Never forget? Memory maintenance on an aging platform
Article / Journal
Author(s) / editor(s):
Frances Corry
Year: 2022
Abstract:
This article addresses the intersection between platforms, their sociotechnical process of aging and memory practice, by focusing on local social platform OakdaleTalk and its use in reflecting on September 11, 2001. Founded in 1997, OakdaleTalk serves the town of Oakdale in New Jersey, a place significantly affected by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Situated in literature on digital memory work, this analysis draws on interviews with 15 OakdaleTalk members who have used the platform to reflect on September 11th. Asking how users maintain particular meanings of this date while negotiating sociotechnical changes to the site over time – including the loss of posts from 2001 – it discusses how users perpetuate hyperlocal interpretation and describes how community members grapple with lost content. The article concludes by proposing a ‘preservation paradox’, an emerging memory practice under platformized media conditions describing a contradiction in user preservation attitudes and behaviors toward posts of memory-related significance.
https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221129224
Post created by: interculture.de e.V.