Issues of memory preservation in the digital era: The case of Facebook

Abstract

In a heavily digitised era, in which technology seems to play a critical role in seemingly every aspect of our lives, among other factors, interpersonal relations and social practices need to be constantly and critically scrutinised in order to effectively reflect on and respond to these contemporary rapid changes. Being a pivotal part of our understanding of the world, memory seems to have also been affected by these changes and the ever-present social media, which are equipped with an unprecedented capability to assess, configure and bring out each user’s “memories”. But are those really memories?

The aim of this thesis is to explore the notion of memory within this framework and examine how it is framed by the most popular social media platform, Facebook. To further narrow down this objective I intend to examine On This Day and Friendversary videos, Facebooks memory-dedicated features. To this end, the research question is: How does Facebook’s archive as represented via On This Day and Friendversary videos frame our understanding of personal memories online? The research method employed to answer this question constitutes a combination of affordance and discourse analysis focusing equally on the platform’s attributes as well as the users’ understanding of memories online. Finally, I intend to establish a thorough connection between theory and my research findings in order for a cohesive conceptualisation of how exactly personal memory is framed on Facebook to emerge.