Digital Memory of War: A Case Study on the Telegram Group of Ex-Combatants of the Eight-Year Iran-Iraq War

Author

Ph.D. in Sociology, Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

Abstract

Objectives: New social media have created a new arena where memories are no longer just consumed, but produced creatively in a participatory way. In the current research, by studying the Telegram group belonging to ex-combatants of one of the brigades of the 10th Seyed-al-Shohada Division in Tehran, it was tried to answer the following question:1.What narrative patterns or schemas are the manifestations of the collective memories of the war configured in this new arena? 2.To what extent are these patterns different from the schemas that formulate the official form of the collective memory of the war? 3.In fact, to what extent does this new ecology of the war memory have the capacity to become an arena for promoting alternative memory? Methods: In this study, using the method of virtual ethnography, it has been described that how the collective memory of the war is structured among the members of the Telegram group, and by using the thematic analysis technique, the cognitive schemas that form the semantic and interpretive frameworks of remembering the important events of the war have been patterned. Results: During the coding process, in the first stage, 404 descriptive categories, in the second stage, 27 interpretive categories, and finally, among them, 4 comprehensive categories were obtained, including the "construction of meaning in people's memory", "memory sites", "search for meaning" and "memory and identity". Conclusion: The results showed that the possibility of using dynamic platforms such as Telegram has extended the memory capacity and performance of the ex-combatants and it has created a new arena for configuring, aggregating and promoting alternative narratives and competing with the official frameworks of war memory.

Keywords

References

 
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Sociology of Social Institutions
Volume 9, Issue 19
June 2022
Pages 159-185

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