Construction Of Collective Memory Changing From Mass Media To More Personalized Media

CONSTRUCTION OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY CHANGING FROM MASS MEDIA TO MORE PERSONALIZED MEDIA
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Construction of Collective Memory Changing from Mass Media to More Personalized Media
Memories could be interpreted via the perspective of a group, as well as the lens of an individual. People tend to weave their past together thereby forming collective memories. Ince (2013, p. 54) noted that collective memories are socially constructed basing upon common values, sentiments, as well as the current state of affairs that the group is in. Memories that are created by a group are crucial in developing a sense of identity in the group. In addition, such memories might offer the members a certain way of understanding their shared experiences which might enable them to cope whenever the memories are especially disturbing. While mass media including television, radio and print media have been the main means through which collective memory is constructed, the construction is gradually shifting from this form of media to more personalized media. This paper discusses how the construction of collective memory might be changing in the move from 'mass' media to more 'personalised' media. In the discussion, the paper also covers how collective memory is changing or has changed from how it was in the past to what it is at the moment.
The phrase collective memory was initially coined in the year 1902 by Hugo van Hofmannsthal, although it is Maurice Halbwachs, a French sociologist, who is widely recognized as the person who founded collective memory research. Collective memories in general do not exist in abstract. Collective memory, according to Halbwachs (1992, p. 12), is a reconstruction of the past events or activities which adapts the image of the facts of the past to the beliefs as well as spiritual needs of the present. This construction process necessitates sites which serve various agents as the ground upon which they develop their accounts and ideas of the past that are mediated to broader audience members. For many years, mass media platforms especially radio, television and newspapers have been the most prevalent site for such construction.
For a long time, the mass media has been playing an essential role in shaping and informing public consciousness on a lot of different issues. A significant amount of people’s understanding of the world is, in fact, influenced by what they hear, watch or read in the media (Logan 2010, p. 65). This is no less true with regard to people’s understanding of the past. According to Pentzold and Sommer (2011, p. 34), the media is a vector of memory in so far as it constructs past representations – in terms of choices with regard to what is represented, when, where, how as well as how often. Memories are, in essence, transmitted via the media and then made collective, literally. In his paperback Imagined Communities, Anderson (2008, p.35) described the significance of the development of the print media in allowing people to imagine the nation. National communities are imagined given that people would never meet each of the other community members yet they imagine the group’s characteristics, mainly by means of reference to the media (Anderson 2008, p. 36).
The mass media has been the main means by which collective memory is constructed owing to the omnipresence and dominance of the mass media in daily life, as well as its critical role in shaping collective recollections (McCormack 2012, p. 133). The television (TV) medium, for example, has always been the major means through which nearly all people learn about history. Just as TV has greatly altered and affected all aspects of modern life, from religion to business, government and education, its fictional and nonfictional depictions have in the same way changed how many viewers think about historical figures (Kocak 2017). In America for example, journalists played a significant role in making history by shaping the public memory of the assassination of President JF Kennedy in the year 1963. The story of the country’s past would always be to some extent a story of what the mass media actually chooses to recall; that is, a story of the way in which the memories of the media have turned out to be the memories of the people of America (McCormack 2012, p. 137).
However, the construction of collective memory is slowly shifting towards more personalized media from mass media. Personalized media generally delivers unique experiences that are customized to individual consumers mainly through social media and the Internet and increasingly via devices such as mobile phones, personal computers, tablets and iPads (Dijck 2011). According to Ernst (2013, p. 68), collective memory is being mediated more and more by the personalized digital media, preserved for the making of cultural memory that could be interpreted as the lasting memory of the society. The cultural memory, as Donk (2013, p. 4) mentioned, holds the material starting point for future recollection in store and it creates a firm ground for social memories construction throughout time. Therefore, without the (re)mediation and circulation of collective memories, a lasting cultural memory cannot exist. New digital, personalized media increases the power of cultural memory given that the collective memories have more means or channels through which they can be spread (Donk 2013, p. 4). In essence, personalized media creates new memory that is mobile, digital, and global (Donk 2013, p. 4).
In recent years, the developments in digital technologies have significantly influenced how people keep track of events at the collective level. Whilst the bonds which held groups together in the pre-modern societies actually assured the sustainability of social memory, Kocak (2017, p.2) observed that in the computerized world of today, patterns of common belonging have changed. In essence, digital communication technologies have produced new unique forms of collectivity through the opportunities they afford for bringing people all over the globe together. Digital, personalized media provides emplacement for collective memory (Kocak 2017, p.3). A notable characteristic of the personalized media is the digital media or new media, as the construction of collective memory transitions from analogue media to the digital media. The new media, as McCormack (2012, p.139) pointed out, is a combination of both offline and online media, including e-readers, smart phones, tablets, personal computers, and the internet. The newness of the digital media permits greater involvement of the users who are not passive recipients of information like in the case with television, radio, newspapers and other forms of mass media, but they are also active producers of information and content (Pentzold & Sommer 2011, p. 57). Active interactivity and participation is the norm with the digital, personalized media. The new, personalized media are cross-linked and connected with one another and the information mediated by them can be processed, transformed, stored, retrieved, hyperlinked and accessed easily.
Digitization and new media technologies have enabled the capturing and storage, reassembly, as well as management of data records in ways which are reproducible across various media, internationally connected, and less costly compared to mass media and earlier mediated memories (Logan 2010, p. 97). These days, mediated memories of events could be produced locally and personally, prior to being speedily mobilized, travelling and settling in many locations worldwide emplaced in different local settings (Franch 2016, p. 42). In addition, Garde (2011, p. 21) underscores the Internet’s power as well as the convergence capacity of various means to promote the construction of collective memory. According to him, the Internet distributes memories into institutional, corporate as well as personal archives. It is of note that as more media including photography, video, cell phones and television converge digitally, there are growing opportunities for media companies, private firms, o...