Picturing Auschwitz. Multimodality and the attribution of historical significance on Instagram (Imaginando Auschwitz. La multimodalidad y la atribución de significado histórico en Instagram)

Abstract

As social media have become a prime means of communication among students, so too are they increasingly used to give meaning to the past. But while history education scholars tend to conceptualize historical meaning-making as acts of narrative emplotment, social media are multimodal by nature, and some platforms-like Instagram-prioritize images over written text. This article focuses on the question of how Instagram users attribute historical significance in posts that feature the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, by analysing the various ways in which they combine images and captions to give meaning to the past. Subsequently, the potential of multimodal social media representations for history education is explored. RESUMEN Dado que las redes sociales se han convertido en un medio principal de comunicación entre estudiantes, también se usan cada vez más para dar significado al pasado. Sin embargo, mientras que los expertos en la enseñanza de la historia suelen conceptualizar la construcción de significado histórico como actos de contextualización narrativa, las redes sociales son multimodales por naturaleza, y algunas plataformas-como Instagram-priorizan las imágenes sobre el texto escrito. Este artículo aborda cómo los usuarios de Instagram atribuyen significado histórico en sus publicaciones relacionadas con el campo de concentración y centro de exterminio de Auschwitz-Birkenau a través del análisis de las diversas formas en que combinan imágenes y pies de foto para dar significado al pasado. Después, exploramos el potencial de las representaciones multimodales de las redes sociales para la educación histórica.

An Ontology of Semiotic Activity and Epistemic Figuration of Heritage, Memory and Identity Practices on Social Network Sites

“…symbols are particularly important for culturalist approaches as a means of assigning meaning (Gibson & Jones, 2012) to places and events, but the notion is often used in an untheorized manner. Visual symbols discussed include gestures (Damcevic & Rodik, 2018), drawn images (El-Farahaty, 2019), photographs (Farquhar, 2013; Garduño Freeman, 2010; Ryzova, 2015), or material objects appearing as visual content (Adriaansen, 2020; Kozachenko, 2019). symbols also appear in verbal communication, for example, nationalist slogans chanted during football games (Sindbæk Andersen, 2016), or anthems (Bosch, 2020), or take the form of complex symbols, such as past events functioning as political symbols (Rodríguez-Temiño & Almansa-Sánchez, 2021).…”