livessuch

Livessuch is a neologism used in digital humanities and journalism to describe the systematic collection and synthesis of life narratives from public digital traces in order to construct a life history of an individual or a thematic group. It is often discussed as a methodological approach for turning dispersed online information into a coherent biographical or biographically framed narrative.

The term's etymology is informal and descriptive rather than linguistic; it emerged in scholarly and media discussions in the early 2020s to label practices that assemble biographies from online footprints. As such, livessuch denotes a family of methods rather than a single established protocol.

Methodologically, livessuch involves defining a scope, gathering data from public sources such as social media posts, news articles, public records, and interviews, and then corroborating events to produce a timeline and narrative synthesis. Researchers must account for limitations, including data gaps, inconsistent records, and potential misrepresentation or context loss when pieces are interpreted out of context.

Applications include digital biography projects, memory studies, data journalism, archival research, and social-science inquiries into how online lives are constructed and remembered. The approach is frequently used to examine how public online traces contribute to perceived life stories and to illuminate the ethics of narrating someone’s life based on digital footprints.

Ethical and legal concerns are central, including privacy, consent, data minimization, potential harm from misrepresentation, and questions about consent for publishing life narratives created from personal traces. Responsible use often requires transparent methodology and sensitivity to the subjects involved.

See also: life history, digital ethnography, data journalism, privacy, biography.