Reconstructing memory narratives on Facebook with Digital Methods

Abstract

Social platforms are playing an increasingly more important role in different aspects of our daily lives, which can range from the most mundane to such crucial processes as the transmission of meanings and values in our society. Much of the interest lies in the fact that storytelling on social networks is a collective process in which users participate by creating, sharing and commenting on content. All these actions generate digital traces that are easily accessible, in a non-intrusive and automated manner, which represents an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the mediation of social and cultural phenomena. Digital Methods is an epistemological proposal that, aligned with Studies in Science, Technology and Society (STS), assumes the existence of a technological mediation of social and cultural practices and uses computational techniques, not only to extract the digital traces left by the users of these social networks, but also to analyze and display their content. This article takes as a case study the representation of the Spanish Civil War on Facebook to exemplify the affordances of such a methodological approach to investigate the processes of generation, diffusion and representation of historical knowledge.