Mediating Communities: Digital Memory and Contemporary Identity

Project description

The popularisation of digital media in recent decades has profoundly effected the memorial process: “cheap data storage” and retrieval options, alongside the ease of instantly sharing data through mobile technologies have enabled “unprecedented global accessibility and participation in the creation of memories” (Garden-Hansen et al). These shifts invariably raise important questions. How are individuals, for example, using digital media to mediate family memories? Why are community organisations using social media to communicate with their members, particularly in times of crisis? How are identities increasingly constructed online and with what effect to the security of those identities? What is digital memory and what might its relationships be to other forms of memory and remembering? These are some, but by no means all of the questions that this cluster is broadly interested in investigating.

Bio CV on project manager

Dr Kelly McWilliam is currently a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies in the School of Humanities & Communication, the Deputy Director of the Public Memory Research Cluster, and a Chief Investigator on ARC Linkage Project LP0884097 (the latter with Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham). She is the author or editor of several books and numerous articles and chapters. She is also an executive member of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia and a member of the ARC Cultural Research Network.