Contributo in volume, 2024, ENG

Holocaust Remembrance on Facebook during the Lockdown: A Turning Point or a Token Gesture?

Manca, Stefania; Rehm, Martin; Haake, Susanne

ITD-CNR; University of Regensburg; University of Education in Weingarten

In this chapter, we investigate how four Italian and five German Holocaust memorials and museums, as well as three major internationally relevant Holocaust organizations, employed Facebook for Holocaust remembrance purposes during the period of pandemic lockdown. A comparison was made of the quantity and variety of activity on their Facebook pages during the months of April and May 2020, as compared with the same time span in 2019 and 2021. Although the study revealed major changes and adjustments in Holocaust institutions' Facebook activities, both in terms of volume and type of content and regarding interaction strategies, the results show that the COVID-19 lockdown did not appear to trigger a radical change in Holocaust remembrance institutions' use of social media. Despite the changes found in many Holocaust remembrance practices on Facebook and their growing use of digital media, the memorials and museums considered in this study appear to adopt a conservative stance in terms of the topics and themes addressed via social media and a general little change in the framework of commemoration policies. Also, despite a drive toward internationalization, as demonstrated by the Holocaust institutions' increased use of English, there still appears to be a certain tension between local and global memories of the Holocaust.

Keywords

Holocaust memory, COVID-19, Holocaust museums

CNR authors

Manca Stefania

CNR institutes

ITD – Istituto per le tecnologie didattiche