Three Phases of Digital Holocaust Memory Development

By Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Through artificial intelligence, machine learning, crowdsourcing, digitisation, VR, AR and computer games, we take you on a tour of some of the world’s most prolific digital Holocaust memory initiatives by way of the theory of the ‘three stages’ of development. To argue that there are three phases of digital Holocaust memory development is not to suggest a clear and simple historical chronology from the 1990s – when digital technologies were first introduced into this arena – to now. Rather, this proposition offers a framework for mapping the different types of approaches organisations take when adopting digital media for the sake of Holocaust memory. These three phases are: the experimental, the normative, and the connective, and they define the different relationships organisations have with digital technology and cultures through their work. Let’s take a closer look at each of them. Experimental Phase This phase acknowledges periods of enthusiasm for a new medium, often led by a ‘what if?’ curiosity among a handful of digital advocates or a desire to shake up the status quo. During this phase, creators are explorative and playful with a medium’s possibilities, they’re not afraid to take risks and can be inquisitive [...]

By |2024-11-11T14:29:45+00:0023 October 2024|

Listening in Latin America: Digital Holocaust Memory and Education in Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador

by Dr Kate Marrison Research fellow Dr Kate Marrison recently returned from Lima where she held a roundtable discussion with professionals working in the field of Holocaust education from Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador. This is what she found out. While there is a proliferation of scholarly interest in the digital development of Holocaust commemoration and education across Europe and the US, little attention has been paid to this work in Latin America. Last month the Memory Studies Association annual conference took place in Lima, so we took the opportunity to bring together colleagues to discuss their work within Holocaust organisations in Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú. To kick off, I asked contributors what digital interventions they had brought to their organisations and what are the challenges and opportunities they bring. Participants discussed some fascinating examples of their practice. They included a virtual tour of Museo del Holocausto de Buenos Aires and the first survivor interactive biography to be recorded in Spanish as part of the Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) project in collaboration with The Latin American Network for Education on the Shoah. Examples from Brazil included open-access online educational materials created by Museu [...]

By |2024-11-08T16:44:26+00:0022 August 2024|

Holocaust Education and Social Media: What Young People Really Think 

by Dr Kate Marrison Dr Marrison reports from a recent event which brought together young people from across the UK to further their understanding of the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance.  We’re familiar with the pros and cons of social media, but what role can it play in Holocaust education, memorialisation and commemoration? This was the topic of a workshop I ran this month in London with an audience of 30 16-to 25 year olds at the Holocaust Educational Trust’s annual Ambassador Conference (AmCon). The Ambassadors come from across the UK and from a range of backgrounds. The initiative tasks young people to be ‘the driving force’ behind efforts to make sure that British people understand and remember the Holocaust.  Holocaust survivors and other educators were also present.  The workshop explored how museums, memorial sites and professional memory institutions harness social media. We kicked off with a quiz asking which were the most popular social media platforms they engage with – Instagram, Tiktok and Snapchat – and which three words describe their thoughts about social media being used for Holocaust education.  Attitudes varied from those optimistic about the potential of social media (‘educational’, ‘important’ and ‘useful’), to those who expressed [...]

By |2024-11-08T17:37:55+00:001 August 2024|

Serious TikTok: Can You Learn About the Holocaust in 60 seconds? 

by Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann and Tom Divon, Hebrew University, Jerusalem In this month's post, our guest contributors explore multimodal education and commemoration of the Holocaust on today's most popular social media platform. In less than a year, the trending short-video platform TikTok transformed from a mostly entertaining environment for lip-syncing, dancing, and other self-performances into an interest-based platform for sharing information about politics, sexuality, identity, history, and other topics. This development was accompanied by the rise of a format which we describe as “serious TikTok”. In such videos, users communicate socio-political affairs in engaging ways through digital storytelling while harnessing the platform’s features, aesthetics, and dialects, allowing them to creatively unpack complex topics, contextualise and provide information. Following a controversy about TikTok users who performed as fictional Holocaust victims in a #POVHolocaustChallenge in August 2020, as well as the increase in antisemitic harassment and hate speech on the platform, ways of seriously dealing with the complex history of the Holocaust on TikTok gained special attention. In the following, we explore the specific modes individual and institutional TikTok creators use to address the history and memory of the Holocaust in their short video-memes and their ways of using TikTok’s aesthetics and vernaculars [...]

By |2024-11-11T15:21:35+00:0024 March 2022|

TikTok #HolocaustChallenge

A few weeks ago on Twitter, I pondered whether there was a place for Holocaust institutions on TikTok, then posts with the hashtag ‘#HolocaustChallenge’ went viral on the platform and hit international headlines. It has taken me a while to come to write something on this topic. As soon as I took some much needed leave (with no internet signal), of course, a major digital Holocaust memory debate took place. Context: From Holocaust Denial to Holocaust Distortion There is increasing and necessary discussion taking place within the Holocaust education sector about not only online Holocaust denial, but Holocaust distortion. Yehuda Bauer, Honorary Chairman of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) has recently argued in a series of keynote lectures that Holocaust distortion is one of the greatest threats to the work of those who are trying to educate about this past. We see examples of distortion at political levels – such as the controversial ‘Holocaust Law’ in Poland, which tries to prevent acknowledgement that some Polish individuals and communities were antisemitic and/or were responsible for the murder of Jewish individuals during Nazi Occupation of Polish land. We also see examples of distortion through trivialisation of the Holocaust into commercial products such as face [...]

By |2024-11-11T15:48:25+00:0010 September 2020|
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