Bridging Collective Memories and Public Agendas: Toward a Theory of Mediated Prospective Memory

Abstract

While memory can be both retrospective and prospective, referring to either what happened or what needs to be done, scholarship on media and collective memory has focused on retrospective memories. Shifting the focus to the news media as agents of prospective memory, this article develops the notion of mediated prospective memory. This new construct, which encompasses the various media practices by which collective prospective‐memory tasks are shaped and negotiated, is intended to shed light on one facet of the complex relationships between past, present, and future in news discourse; create a much needed bridge between the theoretical frameworks of agenda setting and collective memory; and provide one possible answer to the question of what is unique about journalism's memory work.

Understanding Journalism Through a Nuanced Deconstruction of Temporal Layers in News Narratives

“…Neiger (2007) suggested dividing the news discourse regarding the future into four levels of speculation: predictable future, informed assessment, speculative assessment, and conjectured future. According to Tenenboim-Weinblatt (2013), the news media may serve as agents of prospective memory, insofar as they set the social "to-do list" by linking interpretations of the past to future-oriented tasks. Other studies of future-oriented news have pointed to its narratological qualities, including strategies of precontextualization (Oddo, 2013), discursive manipulations of temporalities in reports of future events (Jaworski, Fitzgerald, & Morris, 2003), and the creation of future-oriented suspense (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2008).…”

Afterword: Memory worlds in times of Corona

“…The Poles called it the Bolshevik disease, the Persians blamed the British' (Spinney, 2018: 64) 38. On agenda setting and 'mediated prospective memory', see Tenenboim-Weinblatt (2013). 39. https://www.zeit.de/2020/18/corona-krise-studierende-professoren-narrative?page=2#comments (accessed 20 May 2020).…”

Theorizing Media Memory: Six Elements Defining the Role of the Media in Shaping Collective Memory in the Digital Age

“…In contrast, the journalistic coverage of the 1996 Democratic convention positioned it as a final scene in the plot, as a successful reconciliation with a problematic past. Another interesting connection between temporal layers and political agendas is the concept of "mediated prospective memory" (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013 Indeed, we must bear in mind that a dominant player usually has privileged powers to shape memory and use it for political goals. Taking into account that both media genres and products are constructed as well as the collective memory, one of the questions is who this construction serves and who has the power to construct collective memory.…”