Activist memory narration on social media: Armenian genocide on Instagram

Abstract

This article explores diasporic activist memory narration on social media. We analyze the multimodal content and comments on the Instagram account “Armenians in Lebanon” (AiL), Instagram’s affordances, and interview data with their social media manager to understand how memory is narrated, how specific audiences respond to it, and how Instagram as a platform shapes it. We found three temporally non-linear memory activist narratives—“Survival,” “Suffering,” and “Never Forget.” These narratives leverage Instagram’s affordances of visuality, scalability, and interactivity and combine social media branding practices with framing to recount the past so as to serve the diaspora Armenians’ present and future needs of genocide recognition and reparations. In the narrative, Armenians are positioned as both continually suffering because of, and thriving despite of Turkey, as well as committed to extending their quest for genocide recognition into the future.