Media-Remembering: Power, Identity and Agency

Abstract

At the centre of this book’s analysis were a series of questions that spoke to the complexities of media-remembering and the implications for all involved. Whose remembering is remembered and/or denied in the media? What does a remembering in the media reveal about a performance of identity? Similarly, how might the media ignite remembering, what type of remembering results, and what does this reveal about the negotiation of identity? And, critically, where is the agency of those remembering and remembered within all of these processes? In this concluding chapter, I attempt to address these questions by drawing together all of the empirical stories contained in this book, for whilst each story differs—by virtue of emanating from different (groups of) actors in different circumstances—they are all similar in their ability to tell us something about what happens when the practice of remembering and the practices of the media converge. In the following then I rehearse the parameters at the core of all the stories—remembering in, with and through media—not only to remind the reader of the starting point for the book’s enquiry, but also to move the discussion beyond singularly focused studies of media and memory (text-based, practice-based, participant-based) and existing understandings of media and memory (journalism and memory, memory work, memory and identity) to develop a broader conceptual framework through which we can interrogate the interconnectedness and interdependence of media and remembering in relation to the production, interpretation and negotiation of remembering in the media ecology.