{"id":2180,"date":"2022-02-06T14:47:02","date_gmt":"2022-02-06T14:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/digitalholocaustmemory\/?p=2180"},"modified":"2022-12-13T16:20:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T16:20:51","slug":"holocaust-memorial-day-2022-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/digitalholocaustmemory\/2022\/02\/06\/holocaust-memorial-day-2022-on-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust Memorial Day 2022 on Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If the core logics of social media <\/strong>are the sharing economy <\/strong>and the attention economy, <\/strong>it is significant to study what content has the most interactions <\/strong>and shares <\/strong>on Holocaust Memorial Day, <\/strong>if we are to understand the spreadability <\/strong>of awareness campaigns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our first post of 2022, we offer some very early findings regarding popular social media content <\/strong>this Holocaust Memorial Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Holocaust Memorial Day and Social Media <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the UN Resolution 60\/7<\/strong> in 2005, the 27th January<\/strong> has been recognised internationally as Holocaust Memorial Day<\/strong>. This date commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz<\/strong> by the Soviet forces in 1945, but is used to reflect on all Holocaust victims and in some cases (such as in the UK), genocide victims more broadly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT)<\/a> <\/strong>in the UK <\/strong>run a major national campaign, supporting commemorations with resources and making visible the vast range of local and national level events. This year’s theme was Light in the Darkness.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More internationally, in 2022, UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress<\/strong> worked with major social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok through advertising grants to highlight<\/a> content related to their #WeRemember<\/strong> campaign. You can hear representatives from UNESCO and the WJC talk more about the project at a recent UN Civil Society Briefing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The significance that social media <\/strong>plays in public memory and understanding <\/strong>of the Holocaust has in recent years been taken more seriously, as the significance of online distortion and denial has been recognised. As early as 2014, The<\/strong> International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance<\/strong> published guidelines for Holocaust Educators using social media<\/a>. Nevertheless, there is still evidently a deficit in digital literacies and capacities<\/strong> in Holocaust education and memory contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Methodology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was possible to collect an internationally-relevant sample of posts from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter <\/strong>through researcher access to their APIs: CrowdTangle for the Meta-owned platforms and then Twitter’s API 2.0 for the latter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We combined our own knowledge of common phrases used for Holocaust remembrance, such as #NeverForget and #NeverAgain with terms we found used on posts by official memory organisations and users from an initial manually look on social media on the day. We also added the UNESCO\/WJC campaign #WeRemember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then collected posts using the following hashtags:<\/p>\n\n\n\n