DIGITAL MEMORY, PANDEMIC TEMPORALITIES: REFLECTIONS ON STUDYING AND STORING CRISIS MEDIA

Abstract

Digital memory studies is a field deeply attuned to social transformations, including the often abrupt and destabilizing impact of crisis events. It is also a field attuned to the role of time and temporalities in shaping how digital media propels experiences and interpretations of the past into the present and future. This panel is dedicated to bringing these two significant threads of digital memory studies research into concerted conversation by drawing on complementary case studies of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, these projects examine how networked digital media interface with experiences of temporality, playing a fundamental role in shaping how the COVID-19 crisis is remembered and researched over time. This panel incorporates four projects that examine the relationship between crisis, memory, and digital media across complementary temporal and structural considerations. In conversation, these projects present reflections spanning personal and institutional pandemic memories; crisis time scales; and visual, sonic, and infrastructural media. Ultimately, this panel underscores the interconnectedness of crisis and temporality in digital memory studies, inviting conversation on mediated memories of disruptive events constructed research participants and researchers themselves.