Historical Social Media and Remembrancing

• In Event: Digital Media Practices and Consequences

Abstract

This paper explores the practice of remembrancing, which is the purposeful creation and sharing of media traces in service of mediated memory work. By drawing on several examples of social media both contemporary and historical, this paper aims to situate remembrancing into a longer historical media practice. More specifically the paper draws on travel journals, infant memorial photos, and remembrance tweets on this day in history, to explore the ways that people use media to document both joyous and tragic events, in anticipation of wanting to revisit and share these media traces.

Author

• Lee Humphreys, Cornell U