Confronting the violent past online

: Digital Memory Platforms from Chile and Argentina

Abstract

Online platforms engaging in memory work, which I term Digital Memory Platforms (DMPs), have become important for understanding online cultural production related to the legacies of dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. But these DMPs are unexpectedly precarious, threatened by obsolescence and decay; a situation which runs counter to memory. The diverse approaches employed by memory organisations, entrepreneurs, and activists to engage online media to share memories of state violence are ripe for exploration of their role in creating or transmitting digital memories in post-dictatorship contexts from Latin America. While memory studies from Latin America is an extensive field, there is only nascent scholarship examining the convergence between memory and the digital. There are no extensive studies using a comparative framework to examine digital memories in post-dictatorship societies in the Southern Cone. Seeking to correct that lack of study, this thesis centres on the analysis of six platforms from Chile and seven from Argentina created by organisations ranging from grassroots activist networks to state-sponsored memory museums and those that sit in the interstice. The study provides a snapshot of digital projects from Latin America by identifying heuristic typologies which include: object-centred, participatory, walkthrough, and photographic DMPs. In doing so, it explores extant literatures drawing from memory, (new) media and Latin American studies to situate this work. It poses an expanded deployment of the term ‘platform’ to denote cultural production, moving away from technological determinism. The research underpinning the thesis employs a mixed methodology, drawing together content analysis, reflexive autoethnographic approaches and semi-structured interviews with individuals working on online memory projects to analyse 13 memory platforms. The analysis suggests, and the thesis concludes, that digital media is an important site for memory work, which merits sustained attention but one which is an unstable site threatened by obsolescence and decay, which is at odds with memory’s ontological proposition.

Date of Award	30 Sept 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Sponsors	SWW Doctoral Training Partnership Panel
Supervisor	Matthew D Brown (Supervisor) & Gabriella Giannachi (Supervisor)