Moonwalking together: Tracing Redditors’ digital memory work on Michael Jackson

Abstract

This article investigates the memory work concerning Michael Jackson on Reddit. By means of their posts, comments, and replies, people contributing to this site – Redditors – enter into a process we call mnemonic stabilization. This is a collaborative process in which networked individuals share their memories about, in this case, Michael Jackson. We argue that this process resembles Jackson’s dance technique called moonwalking: Redditors seem to go back in time, but they continually alter how Jackson is remembered and forgotten, depending on the (personal) context of the present and an imagined future. These theoretical observations are assessed empirically by a content analysis of comments and replies ( N = 917) posted on the subreddit /r/MichaelJackson between June 25, 2009, and December 31, 2018. This revealed that most posts with a mnemonic dimension focus on personal memories of Michael Jackson’s music, performances, and (perceived) positive characteristics, rather than on how he should be remembered. These findings can be partially explained by Reddit’s socio-technical infrastructure.

Family and Social Acceptance of Transgender Women in the Midst of Stigmatization in Indonesia

“…Even though he turned into a man with feminine look, Michael Jackson is still praised by the people because of his songs and choreography. Jackson was able to demonstrate high skills in singing and dancing [36]. Dreaming of following Jackson"s success career in singing and danacing, many artists are trying to build their careers and fame by imitating Michael Jackson"s choreography [37].…”

Deep Nostalgia: Remediated memory, algorithmic nostalgia and technological ambivalence

“…As becomes apparent here, the socio-technical infrastructures of social networks are profoundly implicated in digital memory work. Calling attention to this as 'work', as we have done in this section (following Smit, 2020), highlights the continually emergent nature of digital memory, not only for individuals or groups, but also in relation to technologies and objects (Esteve Del Valle and Smit, 2021). Prey and Smit observe this adroitly when they recognise that although Facebook is a platform through which 'we compose ourselves', it is, at the same time 'composing us', in large part through its 'proprietary algorithms' (2018: 218).…”

Synthetic Heritage: Online platforms, deceptive genealogy and the ethics of algorithmically generated memory

“…In the case of Deep Nostalgia especially, the frenetic social media sharing which occurred around its launch demonstrated that shift extraordinarily well, with what might have started as ‘intimate’ remembering (Hjorth and Hinton 2019: 172) transferring quite comprehensively – and in the case of DeepStory also quite audibly – into the public domain. This is significant because it requires that memories and remembering are shaped to fit the socio-technical parameters of social platforms (Esteve del Valle and Smit 2021), and it demonstrates how – through what might be termed ‘posthumous performances’ – the dead continue to be made productive, ‘generat[ing] capital’ for these companies ‘in collaboration with the living’ (Stanyek and Piekut 2010: 14).…”

“…Our analysis in this article draws on studies of digital memory which emphasise the manifold ways mediated memories now have a generative function in our everyday lives; 'creating and re-creating a sense of past, present, and future of ourselves in relation to others ' (van Dijck 2007: 21). 1 Mediated memories, according to Worcman and Garde-Hansen (2016) 'stretch' the very idea of the past, such that it becomes 'continually emergent', not least within the socio-technical parameters of platforms (Esteve Del Valle andSmit 2021: 1816). Of particular relevance for this discussion are works studying interconnections between algorithms, automation and memory (Kidd and Nieto McAvoy 2023;Cheney-Lippold 2017;Lambert et al 2018;Sisto 2020Sisto , 2021 as well asgiven encouragements to share synthetic media creations via social mediaon the impacts of memory metricization or quantification within those contexts (Jacobsen and Beer 2021a).…”