It happened before and it will happen again: Online user comments as a noncommemorative site of holocaust remembrance

Aya Yadlin-Segal

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

By addressing the vernacular versus official memory dyad in collective memory studies, this article explores user comments on four Israeli news websites that covered the Iranian film A Separation’s (Asghar Farhadi, 2011) Academy Award win for best foreign language film in 2012. Against the backdrop of Israeli-Iranian relations, this study focuses on the use of the Holocaust as an interpretive framework and new media users’ construction of collective memory. Through qualitative analysis of user comments, I show how the memory of the Holocaust supports a circular narrative of Jewish history, intertwining past, present, and future events into a single metanarrative of persecution. The study also emphasizes how remembrance goes beyond intentionally commemorative practices, and questions the place of online platforms in enabling and constraining alternative and critical political discourses.

Original languageEnglish
Article number12
Pages (from-to)24-47
Number of pages24
JournalJewish Film and New Media
Volume5
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Wayne State University Press.

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