Digital Traumatic Memory

Abstract

Our world is shaped by digital technologies. Since the first commercially available computer was released in 1951, a digital revolution was started across contexts - exposing new ways to connect disparate fields. Digital geographers Sarah Elwood and Katharyne Mitchell concluded that digital approaches inevitably change ways of knowing, remembering, and communicating across space, time, and collective memory. When it comes to trauma-related museums, the rise of digital initiatives allowed the public to access traumatic collective memory beyond space and time limits. Moreover, by the beginning of 2020, with worldwide lockdown measures under the Covid-19 pandemic, digital developments have become a new impulse. To deal with new challenges, some museums started providing online virtual tours via web conferencing software to the public who cannot visit museums physically. The study of the impact of digital media on memorial museums helps to grasp trends in museums’ digitization and explore the possibilities of memorial museums’ development in an interdisciplinary way. Against these backgrounds, this article aims to investigate the role of digital media technologies in contemporary trauma-related museums - especially memorial museums. The objective is to critically reflect on the digitization of traumatic memory and explore the boundary between physical articles and digital artefact. Moreover, this study hopes to raise key issues for media scholars more broadly in terms of developing critical practice concerning new technologies, as well as for historians, museum and memorial curators.