Contested Past: Social Media, Social Memory, and the Production of Historical Knowledge in Contemporary China

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Political Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This study explores the influence of social media on the (re)formation of social memory and the production of historical knowledge in society. It takes one of the most widely used forms of social media, known as weibo, as a case to investigate how social media enable people to articulate their previously unspoken experiences and memories in contemporary China. By dissecting several contested debates on weibo over historical events and figures in the Mao era, this study argues that social media embraces a wide variety of diverse individuals as subjects who contribute to various mnemonic practices, facilitates the crowdsourcing and aggregation of alternative narratives of the past as counter-hegemonic discourse, and cultivates the production of historical knowledge as an easily retrievable and re-activatable process. It concludes that the integration of fragmented, individual memories into historical knowledge and the facilitation of diversified mnemonic practices on weibo re-construct the maintenance and production of historical knowledge while questioning the authenticity and accuracy of official history in the long run in society.

Author

• Jun Liu, U of Copenhagen