Peeling back the onion (domes) in the North Caucasus: multi-layered obstacles to effective web-based research on marginalized ethnic groups 12:00-12:30

Kit Condill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The North Caucasus is a remarkably multilingual and multi-ethnic region located on the southern borders of the Russian Federation. The predominantly-Muslim peoples of the region (which, for the purposes of this paper, includes Chechnya, the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and many other neighboring territories) have a fascinating and diverse online presence, generated by communities both within Russia and in emigration. Building on previous research into the vernacular-language online media environment of this strategic and conflict-prone region, my paper will argue for the importance of preserving online content in languages such as Chechen, Ossetian, Abkhaz, Avar, Kumyk, and Karachai-Balkar. The many-layered difficulties associated with establishing a web archive for the North Caucasus — and with making its contents easily and permanently accessible for scholars — will be outlined and discussed, along with possible solutions to these problems.

It will also be demonstrated that, despite the North Caucasus’ inherent intellectual appeal as an ancient melting pot of cultures, languages and religions (and its current significance in, among other arenas, the global battle against Islamic extremism), the region is woefully under-studied in English-speaking countries, and locally-produced vernacular-language sources are almost never used in contemporary scholarship. The creation of a web archive dedicated to the North Caucasus, therefore, would be an important step toward encouraging researchers to make systematic use of an already-existing corpus of primary-source material that is both substantial and readily (if not permanently) available. Presumably, North-Caucasus-related websites whose political or social stances and circumstances render them particularly vulnerable to disruption and content loss are (or should be) of particular interest to scholars, and these sites will be identified as priorities for future web-archiving efforts.

Tackling the problem of preserving web content in the languages of the North Caucasus also has broader implications, raising questions such as how well online content in minority languages is being preserved, the relationship between statehood/sovereignty and the feasibility of comprehensive web preservation efforts, and the role of web archiving in cultural and linguistic preservation.