Digital Hermeneutics: The Reflexive Turn in Digital Public History?

The digital – be it in forms of data, infrastructures, or tools – interferes atall levels in the practice of doing public history. This chapter argues that digitalpublic historians have to reflect more deeply on the epistemological consequencesof their digital practices. It proposes the concept of “digital hermeneutics” as a conceptual framework for this reflection. As a “hermeneutics of in-betweenness,” digital hermeneutics investigates the trading zone of digital public history where new digital methods and approaches meet disciplinary traditions and epistemic cultures of history.