Unsettling Memories: Practice, Platforms, and Possibilities. Closing Reflections on the Communicating Memory Matters Collection

Communicative remembering refers to the ongoing process by which people actively construct, negotiate, and share memories through everyday interactions, whether in faceto-face conversation or via digital media.Rather than viewing memory as fixed or stored in archives and monuments, this approach foregrounds remembering as something enacted through conversation, storytelling, image-sharing, and participatory media practices.In today's media-rich environments, both the exchanges themselves and the technological systems that filter, amplify, or automate them shape what and how we remember together.Consider, for example, posting anniversary photos on Instagram or exchanging messages in a family WhatsApp group.These ordinary acts help recall personal milestones and shape what is shared, remembered, or valued today.This special collection explores such everyday communications of memory and examines how platforms, algorithms, and AI are reshaping the everydayness of both media and memory.The contributions published here have delivered to these aims, in diverse and unexpected ways.Together, they chart a memoryscape in which remembering is not so readily assigned to or imagined through established domains like the archive, the monument, or even testimony.Rather, it is through the dynamic intersection of affect, infrastructure, agency, and design that processes of remembering and forgetting are embodied and enacted.In the closing editorial of the Communicating Memory Matters Collection, we reflect on how its contributions deepen, stretch, and at times unsettle the core propositions set out in our opening introduction (Lohmeier and Pentzold 2023).It is clear that the field of memory studies, especially in its communicational forms and effects, has entered a phase marked by creative expansion, theoretical renewal, and growing complexity.As stated in the introduction, "[m]emory is a communicative affair.It is inherently intertwined with communication, representing a complex interplay that has evolved throughout history."(p. 1) Dealing with memories, reminiscing as well as forgetting has transformed.Individuals, collectives, and even algorithms produce, curate, and circulate memory through communicative practices.Where this work was once the domain of established institutions or specialized genres, today it encompasses the everyday tasks of digital participation, online sharing, and algorithmic curation.Notably, platforms, algorithms, and AI are fundamentally reshaping the everyday dynamics of both media and memory.Platforms now operate not just as technical