Social Movements, Cultural Memory and Digital Media: Mobilising Mediated Remembrance

by Samuel Merrill (Editor), Emily Keightley (Editor), Priska Daphi (Editor)

Overview

This collected volume is the first to study the interface between contemporary social movements, cultural memory and digital media. Establishing the digital memory work practices of social movements as an important area of research, it reveals how activists use digital media to lay claim to, circulate and curate cultural memories. Interdisciplinary in scope, its contributors address mobilizations of mediated remembrance in the USA, Germany, Sweden, Italy, India, Argentina, the UK and Russia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030328276
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	02/20/2020
Series:	Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Samuel Merrill is a Research Fellow at Umeå University’s Digital Social Research Centre in Sweden. His research interests concern social movements, cultural memory and digital media. He is author of Networked Remembrance: Excavating Buried Memories in the Railways Beneath London and Berlin (2017). 

Emily Keightley is Professor of Media and Memory Studies at the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University, UK, and editor of the journal Media, Culture&Society. Her research focuses on memory, time and its mediation in everyday life. 

Priska Daphi is Professor of Conflict Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany, and co-editor of the journal Social Movement Studies. She is author of Becoming a Movement: Identity, Narrative and Memory in the European Global Justice Movement (2017).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Digital Memory Work Practices of Social Movements.-2. Trans Memory as Transmedia Activism.- 3. Who is the Volk? PEGIDA and the Contested Memory of 1989 on Social Media.- 4. Connective memory work on Justice for Mike Brown.- 5. Following The Woman with the Handbag: Mnemonic Context Collapse and the Antifascist Activist Appropriation of an Iconic Historical Photograph.- 6. #ioricordo, beyond the Genoa G8: social practices of memory work and the digital remembrance of contentious pasts in Italy.- 7. In Between Old and New, Local and Transnational: Social Movements, Hybrid Media and the Challenges of Making Memories Move.- 8. Archiving the Repertoire, Performing the Archive: Virtual Iterations of Second-Generation Activism in Post-Dictatorship Argentina.- 9. How to Curate a ‘Living Archive’: The Restlessness of Activist Time and Labour.- 10. ‘We Will Not Forget, We Will Not Forgive!’: Alexei Navalny, Youth Protest and the Art of Curating Digital Activism and Memory in Russia.- 11. Afterword/Afterweb: The Antisocial Memory Assemblage.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Weaving together diverse disciplinary perspectives, this edited volume offers an insightful exploration of the relationship between activism and digital memory. It brings together scholars from memory studies, digital media research and social movement studies to investigate practices of digital curation, circulation and claiming of memories by social and political movements. The picture that emerges is nuanced and compelling. It is also firmly grounded in empirical case studies from all over the world, from the virtual Escrache in Argentina to American transgender communities to the Navalny campaign in Russia. This is an indispensable volume for scholars interested in digital memory and social movements.” (Dr Anastasia Kavada, Reader in Media and Politics, School of Media and Communication, University of Westminster, UK)

“While social movements are certainly innovative, they are also deeply rooted in traditions of contention that are embedded in the memories of past struggles. Mnemonic practices involve complex mechanisms that work offline, but also online. Covering a broad range of cases in various parts of the world and bridging studies on memory and digital media, this very interesting collection helps us understand the forms and meaning of protest.” (Donatella della Porta, Professor of Political Science, Scuola Normale Superiore Florence, Italy)

“This excellent collection offers cutting-edge insights within a unified perspective. It will become required reading for everyone interested in memory and activism in the digital age.” (Ann Rigney, Professor of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Editorial Reviews

Social Movements, Cultural Memory and Digital Media provides an important foundation for future interdisciplinary research of memory and media in movement. It will be of great value to experienced and junior scholars. Despite its sometimes heavy use of jargon, it may even inform students and activists.” (Yifat Gutman, Mobilization, December, 2020)

From the Publisher