Image: Michael Fousert
Research project With the number of living Holocaust survivors shrinking and surveys showing that memory of the Holocaust is receding in European and Anglophone countries, especially among the youth, the rallying cry to ‘Never Forget’ that has previously characterised Holocaust remembrance is increasingly at risk. Meanwhile, social media platforms now provide those Holocaust memorials and museums, with additional ways to commemorate it - especially during its anniversaries.
This project analyzes the contemporary commemoration and contestation of the Holocaust on social media during its anniversaries. It also studies the role that social media platforms play in these matters in terms of their technical design and underlying algorithms. It will generate new knowledge, of relevance to a range of societal stakeholders, at a time when memory of the Holocaust is not only being eroded by the passing of its living survivors but also faces the heightened risks associated with a contemporary political landscape characterised by increasing polarisation, especially online.
The aim of this project is to analyse the contemporary commemoration and contestation of the Holocaust and its victims on social media during its major anniversaries and memorial days. The project assembles an international and interdisciplinary team with expertise in online commemoration and hate speech, and digital Holocaust memory and antisemitism, and with backgrounds in digital sociology, memory studies, media studies and communication studies. Focusing on Swedish, English, and German linguistic settings, the team will analyse the social media use and content of institutional and grassroots commemorative actors as well as antisemitic actors on mainstream and alternative social media platforms. To do this comprehensively the team will compile data via the collection of social media content, semi- structured interviews, and digital ethnography. To generate new knowledge with relevance also to societal stakeholders, team members will then analyse combinations of this data using concepts from their respective disciplines (including networked commemoration, digital dis/misinformation, and algorithmic agency) and by applying a range of analysis techniques (including large scale text- and image-analysis, social network analysis, and discourse analysis).
This project will analyse how institutional and grassroots actors interact on social media as they commemorate the Holocaust during its major anniversaries and memorial days while also considering how their efforts to do so are contested by antisemitic actors. Furthermore, it will assess the technological role of social media platforms within these matters in terms of their technical design and underpinning algorithms. To these ends the project is guided by the following research questions (RQs).
The project is timely not only because memory of the Holocaust is currently being eroded but also because the risks to such memory are arguably heightened in a contemporary political landscape characterised by increasingly visible polarisation, especially online. Against the background of a general political shift to the right (indicated by the sustained or improved performance of far-right parties across Europe), it is critical to better understand how institutional and grassroots actors can interact via social media in order to buttress the memory of the Holocaust through commemoration, and furthermore to comprehend how antisemitic actors contest such efforts, so that this contestation can be better countered in the future. This project will address these needs by advancing and bringing into dialogue the existing research dedicated to the study of digital Holocaust memory and digital antisemitism.
