Abstract
On Media Memory: Collective Memory in the New Media Age is a collection of essays that explores the relationship between memory and media studies. The book demonstrates various ways to think through this relationship and asserts that ‘collective memory is an inherently mediated phenomenon’ (p. 3). The book contains 20 short essays (up to 10 pages each) that create a snappy tableau of scholars exploring the links between these fields. The short length of the essays can at times be a drawback because arguments can feel underdeveloped. However, it does mean the collection is fast paced and this format effectively communicates the wide range of work exploring the multiple intersections between media and memory studies.
The title of the book too is a little misleading, as it suggests the main focus of the collection will examine the relationship between collective memory and new media. The essays, however, engage with diverse media formations including television, radio, museums, archives, journalistic practice and newspapers, as well as exploring the particular ways new media technologies provide epistemological and ontological challenges to the lived experience of media/memory across a range of historical and geo-political locations. Because of this the collection presents the interface of media and memory in multiple ways that really demonstrate the rich diversity of scholars working within this area. Analyses use a variety of methodologies using both qualitative and quantitative approaches and arguments are built around compelling case studies so that media/memory interface is grounded in empirical evidence.
The collection is organized into five areas of enquiry. The first section, ‘Media Memory: Theory and Methodologies’, presents four different approaches. Barbie Zelizer’s essay demonstrates how memories are ‘cannibalized’ by the western media in the global flow of news. Such a process foregrounds western interpretations of events that ‘unfold beyond their range of understanding’ (p. 34) and serve to minimalize, substitute, displace and transport local memories so that they become intelligible narratives within a global media landscape. Jill A. Edy’s essay presents a hopeful, if not entirely convincing argument for the democratic potential of collective memory. Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi’s essay views the mobilization of shared memories in a less positive light to Edy, as the concept of ‘banal commemoration’ is introduced to talk about everyday ways in which cultural memories are constructed by the media. ‘Banal commemoration’ should be understood in contrast to formal and often large-scale ceremonies, as it operates in ‘informal, subtle, and non-intrusive’ (p. 56) ways, evoking figures or events that weave into the fabric of everyday social relations.
The next section of the book explores dimensions of ‘Media Memory, Ethics, and Witnessing’. The three essays in this section engage with how media and oppositional forms of memory can be mobilized as a form of activism. Tamar Katriel and Nimrod Shavit examine the testimonial project ‘Breaking the Silence’, a website and exhibition that documents the ‘verbal and visual testimonies of the day-to-day reality of the Israeli occupation regime as seen from the standpoint of the soldiers assigned to uphold it’ (p. 78). The essay highlights how documenting these memories is done to contribute to a different political future in Israel/Palestine, as the possibility of the ‘erasure of uncomfortable memories from the Israeli public arena’ (p. 84) is lessened by these acts of witnessing.
S. Elizabeth Bird’s essay examines the crucial role the media plays in creating cultural memories, using her work with the Asaba Memorial Project as a case study. The essay demonstrates how the memory of the many people who were brutally murdered in the town of Asaba during the Nigerian Civil War was virtually ignored by global news reports at the time so that such ‘reportage defined the war’ (p. 91) for a long time. The essay explores how new forms of collective memory enabled by new media such as online internet forums help to bring these suppressed histories into public consciousness through passionate discussions that are sometimes subject to exaggeration (p. 98).
The next section of the book ‘Media Memory and Popular Culture’ examines how memory interacts with popular cultural formats such as television and radio. It contains interesting case studies of programmes such as Life on Mars (UK), Such a Life (Israel) and Curso del 63 (Class of 63, Spain), and a comparative study of regional radio shows in Israel. This essay demonstrates another way the interface of memory/media is currently being examined by scholars as they highlight the important role memory plays in shaping themes and representations within popular culture.
The fourth section of the book focuses on the role journalism and journalistic practice has on the construction of memory. Having a whole section dedicated to this area is appropriate because many of the previous essays in the collection comment on the important role journalistic media has on the formation of diverse articulations of memory, both subversive and hegemonic. These essays focus on events such as Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the ways in which collective memory is used as a device within news reporting (a common argument in the collection as a whole) and how journalism can act as an agent of prospective memory. This theme also emerges in other essays, and suggests that memory can be mobilized toward the future, acting as a reminder of what needs to be done.
The final section of the book examines the emergent field of New Media Memory, and offers different conceptual frameworks to approach this area. Anna Reading’s ‘globital memory field’ is a concept that describes the relationship between memory and communication that accounts for the ‘synergetic combination of the social and political dynamic of globalization with digitization’ (p. 242). Andrew Hoskins’s essay suggests that one way to think through memory/media is through ‘connectivity and the potentiality of connectivity through digital media and communications’ (p. 287). All the contributions to this essay demonstrate the changing nature of memory and media-scapes in the contemporary world and suggest this it has important implications for thinking about subjectivity, ontology, knowledge production and, of course, media and memory.
On Media Memory is an interesting collection that offers a number of ways to think through how media memories are constructed, connected, created, invoked, transmitted, eluded to, enacted and re-enacted in social, cultural, individual and collective ways. As the editors are academics based in Israel, there a large number of essays that focus on the interface of media/memory in Israeli culture. These provide insight into how media and memory were mobilized in the formation of Israel and continue to be mobilized in contemporary Israeli politics. Essays also reflect on how the various media and memory is being used to critique the ongoing military occupation of Palestine. For this reason, the collection may be particularly useful for researchers who are critically examining the mediation of Israeli nationalism and its contemporary political implications. This book is challenging, insightful and informative and will definitely be of interest to researchers from a range of disciplines exploring the relationship between media and memory.