| Description |
The rise of digital media technologies has changed how we remember the past. This study examines the memorial functions of Web 2.0 and digital memories. I suggest that memory practices that use Web 2.0 technologies are not just extensions of older forms of human memory practice based on a dichotomy between technological and human memory practices in which one is seen as determining or changing the other; memory practice with/in materiality, specifically Web 2.0 memory practice, is a collective where heterogeneous realities are mingled in the same domain, and the intersection entails new meanings, capacities, and potentials of memories. Borrowing methodological insights from actor-network theory (ANT), I examine the human actors (users and administrator), Web 2.0 technologies (interface and database/server), and political factors (terms and policy) on the same ontological level to show how the mixture of social factors and technological elements becomes memories and/or memorial website. To illustrate this human-technical network of social media memory practice, I examine the online memorial site for the Korean ferry Sewol, Citizen Network Remembering The Sewol (www.sa416.org), an extensive online public documentation that commemorates the tragedy of the Korean ferry Sewol sinking. Through this study, I reveal the ways in which the various actors, including humans and nonhuman, function, and I show how each node of network intersects in the practices of memory production and the politics. |
