International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2016

This article discusses how the interplay between the canon, the archive and performance informs the use of digital heritage resources in the construction, interpretation, representation, circulation and preservation of cultural and/or collective memory with a view to animating community and regional identities. To this end, the article draws on a range of relevant theoretical models and ethnographic fieldwork to interrogate how the aforementioned interplay enables and encourages different approaches to meaning and memory-making through the lens of two British case study heritage projects in Stoke-on-Trent (West Midlands of England) and the Isle of Bute (West Coast of Scotland). The overarching argument is that local, alternative, bottom-up approaches to telling (hi)stories and re-enacting the past not only effectively take on a socio-political dimension directed at challenging dominant, hegemonic, institutional narratives and versions of the past, but – in doing so – they also offer new and refreshingly different ways of understanding, representing, remembering and rediscovering the past meaningfully in ways that local communities and regions can relate with.

The model of fluid transition of memory from the individual to the collective level and vice versa as proposed by Jan and Aleida Assmann can be considered a great progress in social theory. However, the ways in which both memory dimensions reciprocally influence each other have not been theorized sufficiently yet. In this article we propose a theoretical process through which collective memory at the macro level influences the individual’s memory and through which memory at the individual micro level may become a part of the collective memories. This process can be considered as an exchange taking place at the meso level and can be exemplified by the public discourse within the Web 2.0. It is assumed that the Web 2.0 provides a forum that aggregates individuals’ perceptions and interpretations of the past on the one hand (bottom‑up) and disseminates the meaning of a society’s dominant commemoration figures on the other hand (top‑down). Here, Wikipedia with its articles about history together with its discussion function is seen as a crucial example of collective memory presented by the Web 2.0. Therefore, within this paper, Wikipedia is theoretically integrated as an intermediary institution located at the meso level.

In general terms, this study is concerned with the use of political memory in the processes of creating, maintaining and transforming symbolic boundaries and the role political memory plays with regard to legitimization of state policies. The aim of the study is to show on both theoretical and empirical levels how the concept of political memory could be fruitfully combined with that of symbolic boundaries. To achieve this, the study draws on analysis of various types of material related to a historical event that in the Czech context bears special relevance – World War I and the establishment of the independent Czechoslovak state after its end. The focal point for analysis was presidential speeches from the period 1990 to 2013, but the analysis also included their media coverage to indicate contextual information. The study identifies basic oppositions present in political memory related to the war events and shows how these oppositions serve as basis for drawing symbolic boundaries, which eventually translate to particular state policies.

This article presents an empirical analysis and theoretical reflections on the negotiation of memories in hyperconnected memory cultures. In order to describe the conditions of memory negotiation, we suggest using the notion of ‘hyperconnected memories’, which refers to the mediatization of memory in a nexus of contingent forms of communication. By conducting a critical discourse analysis (CDA), we show how the Soviet past is negotiated in contemporary Russia and analyse how national identity is discursively constructed alongside official narratives and individual memories. We argue that an important element in this process is nostalgia, which motivates people to join mnemonic online communities but also functions as an intermediary between cultural memory and national identity by making history a personal, sentimental matter. However, we will also demonstrate that the negotiation of official history and individual memory in mnemonic online communities does not automatically lead to emancipation from state-propagated narratives.

During the second half of the eighteenth century there was a significant increase in the Greek Orthodox Christian population in the region of the western coast of Asia Minor, which was accompanied by the establishment of new settlements and the growth of existing ones, as Ayvalık. In the following article we will study both the formation of this city’s ‘tradition of origin’ and its various transformations in the course of time. Ayvalık’s cultural memory was neither fixed nor unified since members of subsequent generations, as well as members of different sociocultural groups, often tended to fill the emerging ‘floating gaps’ according to their, sometimes, competing political agendas. In doing so, they formed nostalgic narratives by making use of certain elements of local and national history, myths and legends, folk tradition, religion and culture in order to mobilize groups and form identities.

Historians and cultural theorists have recognized the power of cinema to provide narratives that give shape and coherence to the past. The trope of the child witness has had a particular provenance in European cinema that has chronicled war and trauma. This article tracks the ways in which the device has been employed and re-employed since World War II, chronicling the social and psychological legacies of war violence: in Europe and in Italy after World War II; in Spain during the early years of the Franco dictatorship; and in Spanish cinema after three decades of democracy.

The image of the Australian beach as a place of beautiful waves and sand is popular on postcards and seen frequently in tourism campaigns around the world. And yet, the beach is a surprisingly complex spatial location. Despite its beauty, the beach can have a disturbing underbelly of crime and danger. The ongoing tension between its role as a cultural icon of myth as well as an ordinary, lived location makes it a layered landscape. This article uses the framework of Ross Gibson’s ‘badland’ as a way of interrogating cultural memory in a lived, familiar space. By examining a combination of popular and literary texts such as fiction by Robert Drewe and the reality television show Bondi Rescue (2006–), as well as real life events, this article examines how the Australian beach can be a site of complex memory, and how this memory bleeds through and problematizes contemporary understandings and representations of the space.

Research on memes has been growing within cultural memory studies. To date, this research has largely focused on the ways in which memes transmit representations of shared pasts. This article, instead, examines how memes are used to construct cultural memory. It makes two arguments: first, that cultural memory can be engineered through memes and can take the form of texts, artefacts or practices. Second, large sets of such memes – ‘memeplexes’ – can help societies not only engage in acts of remembrance, but also help guide their future behaviours and attitudes. However, these processes are problematic, and the article discusses these tensions. The Nobel Peace Prize serves as the article’s case study, with an analysis of the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony illustrating its arguments.