#Hashtag Memory: Public Engagement with Genocide Commemoration Events during Covid-19 Lockdowns

Abstract

2020 was a significant year for genocide commemoration: it marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the last Nazi concentration camps and the end of the WWII, and the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. Mass commemorative events were planned at sites of historical importance and large community spaces. However, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic signified an important milestone in the digital transformation of genocide commemoration. The limitations for public gatherings together with increased risks for their participants (in particular, the older ones, such as Holocaust survivors) prompted the need for even more profound digitization of commemorative practices. In many cases, this process involved more innovative uses of platform affordances to translate traditional commemorative acts into hashtag streams and video transmissions.

Whilst recent academic work has looked at Holocaust-related commemorative activities by institutions during COVID (e.g., live tours; Ebbrecht- Hartmann 2021), and the development of typology of the social media strategies used by memory organisations (Manca, 2021), there is lack of research exploring the translation of in-person commemorative ceremonies into online-only (or mostly online) ‘events’. This translation process raises new possibilities in examining public engagement with these events through hashtags, and questions the very definition of ‘commemoration event’ as its temporal and spatial boundaries extend across digital spheres.

In this paper, we present initial findings from the comparative analysis of data from institutions organising commemorative events for the liberation of Neuengamme, Germany; the massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia; and the liberation of Beau Bassin, Mauritius, which we enrich with collections of Twitter posts using the hashtags these institutions used to promote their events. The project aims to explore the extent to which social media campaigns associated with major genocide-related commemoration events are successful in encouraging publics to engage with institutionally-led memory narratives