Inevitably, classification processes are powerful within any type of archive. The way content is classified shapes how documents are interpreted and, crucially, how they are retrieved. If we approach social media as a form of archive, then we can begin to see how the ordering process of classification and sorting that occur within these media may be powerful for how people engage with their past content and how individual biographies are made accessible. As we will explore, the ordering of the archive is crucial for understanding its functioning and what can be pulled from its vast stores.

The types of archives that are used to document life are powerful in their presence and outcomes. For some it has been placed at the centre of modern power formations. Derrida (1996: 4 n1) famously argued that, ‘there is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory. Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation.’

If we treat social media as a population of people effectively participating within a large archival structure, then social media bring the politics of the archive to the centre of everyday life and social interaction (see Beer, 2013). Derrida's point is that the structures of the archive afford its uses and what can then be said with it or retrieved from it. He argues that ‘the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future’ (Derrida, 1996: 17; original emphases). The form that the archive takes also dictates the type of items or documents that come to be stored within them; it imposes its logic upon its content. Derrida adds to this, crucially, that ‘the archivization produces as much as it records the event’ (Derrida, 1996: 17). The technical structures of the archive need to be understood in order for its politics to be revealed, particularly as they intervene in the relations between the past and the future. This is something that we will keep in focus as we move through this and the following chapter.