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 (And...