Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper examines the role of social media in regulating collective memory of the Holocaust. The paper first gives an overview of the online presence of several key institutions (The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem) to discuss the growing reach of Holocaust remembrance in this new platform, and the efforts by these institutions to balance their immediate political contexts with their goal of promoting historically accurate representations and commemorations. The paper then explores the underlying tension between the institutional goals and the democratization of knowledge that the online environment encourages. Do social media platforms uphold the authoritative versions of history presented by historically central institutions of Holocaust study and remembrance, or do they undermine it? How do these and similar institutions use social media to “police” remembrance, i.e. to declare statements legitimate or false? Do individual commenters ultimately subvert or reinscribe the authority of expert knowledge? And finally, what do social media platforms tell us about Holocaust memory in the digital age? This paper ultimately takes a critical view of the reliance on social media as a means for producing useful knowledge.