Remembering Marielle Franco: Haunting online presence and the memorialization of resistance on social media

Abstract

Social media has transformed how we construct collective memory, with increased opportunities for dispersed individuals and groups to participate in collective remembrance. With the ever-changing nature of social media practices, the field of critical memory studies begs for more research on the role of digital media in memory construction. Based on a critical rhetorical analysis of YouTube and Instagram archives, I examine how social media is used to remember Marielle Franco, a Brazilian black queer city councilwoman killed in 2018 by former police officers. Specifically, I argue that two communication strategies – mediating a resistant specter and mediating something-to-be-done – are articulated on social media in the construction of a haunting online presence of Marielle. I further suggest that this digital memorialization is consequential for how Brazil remembers the racial, gendered, and social injustices that inform Brazil’s past, present, and possible future. The analysis contributes to previous literature on cultural memory by articulating the notion of haunting online presence as a heuristic tool to theorize about public mourning, digital memory, and activism.