Hybrid memory.

How does the technological and digital developments affect contemporary memory culture and how we (re)connect with the past?

It has been argued that the technological and digital development has brought with it a connective turn and an ontological shift in contemporary memory culture. Memories and memory practices have greyed, as memories have become abundant, automatized and algorithmically curated. Central to the (re)shaping of contemporary memory culture is social media. Many social media platforms have identified memories as successful for producing lasting ties between the users and the platform. Recognising social media platforms as socio-technological actors further strengthens the idea that memory practices are (ontologically) not the same after the connective turn and the growing use of social media. However, how do people engaged in memory practices (epistemologically) understand and deal with this ontological shift? Focusing on memory practices in Facebook groups, this presentation investigates the experiences and practices of people who actively turn to Facebook to produce, share, and discuss memories about the past with others. More specifically, I ask how members of “retrospective” Facebook groups experience and deal with the ways in which Facebook’s interface and algorithms enable, shape, and interfere with their memory practices. One main point of the presentation is that we need to view and investigate these contemporary memory practices as hybrid phenomena.

Robin Ekelund is an historian and a senior lecturer at Malmö University. He is also editor of Swedish history journal Historisk tidskrift.

He has been researching digital and hybrid memory practices since 2019 and published his work in for example Memory Studies, Memory Mind Media, and Culture Unbound.

Currently, he is working on an edited volume on the topic of hybrid memory.