Chinese collective memory on the Internet: Remembering the Great Famine in online encyclopaedias

Abstract

Recent research on how the Great Chinese Famine was debated on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, in 2012 suggests that information and communication technologies can challenge official versions of the past and increase pluralism in collective memory narratives in authoritarian states. This article suggests that analysing change in the treatment of the famine in Chinese online encyclopaedias during and following the debate helps us further explore the debate's impact. Moreover, it allows us to determine the extent to which Chinese online encyclopaedias function as the type of memory place that previous research on Wikipedia in other contexts might lead us to expect. The article concludes that the changes made to the narratives about the Great Famine in Chinese online encyclopaedias following the debate were rather limited and that the Chinese online encyclopaedias have not yet developed into participatory and pluralistic memory places that challenge official narratives.

Online Gruplarda İletişimsel Bellek: Aracılı ve Müşterek Bilgi

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Cyberplace: From fantasies of placelessness to connective emplacement

“…Recognising these continuities raises important questions about both pessimistic and optimistic visions of digital memory. The presentation of Wikipedia as a deterritorialised ‘global memory place’ is challenged by studies demonstrating the persistence of pre-digital inequities and asymmetries, notably that the Global South and particularly Africa are severely underrepresented on Wikipedia both in terms of articles and contributors (Graham, 2014: 13–16); that women as subjects of and as contributors to Wikipedia articles are likewise hugely underrepresented (Ridge, 2013); that national censorship laws often restrict the accessing and editing of Wikipedia content (Gustafsson, 2019); and that there is very little overlap between different language editions of the encyclopaedia in terms of what are the hotly debated topics (Yasseri et al, 2014), undermining the notion of Wikipedia as a shared and global memory place. YouTube’s status as a democratising forum for the exchange of diverse ideas is likewise called into question by the prevalence of antagonism, incivility, one-upmanship and hypermasculinised nationalistic discourse, and by the relative absence of significant introspection, flexibility and sustained dialogue (Benzaquen, 2014; Drinot, 2011; Goode et al, 2011).…”

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