Holocaust Memory in the Digital Mediascape

Holocaust Memory in the Digital Mediascape is essential reading for anyone interested in the role that new media play in our understanding of the past and its construction in the present. The book marshals an impressive range of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, combining quantitative and qualitative analysis of a variety of media, including Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. It demonstrates convincingly how techniques used by media and communication scholars can be made useful for historians wanting to understand the importance of new media connectivity in the writing of the past. The authors skilfully weave a path between pessimism and optimism. They recognize the threat posed by a “post-truth” media ecology and its enabling of right populist extremism on the one hand, and the potential of social media to foster communities of opposition and democratic participation in the creation of historical knowledge on the other. Activism, mediatization, and archives are key terms across the volume, highlighting both the newness of these forms, but also how they are connected to older and institutionalized ways of memory-making. It is a particular strength of the volume that the authors consider both the mediation of content and its reception by and impact on audiences, who are also situated and act in the world “offline”. * Sara Jones, Professor of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Birmingham, UK * Holocaust Memory in the Digital Mediascape combines a deep understanding of the multiple layers and historical evolution of Holocaust memory with an impressive grasp of how different technological platforms shape the way in which different actors and communities remember. Finely attuned to the challenges and dangers of addressing the legacies of mass violence online, the authors also point to the important opportunities for a new and productive engagement with public history that social media can provide. This volume is, moreover, an invaluable methodological guide for historians and others working with Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, and more. With Holocaust memory now a fast moving and ever-changing target for scholars, Evans, Lundrigan and Fagen bring not only a fantastic breadth of knowledge and theoretical insight, but also sensitivity and nuance to a topic that lies at the heart of our most pressing discussions about democracy and its discontents, popular culture, and the role of memory in all of it. A massive achievement! * Jenny Wüstenberg, Professor of History & Memory Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK *