture real-time autobiographical reflections during a period of crisis. The study focuses on the formation of the Latvian Pandemic Diary Collection, initiated through an open-call crowdsourcing initiative that was launched on 17 March 2020 to collect people’s recordings of their personal thoughts and emotional responses in this period of profound change and uncertainty. Methodologically, the project employed a versatile rapid-response crowdsourcing framework and dynamic digital archiving strategy, coupled with an intense outreach and social media campaign to encourage diary submissions. 

The diary project has resulted in an open-access digital collection of 2,333 daily entries by 238 participants, offering unique insights into the societal shift towards digital modes of professional, social, and educational interaction in response to the pandemic’s constraints. Although the methodology applied proved effective in eliciting relatively widespread public engagement, difficulties became apparent in relation to the scalability of the approach and getting different segments of society to participate in the project through the crowdsourced-driven digital collection of autobiographical narratives in a rapidly changing social context. 

Author Biographies

Sanita Reinsone, Digital Humanities Center, University of Latvia

Sanita Reinsone, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Latvia, former head of the Digital Humanities Group of the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (2016–2024), the head of the Digital Archives of Latvian Folklore (garamantas.lv, 2014–2020), and the initiator of the Autobiography Collection at the Archives of Latvian Folklore. Reinsone is leading local and international research projects and has extensive experience in curating outreach projects dealing with cultural heritage crowdsourcing. Her research interests focus on digital archiving practices and autobiographical heritage, as well as participatory methods in digital humanities. Reinsone is the author of the monograph The Poetics of Getting Lost (in Latvian, 2017) on oral folk narratives. She has also published two autobiographical books, both of which were staged in Latvian theatres: Story of Ādams (in Latvian, 2008) about a nineteenth-century Latvian peasant’s autobiography, and Forest Daughters (in Latvian, 2015), based on autobiographical accounts by Latvian anti-Soviet partisan women.

Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia

Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, PhD, has been a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia, since 2018. During the last few years, she has managed the Autobiography Collection at the Archives of Latvian Folklore and has been one of the driving forces behind the Pandemic Diary Collection since March 2020. Ļaksa-Timinska’s main research interests focus on (auto)biographies of Soviet-Latvian writers in 1920–30s USSR. In 2018, Ļaksa-Timinska received the Young Scientist Award from the Latvian Academy of Sciences and her master’s thesis was honoured by the Kārlis Dziļleja Foundation.

 

Haralds Matulis, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia

Haralds Matulis is a research assistant and data analyst at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia and a doctoral student at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Latvia. With a background in philosophy, social anthropology, and literary studies, he is now specializing in the application of computational methods to data in the humanities and cultural sector.

Elvīra Žvarte, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia

Elvīra Žvarte is a PhD candidate at the Latvian Academy of Culture and a research assistant at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia. She also holds an M.A. in social anthropology from Riga Stradiņš University, where she studied life writing practices. Žvarte has gained substantial experience in digital archiving and data management while working as editor of the Digital Archives of Latvian Folklore (since 2014) and has also been involved in the creation and maintenance of the Autobiography Collection of the Archives of Latvian Folklore.

Published

2025-05-09

Issue

Vol. 14 (2025): EJLW

Section

Life Narrative and the Digital

Copyright (c) 2025 Sanita Reinsone, Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, Haralds Matulis, Elvīra Žvarte

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