“WE ARE ALL AYOTZINAPA”: THE ROLE OF DIGITAL MEDIA IN THE FORMATION OF TRANSNATIONAL MEMORIES ON DISAPPEARANCES

Since the 1980s memory studies have investigated how societies remember and forget. We know a lot about how nations remember, and also about the role of traditional media in the way certain events are recorded and disseminated. However, globalization radically changed this stage: digital media have substantially affected the relationship between media and memory, promoting the transnationalization of phenomena traditionally considered to be situated within the framework of the nation-state. How do digital media affect the cultural concept of memory? What are the features that make this memory different from mediated memory in the analog age? To what extent has the concept of nacional national memory ’changed on the global stage? To answer these questions, the “Digital Memories” project, financed by a “Starting Grant” from the European Research Council, investigates the construction of a memory that is still in progress: the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, in September 2014. Combining perspectives from memory studies, cultural studies, communication science, law, history, and sociology, “Digital Memories” aims to provide a theoretical model for analyzing traumatic events that take on a global dimension in digital ecology.

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