Protean Memorialisation: International Holocaust Remembrance Day as a Digital Site of Memory on Twitter

Can social media spaces host sites of memory (or, as Pierre Nora called them, lieux de mémoire, and how do user congregations at such sites evolve? This article examines a decade-long collection of tweets about the International Holocaust Remembrance Day to investigate how digital sites of memory are produced and evolve on platforms like Twitter. By applying computational text analysis to operationalize the definitional features of a site of memory, the study explores the discursive composition of the Holocaust Remembrance Day as a memory site, the evolution of the site’s relevance over time, and the user dynamics that shape this composition online. As part of this exploration, we introduce the idea of protean memorialization, a form of digital memorialization characterized by changes in the discursive composition of a memory site, but not its relevance. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our work and directions for future research.