Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry: Online-First ArticlesRemembrance practices in the 21st century
Collective and individual memory on social media – the case of @eva.stories
Individuals and groups construct identity through storytelling. Sometimes individuals use these to remember past events and group narratives to foster a sense of belonging. The individual and group interact and build relationships through shared memory. The present paper examines the mediatic representations of individual perceptions of the Holocaust in @eva.stories that evoke, revive, and revitalize Holocaust collective memory. Based on Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we analyzed and organized the findings according to the following communication categories: content, mode, and medium. Using Instagram to enliven Eva’s storytelling creates a unique duality between the audience and the implicit story content. Consequently, multimodal storytelling via Instagram bridges the historical past to the present generation. We conclude that the collective memory’s retelling and preservation constantly change due to cultural and political contexts. Consequently, as today’s online environments are a crucial sphere of discourse, online spaces play a role in creating, maintaining, and spreading collective memories.
Keywords: collective memory, individual memory, social media, Instagram, Eva’s Story, Holocaust
Article outline
- Introduction
- Memory narration on social media: The case of Instagram
- @eva.stories
- Research design
- Data collection
- Findings
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References
Akram, M. S., & Albalawi, W.
(2016) Youths’ social media adoption: Theoretical model and empirical evidence. International Journal of Business and Management,
11
(2), 22–30. 
Annabell, T.
Artamonov, D., Volovikova, M., & Tikhonova, S.
(2019) Media memory in the digital world. SHS Web of Conferences.
Bainotti, L., Caliandro, A., & Gandini, A.
(2021) From archive cultures to ephemeral content, and back: Studying Instagram Stories with digital methods. New Media and Society,
23
(12), 3656–3676.
Bareither, C.
(2021) Capture the feeling: Memory practices in between the emotional affordances of heritage sites and digital media. Memory Studies,
14
(3), 578–591.
Bohus, K.
(2019) Éva on Insta. Holocaust Remembrance 2.0. Cultures of History Forum, 1–14.
Brockmeier, J.
(2010) After the archive: Remapping memory. Culture & Psychology,
16
(1), 5–35.
Calderón, C. A., López, M., & Peña, J.
(2017) The conditional indirect effect of performance expectancy in the use of Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Twitter by youngsters. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social,
72
1, 590–607.
Cheng, L.
(2017) Do I mean what I say and say what I mean? A cross cultural approach to the use of emoticons & emojis in CMC messages. Fonseca,
15
(15), 199–217.
Commane, G., & Potton, R.
(2019) Instagram and Auschwitz: A critical assessment of the impact social media has on Holocaust representation. Holocaust Studies,
25
(1–2), 158–181.
Cordonnier, A., Rosoux, V., Gijs, A.-S., & Luminet, O.
(2022) Collective memory: An hourglass between the collective and the individual. Memory, Mind & Media,
1
(e8), 1–16.
Davidjants, J., & Tiidenberg, K.
(2021) Activist memory narration on social media: Armenian genocide on Instagram. New Media & Society,
24
(10), 1–16.
Ebbrecht-Hartmann, T.
(2021) Commemorating from a distance: The digital transformation of Holocaust memory in times of COVID-19. Media, Culture & Society,
43
(6), 1095–1112.
Feldman, J., & Musih, N.
(2022) Selfies in Auschwitz: Popular and contested representations in a digital generation. Memory Studies,
16
(2).
Fidan, M., Debbağ, M., & Fidan, B.
(2021) Adolescents like Instagram! From secret dangers to an educational model by its use motives and features: An analysis of their mind maps. Journal of Educational Technology Systems,
49
(4), 501–531.
Grønning, A.
(2021) Micro-memories: Digital modes of communication across three generations. Memory Studies,
14
(4), 733–746.
Hallinan, B., Kim, B., Scharlach, R., Trillò, T., Mizoroki, S., & Shifman, L.
(2023) Mapping the transnational imaginary of social media genres. New Media and Society,
25
(3), 559–583.
Harp, D., Grimm, J., & Loke, J.
(2018) Rape, storytelling and social media: How Twitter interrupted the news media’s ability to construct collective memory. Feminist Media Studies,
18
(6), 979–995.
Henig, L., & Ebbrecht-Hartmann, T.
(2020) Witnessing Eva Stories: Media witnessing and self-inscription in social media memory. New Media and Society,
24
(1).
Herman, D.
(2010) Multimodal storytelling and identity construction in graphic narratives. In D. Schiffrin, A. D. Fina, & A. Nylund (Eds.), Telling stories: Language, narrative, and social life (pp. 195–208). Georgetown University Press.
Heyman, E.
(1964) Yomanah shel Eva Heyman [The diary of Eva Heyman]. Yad Vashem.
