This article explores the nature and dynamics of mnemonic communities within the context of social media platforms and proposes to identify mnemonic communities using hashtag co-occurrence analysis. The article distinguishes between ‘explicit’ and ‘latent’ mnemonic communities, arguing that while some digital mnemonic communities may exhibit characteristics of offline communities, others exist latently as discursive spaces or semiospheres without direct awareness. On platforms like Instagram, hashtags function as semiotic markers, but also as user-chosen indexes to the content. As hashtags link the social and semantic aspects of community formation, hashtag co-occurrence analysis offers a robust framework for understanding and mapping these communities. This method allows to detect and analyse patterns of hashtag use that suggest the presence of networked community structures that may not be apparent or conscious to the social media users themselves. Additionally, a metric is introduced for determining the degree of ‘latentness’ of communities that quantifies the cohesion within communities compared to their external connections. The article demonstrates this approach by applying hashtag co-occurrence analysis to a dataset of Instagram posts tagged with #Juneteenth, a popular hashtag used to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. It identifies 87 mnemonic communities that reflect the diversity and complexity of how platforms facilitate memory-sharing practices and the role of semiotic markers in forming (latent) mnemonic networks.

Services offered by genealogy companies are increasingly underpinned by computational remediation and algorithmic power. Users are encouraged to employ a variety of mobile web and app plug-ins to create progressively more sophisticated forms of synthetic media featuring their (often deceased) ancestors. As the promotion of deepfake and voice-synthesizing technologies intensifies within genealogical contexts – aggrandised as mechanisms for ‘bringing people back to life’ – we argue it is crucial that we critically examine these processes and the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin them, as well as their mnemonic impacts. In this article, we present a study of two AI-enabled services released by the genealogy company MyHeritage: Deep Nostalgia (launched 2020), and DeepStory (2022). We carry out a close critical reading of these services and the outputs they produce which we understand as examples of ‘remediated memory’ (Kidd and Nieto McAvoy 2023) shaped by corporate interests. We examine the distribution of agency where the promotion by these platforms of unique and personalised experiences comes into tension with the propensity of algorithms to homogenise. The analysis intersects with nascent ethical debates about the exploitative and extractive qualities machine learning. Our research unpacks the social and (techno-)material implications of these technologies, demonstrating an enduring individual and collective need to connect with our past(s), and to test and extend our memories and recollections through increasingly intense and proximate new media formats.

This article is on algorithmically generated memories: data on past events that are stored and automatically ranked and classified by digital platforms, before they are presented to the user as memories. By mobilising Henri Bergson's philosophy, I centre my analysis on three of their aspects: the spatialisation and calculation of time in algorithmic systems, algorithmic remembrance, and algorithmic perception. I argue that algorithmically generated memories are a form of automated remembrance best understood as perception, and not recollection. Perception never captures the totality of our surroundings but is partial and the parts of the world we perceive are the parts that are of interest to us. When conscious beings perceive, our perception is always coupled with memory, which allows us to transcend the immediate needs of our body. I argue that algorithmic systems based on machine learning can perceive, but that they cannot remember. As such, their perception operates only in the present. The present they perceive in is characterised by immense amounts of data that are beyond human perceptive capabilities. I argue that perception relates to a capacity to act as an extended field of perception involves a greater power to act within what one perceives. As such, our memories are increasingly governed by a perception that operates in a present beyond human perceptual capacities, motivated by interests and needs that lie somewhat beyond interests of needs formulated by humans. Algorithmically generated memories are not only trying to remember for us, but they are also perceiving for us.

This paper explores how Ukrainian virtual museums of war are embedded in today's connective environment of humans, codes and algorithms. In particular, I examine the ways virtuality as a mode of memory-making is deployed by the Meta History: Museum of War to shape the mediation and remembering of the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine as it unfolds. Using digital methods and digital ethnography, this study maps the emerging assemblage of the Meta History: Museum of War to grasp how the museum is contributing to efforts to repel the Russian invasion through its artistic and material engagement with the war. By exploring the network of exhibitions and the museum's virtual infrastructure, the study illustrates how the museum generates affective instant memories in order to wield influence over events that will in turn be exhibited in the future. Consequently, it adds valuable insights into the production of virtual engagement with war.

Autobiographical memories play a vital role in shaping personal identity. Therefore, individuals often use various methods like diaries and photographs to preserve precious memories. Tattoos also serve as a means of remembering, yet their role in autobiographical memory has received limited attention in research. To address this gap, we surveyed 161 adults (68.9 per cent female, M = 26.93, SD = 6.57) to explore the life events that motivated their tattoos and to examine their most significant memories. We then compared these findings with significant memories of 185 individuals without tattoos (80.0 per cent female, M = 31.26, SD = 15.34). The results showed that the majority of tattoos were inspired by unique life events, including specific events about personal growth, relationships, leisure activities, losses, or diseases. Even when not directly tied to specific events in life, tattoos still reflect autobiographical content, such as mottos, beliefs, and values. Furthermore, the most significant memories of younger tattooed individuals (20–24 years) tended to be more normative and less stressful compared to those of their non-tattooed counterparts in the same age group, though the nature of these memories varied. This difference was not found among older participants (30–54 years). Additionally, those without tattoos indicated to use specific objects and methods for preserving important events, suggesting tattoos are only one of several ways to reminisce. However, tattoos uniquely allow for the physical embodiment of autobiographical memories, indicating that engraving significant life events in the skin aids in reflecting on one's life story.

