Born digital: The Black lives matter movement and memory after the digital turn

Liebermann, Yvonne

doi:10.1177/1750698020959799

Cited by 27 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…This can prompt a re-examination of their meaning, or indeed allow new meanings to be negotiated. In social networks, it can also precipitate differing or conflicting pasts being brought into ‘dialogic relation to each other’ (Bond and Rapson, 2014:19) in what can be powerful mnemonic networks (Liebermann 2021).…”

Section: Remembering the Dead In An Algorithmic Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep Nostalgia: Remediated memory, algorithmic nostalgia and technological ambivalence

Kidd

McAvoy

2023

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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Digital recreations of the past, and of the deceased, are part of the Internet’s present. They circulate within social networks where logics of connection and connectivity underpin increasingly performative memory work. In this article we explore these developments through a case study of the MyHeritage deep learning feature, Deep Nostalgia. Our analysis is informed by a close critical study of Deep Nostalgia creations, and discourses circulating around them, shared on Twitter during the two-week period following its launch, February 2021 (n.6935). We examine how memory is evoked, framed, re-worked and distorted through algorithmic processes, and within social networks in particular, and explore what this tells us about peoples' need to connect with their pasts. First, we analyse how the shift from photo to video ‘revives’ the dead via a process that we have termed ‘remediated memory’. Second, we explore the affective dimensions and resonances of Deep Nostalgia creations. In doing so, we introduce the concept of ‘algorithmic nostalgia’ to describe the ways nostalgia is generated, organised and exploited through Deep Nostalgia’s automated and recursive algorithmic mechanisms. Third, we interrogate the ways social media logics shape the use and influence of these outputs. Our study’s scholarly contribution is at the intersection of memory, automation, and algorithms. We highlight the importance of studying the ambivalence of emerging media at their nexus with memory studies and, critically, of attending to the ways corporate interests increasingly shape – and assimilate – these activities.

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Section: Remembering the Dead In An Algorithmic Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep Nostalgia: Remediated memory, algorithmic nostalgia and technological ambivalence

Kidd

McAvoy

2023

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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“…As they contribute to the canon (Assmann A, 2008), they expand the archive by incorporating the communicative memory of marginalized communities into it. Research on the Black Lives Matter movement (Liebermann, 2021; Smit et al, 2018) demonstrates how social media offer marginalized groups an alternative to institutionalized archives, creating new possibilities for preserving the communicative memory of marginalized communities (J. Assmann). Yet news archives remain an important repository of collective memory, for social media do not have a tradition of preserving content and news archives stretch back further in time.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generating more inclusive media memory: the limits and possibilities of news archives

Edy

Austin

2022

Media, Culture & Society

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Ideally, mediated collective memory of a society’s past should be both inclusive and communal. Documentaries commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots reveal that a film which relies primarily on mainstream journalism’s news archives tends to privilege the perspectives of social authorities. In contrast, films produced by those from marginalized communities create more inclusive mediated collective memory by altering the rationale for incorporating speakers and stories: from status, having social authority at a moment in history, to witness, the personal experience of history. These films use news archives to authenticate the presence of witnesses to events, authorizing them to speak yet fundamentally altering the story preserved in the journalistic archive because witnesses both talk about their experience and characterize the meaning of the event. Transforming narrative convention from having status to bearing witness allows perspectives to compete more equally, destabilizing social inequities that contribute to marginalization and building a more inclusive, communal collective remembrance via media.

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“…Communities or groups hitherto marginalized from the official discourse and doomed to failure in the mnemonic wars can now find their own place in electronic media. An important element – as Yvonne Liebermann points out in the context of the role of electronic media in the development and activity of the BLM movement – is that activists and interested persons in the digital network create a ‘peer-to-peer’ memory practice (Liebermann, 2021). This is used to break the state’s monopoly on knowledge/power in terms of both its control over citizens and the creation of archives.…”

Section: Czechia: the Roma Minority And The Black Lives Matter Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is used to break the state’s monopoly on knowledge/power in terms of both its control over citizens and the creation of archives. Liebermann explicitly states that social media can create alternatives to institutionalized state-controlled archives, escaping the forms of violence structurally embedded in them (Liebermann, 2021). This is particularly important in the context of both the re-creation of Roma memory and the creation of archives of current political events.…”

Section: Czechia: the Roma Minority And The Black Lives Matter Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mnemonic wars and parallel polis: The anti-politics of memory in Central and Southeast Europe: Kosovar women and Black/Roma Lives Matter

et al. 2022

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The essay argues that anti-politics, a category borrowed from the anti-communist movement in the Eastern Bloc, can inspire memory studies. We focus on one of the chosen categories – the parallel polis (with some forays into the matter of the nonviolence movement). We discuss this universal category through the particular lens of Central and Southeast Europe with two examples: (1) women’s memories of war and violence in Kosovo with a specific focus on the Heroinat monument in Pristina and (2) the Black Lives Matter movement in Czechia that can be used to highlight the racially and ethnically motivated activities of the police, as well as oblivion of the Holocaust of the Roma community in mainstream discourse. It all leads to the identification of parallel orders of memory produced by marginalized groups, as well as the development of anti-politics of memory in opposition to the official, state-driven politics of memory.

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Born digital: The Black lives matter movement and memory after the digital turn

Cited by 27 publications

References 44 publications

Deep Nostalgia: Remediated memory, algorithmic nostalgia and technological ambivalence

Deep Nostalgia: Remediated memory, algorithmic nostalgia and technological ambivalence

Generating more inclusive media memory: the limits and possibilities of news archives

Mnemonic wars and parallel polis: The anti-politics of memory in Central and Southeast Europe: Kosovar women and Black/Roma Lives Matter

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