Hoskins, A.
(Ed.) (2017a) Digital memory studies: Media pasts in transition. Routledge.
(2017b) The restless past: An introduction to digital memory and media. In Digital memory studies: Media pasts in transition (pp. 1–24). Routledge.
Jacobsen, B. N., & Beer, D.
(2021) Quantified nostalgia: Social media, metrics, and memory. Social Media+Society,
7
(2), 20563051211008822–20563051211008822.
Jones, R. H.
(2021) Multimodal discourse analysis. In The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp. 1–6). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Jones, R. H., Chik, A., & Hafner, C. A.
(2015) Discourse and digital practices: Doing discourse analysis in the digital age. Taylor & Francis.
Kansteiner, W.
(2017) The Holocaust in the 21st century: Digital anxiety, transnational cosmopolitanism, and never again genocide without memory. In A. Hoskins (Ed.), Digital memory studies: Media pasts in transition (pp. 110–140). Routledge.
Kershner, I.
Kochavi, M., & Kochavi, M.
(2019) eva.stories. In Instantgram.
Kohn, A., & Weissbrod, R.
(2020) What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram? Éva’s Story as a case of indirect translation. Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance,
13
(3), 285–303.
Kook, R.
(2021) Agents of memory in the post-witness era: Memory in the Living Room and changing forms of Holocaust remembrance in Israel. Memory Studies,
14
(5), 971–986.
Lagerkvist, A.
(2017) The media end: Digital afterlife agencies and techno-existential closure. In A. Hoskins (Ed.), Digital memory studies: Media pasts in transition (pp. 48–84). Routledge.
Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C.
(2020) Instagram: Visual social media cultures. Polity.
Lehman-Wilzig, S. N.
(2021) Virtuality and humanity: Virtual practice and its evolution from pre-history to the 21st Century. Springer. [URL].
Lundgren, H., Poell, R. F., & Kroon, B.
(2019) “This is not a test”: How do human resource development professionals use personality tests as tools of their professional practice? Human Resource Development Quarterly,
30
(2), 175–196.
Manca, S.
(2021) Bridging cultural studies and learning science: An investigation of social media use for Holocaust memory and education in the digital age. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies,
43
(3), 226–253.
Manca, S., Passarelli, M., & Rehm, M.
(2022) Exploring tensions in Holocaust museums’ modes of commemoration and interaction on social media. Technology in Society,
68
1, 101889–101889.
Nora, P.
(1989) Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. representations,
26
1, 7–24.
Noy, C.
(2016) Participatory media new and old: Semiotics and affordances of museum media. Critical Studies in Media Communication,
33
(4), 308–323.
O’Connor, P.
(2022) The unanchored past: Three modes of collective memory. Memory Studies,
15
(4), 634–649.
Riessman, C. K.
(2008) Narrative methods for the human sciences. Sage.
Ro, J. U.
(2021) Memory and history: An introduction. In Collective memory and collective identity: Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history in their context (Vol. 5341, pp. 1–20). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Rossington, M.
(2022) Collective memory. In Theories of memory (pp. 133–156). Edinburgh University Press.
Rozgonjuk, D., Sindermann, C., Elhai, J. D., & Montag, C.
(2021) Comparing smartphone, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat: Which platform elicits the greatest use disorder symptoms? Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,
24
(2), 129–134.
Schiff, B.
Schoofs, K., & Mieroop, D. V. D.
(2019) Adjusting to new “truths”: The relation between the spatio-temporal context and identity work in repeated WWII-testimonies. Narrative Inquiry,
29
(2), 268–292.
Shandler, J.
(2017) Holocaust memory in the digital age: Survivors’ stories and new media practices. Stanford University Press.
Stone, C. B., Guan, L., Labarbera, G., Ceren, M., Garcia, B., Huie, K., Stump, C., & Wang, Q.
(2022) Why do people share memories online? An examination of the motives and characteristics of social media users. Memory,
30
(4).
Thelander, Å., & Cassinger, C.
(2017) Brand new images? Implications of Instagram photography for place branding. Media and Communication,
5
(4), 6–14.
Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T.
(2013) Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication,
1
(1), 2–14.
Vassakis, K., Petrakis, E., Kopanakis, I., Makridis, J., & Mastorakis, G.
(2019) Location-based social network data for tourism destinations. In S. Marianna (Ed.), Big data and innovation in tourism, travel, and hospitality (pp. 105–114). Springer.
Yadlin, A.
(2022) Negotiating the past online: Holocaust commemoration between Iran and Israel. Information & Culture,
57
(1), 46–62.
Zalewska, M.
(2017) Selfies from Auschwitz: Rethinking the relationship between spaces of memory and places of commemoration in the digital age. Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media,
18
1, 95–116.