In April 2022, journalists at the tech website 9to5Mac discovered that photographs taken at sites related to the Holocaust would no longer appear in the Memories feature of Apple's Photos app. This article examines how news of this decision was received by the public through analysis of the comment section that followed the original 9to5Mac post. The perspectives on display in this public forum provide insight into the evolving public perception of automated memory technologies and the potential consequences of their use. Through this analysis, several interrelated areas of public concern emerge. These include the boundaries of platform intervention for governing access to content, the subjective qualities of personal photographs, and the metrics upon which algorithmic memory systems operate. Though opinions vary, this comment section captures an illustrative range of sentiment towards Apple Memories and this intervention into the memories of its users. This range demonstrates a degree of scepticism, alarm, and dissatisfaction rising among users who are increasingly aware of how algorithms are influencing their memories.

The unanticipated product of a survey involving 190 non-professional readers, this first-report paper looks at the way memories from different source media overlap, along with the potential consequences of this phenomenon for existing approaches to reader behaviour.

The paper begins with a focus on how everyday readers articulate their recollection of literary works, in particular those moments they found most memorable. We identify a common situation in which participants ‘mix up’ recollections of a book's content with memories of their respective film or TV adaptations. We offer the term spontaneous transmedia co-location to describe this form of effortless recall involving memories of literary texts which spontaneously trigger memories of other, visual media. We outline five preliminary modes of spontaneous transmedia co-location (STC) and explain what they consist of.

Finally, we elaborate how STC ties into wider theories of how readers and other consumers interact with media, and how they tend to remember and otherwise connect them in a transmedia space.

The rise of digital technology has led to fundamental changes in how individual and collective perspectives on the past are transmitted and engaged. An immediate implication of these changes relates to the shift away from human communication as a single form of communication about memory towards multiple models which involve non-human (or robotic) agents. These non-human agents are primarily constituted by artificial intelligence (AI)-driven systems, such as search engines and conversational agents, which retrieve information about the past for human users and are increasingly used to generate memory-related content. To account for the growing complexity of memory-related digital communication, the article introduces three agency-based models of such communication: (1) human-to-human; (2) human-to-robot; and (3) robot-to-robot. It discusses examples of communication practices enabled by these models and scrutinises their implications for individual and collective memory transmission. The article concludes by outlining several directions for memory communication research increasingly shaped by non-human agents.

This article aims to track and tackle the #ŠtoTeNema hashtag to analyse the meanings generated by Twitter end-users who employed #ŠtoTeNema together with other hashtags, texts, visuals, hyperlinks, and metadata. ŠTO TE NEMA (Why are you not here?) first appeared as an alternative commemorative practice (in 2006) to remember the victims of the Srebrenica genocide (1995). In 2012, the #ŠtoTeNema hashtag emerged to commemorate human loss on Twitter and provide even more comprehensive access to this space of memory and suffering. Using multimodal discourse analysis, I examine how Aida Šehović, the artist behind ŠTO TE NEMA, with her team and Twitter's end-users, portrayed the Srebrenica genocide by employing #ŠtoTeNema. I argue that ŠTO TE NEMA has become an influential and recognisable representation of the Srebrenica genocide not only on-site but also online. This research concludes that #ŠtoTeNema gained momentum during the global pandemic peak (2020), creating inclusive access to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the genocide locally, regionally, and transnationally.

This paper is based on research conducted in February–April 2022. It describes and illuminates what was happening with tech-savvy educated people between 20 and 40 years old in Russia, while their usual digital tools and places for the autobiographical process were changing in the spring of 2022. Facing censorship of platforms, surveillance, and the inability to pay for services, people who were keeping important memories of their lives online were deleting their profiles, migrating to other platforms, censoring themselves, and creating archives of autobiographically meaningful materials. The paper examines these disruptions as a case that illuminates the role of online platforms in autobiographical memory and expands some concepts within autobiographical memory studies, such as evocative objects and autotopography.

A pioneering book on an important novel subject, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict presents a thorough and detailed overview of memory activism in Serbia over the last 20 years, across two generations. First of all, the book traces the transition from anti-war and human rights activism to ‘first-generation memory activism’, by examining the trajectory of the NGO Women in Black created in the 1990s to protest against Serbian nationalism, Milošević's war policy and Serb war crimes in the Yugoslav wars. The turn to what could be defined as memory activism grew organically out of this initial anti-nationalist and anti-war struggle, gaining traction following the deep disappointment felt by many in the Serbian alternative with the continuities in Serbia's institutions and social structures after the fall of Milošević in 2000, the official silence and denial of war crimes, and the unfulfilled promises of transitional justice in the region.

This paper explores self-tracking as a social practice with significant relationships to human memory. The history of data and memory is fraught with a concern that specifics of qualia are subjugated to datafication. Yet, historical perspectives linking paper diaries and digital tracking show that rich accounts can be preserved in media. Cognisant of both perspectives, this paper argues that rather than delegating reflection to algorithms, users engage critically. Using original research data, this paper demonstrates how users unite the sociotechnical affordances of devices, data visualisations, and personal narratives to communicate memory in mediated forms. In doing so, they bridge semantic and autobiographic memory, combining subjectivity and objectivity. A datafied narration of everyday life emerges, affirming unique and vital stories. Often directed toward future goals, the mnemonic value of self-tracking in the present is overlooked. Yet whether recalling unfortunate accidents, sporting success, work, holidays, or illness experiences, participants use data as a scaffold to build stories and affirm identity. This paper asserts that memory and storytelling is an essential anchor for practices of digital self-tracking.