Constructing meaningful memories online : investigating construction and meaning of cultural memories in audience engagement with re-enacted historical personae on social media in the case of @ichbinsophiescholl
(2022) MKVM13 20221Media and Communication Studies
Department of Communication and Media
- Abstract
- Cultural memories are meaningful for the present and are often constructed in remembrance media that institutions produce and audiences engage with. While the remembrance media texts have been getting much attention, the perspective of media audiences is still underresearched. Processes of mediatization, digitalization, and the affective turn call for studies that approach social media audiences’ active, emotional memory construction and meaning-making. Yet, in-depth studies on audience engagement with what I call re-enacted historical personae, a new and trending remembrance media format created by institutions on social media that re-enacts significant sociocultural-specific historical figures from an intimate, interactive, live... (More)
- Cultural memories are meaningful for the present and are often constructed in remembrance media that institutions produce and audiences engage with. While the remembrance media texts have been getting much attention, the perspective of media audiences is still underresearched. Processes of mediatization, digitalization, and the affective turn call for studies that approach social media audiences’ active, emotional memory construction and meaning-making. Yet, in-depth studies on audience engagement with what I call re-enacted historical personae, a new and trending remembrance media format created by institutions on social media that re-enacts significant sociocultural-specific historical figures from an intimate, interactive, live first-person centered perspective, are still missing.
This thesis investigates the construction and meaning of cultural memories in audiences engaging with re-enacted historical personae from a mediated constructivist and phronetic perspective employing the concept of active, emotional, and parasocial audience engagement. The case of @ichbinsophiescholl, in which German public broadcasters re-enact the historical German Nazi-resistance fighter Sophie Scholl on Instagram, is used to conduct qualitative interviews with the German audience, which are analyzed with Qualitative Text Analysis to understand their subjective perspective and engagement.
This research finds that audiences actively construct cultural memories that feel real by parasocial interaction and bonding with the re-enacted historical personae. Active followers playfully imagine them to be the real historical figure who has sociocultural and emotional relevance to them and who they can identify with. Through processes of witnessing, empathy, perspective-taking, and identification, the audience constructs cultural memories about the historical figure and their historical time period with and as the persona and establishes an emotional connection with the past. Audiences for whom these memories have an emotionally positive meaning and are beneficial for their present actively “pull” the re-enacted historical persona in their life and engage long-term. The memories are instruments for them to solve identity conflicts by constructing a social identity that they can identify with, and which entails social responsibilities and action-taking in the present that makes them feel empowered.
In contrast to that, audiences who cannot identify with the historical persona and do not see the historical persona as emotionally relevant for their present could engage in parasocial interaction, but since the memories have an emotionally negative meaning and do not add benefit to their present they actively disengage from the re-enacted historical personae and the memory construction quickly. These unfollowers feel disempowered in their social identity as the memories create an identity conflict and make them feel excluded and silenced in their present sociocultural context.
This research concludes that audiences are active in constructing memories with person-centered remembrance media in parasocial engagement and that memories are meaningful tools to navigate social identity and action-taking in the present. Emotions and identity inform the re-enacted historical personae’s relevance for the audience and lie at the core of their memory construction. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9088172
- author
- Gehringer, Lisa LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20221
- year
- 2022
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- cultural memory, social media, audience, parasocial, engagement, historical re-enactment, subjectivity, emotion, identity, remembrance, constructivism, Germany, Instagram, ichbinsophiescholl, re-enacted historical personae
- language
- English
- id
- 9088172
- date added to LUP
- 2022-06-14 11:20:19
- date last changed
- 2022-06-14 11:20:19
@misc{9088172,
abstract = {{Cultural memories are meaningful for the present and are often constructed in remembrance media that institutions produce and audiences engage with. While the remembrance media texts have been getting much attention, the perspective of media audiences is still underresearched. Processes of mediatization, digitalization, and the affective turn call for studies that approach social media audiences’ active, emotional memory construction and meaning-making. Yet, in-depth studies on audience engagement with what I call re-enacted historical personae, a new and trending remembrance media format created by institutions on social media that re-enacts significant sociocultural-specific historical figures from an intimate, interactive, live first-person centered perspective, are still missing.
This thesis investigates the construction and meaning of cultural memories in audiences engaging with re-enacted historical personae from a mediated constructivist and phronetic perspective employing the concept of active, emotional, and parasocial audience engagement. The case of @ichbinsophiescholl, in which German public broadcasters re-enact the historical German Nazi-resistance fighter Sophie Scholl on Instagram, is used to conduct qualitative interviews with the German audience, which are analyzed with Qualitative Text Analysis to understand their subjective perspective and engagement.
This research finds that audiences actively construct cultural memories that feel real by parasocial interaction and bonding with the re-enacted historical personae. Active followers playfully imagine them to be the real historical figure who has sociocultural and emotional relevance to them and who they can identify with. Through processes of witnessing, empathy, perspective-taking, and identification, the audience constructs cultural memories about the historical figure and their historical time period with and as the persona and establishes an emotional connection with the past. Audiences for whom these memories have an emotionally positive meaning and are beneficial for their present actively “pull” the re-enacted historical persona in their life and engage long-term. The memories are instruments for them to solve identity conflicts by constructing a social identity that they can identify with, and which entails social responsibilities and action-taking in the present that makes them feel empowered.
In contrast to that, audiences who cannot identify with the historical persona and do not see the historical persona as emotionally relevant for their present could engage in parasocial interaction, but since the memories have an emotionally negative meaning and do not add benefit to their present they actively disengage from the re-enacted historical personae and the memory construction quickly. These unfollowers feel disempowered in their social identity as the memories create an identity conflict and make them feel excluded and silenced in their present sociocultural context.
This research concludes that audiences are active in constructing memories with person-centered remembrance media in parasocial engagement and that memories are meaningful tools to navigate social identity and action-taking in the present. Emotions and identity inform the re-enacted historical personae’s relevance for the audience and lie at the core of their memory construction.}},
author = {{Gehringer, Lisa}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Constructing meaningful memories online : investigating construction and meaning of cultural memories in audience engagement with re-enacted historical personae on social media in the case of @ichbinsophiescholl}},
year = {{2022}},
}