Witnessing in the age of the database: Viral memorials, affective publics, and the assemblage of mourning

Papailias, Penelope

doi:10.1177/1750698015622058

Cited by 46 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…As Richard Chalfen (2011) notes in his analysis of the "shinrei shashin" (ghosts in snapshots), the relationship between ghosts and photography in Japanese culture challenges conventional readings of the snapshot. Mobile media and especially smartphones further complicate this situation in networked visuality and the attendant forms of affective witnessing (Papailias 2016). While photography has a long and important history in the role of the family and memory at a global level, as Chalfen highlights, this phenomenon is particularly prevalent to Japan (2011).…”

Section: Tokyomentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Media Practices in Households

Hjorth¹,

Ohashi²,

Sinanan³

et al. 2020

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In this introductory chapter we begin with one of our participants, Rika, as she uses her smartphone practices to help create a sense of care at a distance with her aging mother-what we call Digital Kinship. We then turn to contextualizing the methods deployed over the three years in three locations and how each of the three cultural contexts informs different rituals around data use. We discuss how Digital Kinship can make sense of the paradoxical role of surveillance in an age of datafication through "friendly surveillance" and "care at a distance."

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Section: Tokyomentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Media Practices in Households

Hjorth¹,

Ohashi²,

Sinanan³

et al. 2020

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“…The heightened consumption of these data by those outside of the event usually peaks while the tragedy is unfolding and in the hours, days and weeks following. An assemblage of first person, immersive accounts, alongside attempts to document and piece together details related to the unfolding of the events while also engaging in the memorialization or marking of the losses is all managed now through mobile and social media and the use of mobile devices (Papailias, 2016). 10 This 'affective witnessing' 11 entailed by mobile visuality-whereby graphic images of events are shared in publicly and intimate ways-often originate from a persistent and dominant mobile media trope: the 'selfie' and in the most tragic cases often the selfies of the soon-to-be deceased.…”

Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobiles Facing Death: Affective Witnessing And The Intimate Companionship Of Devices

Hjorth¹,

Cumiskey

2018

CSR

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From disasters to celebrations, camera phone practices play a key role in the abundance of shared images globally (Frosh 2015; Hjorth and Hendry 2015; Hjorth and Burgess 2014; Van House et al. 2005). Photography has always had a complicated relationship with death. This paper focuses on how mobile devices, through the broadcasting of troubling material, can simultaneously lead to misrecognition of the self (Wendt 2015) alongside an often-public evidentiary experience of trauma and grief. In this paper we will focus on the companionship of mobile devices in users’ most desperate hours. Use of mobile devices in crisis situations generate affective responses and uses. We will draw from case studies to highlight the power of the mobile to not only remind us that media has always been social, but that mobile media is challenging how the social is constituted by the political and the personal, and the ethical mediation between both. The ethical, psychological, moral and existential challenges that this new kind of witnessing poses will be explored.

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“…3 Studies of music in relation to the past include, for example, Van Dijck (2006) who shows that "we need public spaces to share narratives and to create a common musical heritage"; DeNora (1999) constructs "music as a device for on-going identity work and for spinning a biographical thread of self-remembrance", and Van der Hoeven (2014) reports on individual memories of musical events. Studies of memory in culture have dealt with mourning (Papailias, 2016), the family (Erll, 2011), business history (Hansen, 2012), mnemonic practices (Olick and Robins, 1998), and organisational memory (Schatzki, 2006;Rowlinson et al, 2010;Üsdiken, Kipping, and Engwall 2011;Anteby and Molnar, 2012). However, there is a clear gap within the research in cultural memory studies about collective remembering of music.…”

Section: Memory In Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural memory and the heritagisation of a music consumption community

O’Reilly¹,

Doherty

Carnegie³

et al. 2017

AAM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural memory of a consumption community and on the implications for its identity and membership. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon insights from theories of cultural memory, heritage, and collective consumption, this interpretive inquiry makes use of interview, documentary, and artefactual analysis, as well as visual and observational data, to analyse an exhibition of the community’s popular music heritage entitled One Family – One Tribe: The Art & Artefacts of New Model Army. Findings The analysis shows how the community creates a sense of its own past and reflects this in memories, imagination, and the creative work of the band. Research limitations/implications This is a single case study, but one whose exploratory character provides fruitful insights into the relationship between cultural memory, imagination, heritage, and consumption communities. Practical implications The paper shows how consumption communities can do the work of social remembering and re-imagining of their own past, thus strengthening their identity through time. Social implications The study shows clearly how a consumption community can engage, through memory and imagination, with its own past, and indeed the past in general, and can draw upon material and other resources to heritagise its own particular sense of community and help to strengthen its identity and membership. Originality/value The paper offers a theoretical framework for the process by which music consumption communities construct their own past, and shows how theories of cultural memory and heritage can help to understand this important process. It also illustrates the importance of imagination, as well as memory, in this process.

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Witnessing in the age of the database: Viral memorials, affective publics, and the assemblage of mourning

Cited by 46 publications

References 29 publications

Digital Media Practices in Households

Digital Media Practices in Households

Mobiles Facing Death: Affective Witnessing And The Intimate Companionship Of Devices

Cultural memory and the heritagisation of a music consumption community

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