Fascination, nostalgia, and knowledge desire in digital memory culture: Emotions and mood work in retrospective Facebook groups

Abstract

This article explores how emotions are practised within retrospective Facebook groups and how these practices are shaped by the logics of the interface. Theoretical inspiration is drawn from Ahmed’s discussions on emotions and mood work and the study is based on netnographic fieldwork involving six retrospective Facebook groups. Overall, a positive emotional relationship with the past is practised and the analysis illustrates that three interrelated mood works are found in the groups; fascination, nostalgia and knowledge desire. The analysis of these indicate that Facebook’s interface directs the members towards fragmented interactions which produces a memory culture that is more focused on brief and general, rather than elaborate and specific, accounts of the past. I conclude by discussing how the emotional practices within the retrospective Facebook groups creates a double-edged sword; at the same time as they offer a sense of positive emotional belonging for likeminded members, they also risk producing simplified notions of the past that feeds into retrotopian tendencies of the present.