Flashbulb memories, psychology and media studies: Fertile ground for interdisciplinarity?

Abstract

The term ‘fl ashbulb memory’ (FBM) (Brown and Kulik 1977; Winograd and Neisser (eds) 1992; Conway 1995) describes human memory that can apparently be recalled very vividly and in great detail, as though reproduced directly from the original experience. Such memories are said to possess a ‘photographic’ quality, owing to the apparent visual clarity of the reproduction of the image in the mind’s eye. For instance, events that elicit a greater emotional response (e.g. from surprise or shock) and that are deemed to have greater (private and/or public) consequentiality, are frequently noted in psychological studies as key factors in strengthening FBMs (see Finkenauer et al., 1997). Yet, despite individuals’ confi dence in the accuracy of FBMs these are often found to be largely inaccurate or compiled from multiple sources and occasions. Indeed, measuring truth and falsity is a core pursuit of the psychology of FBMs, and, most often at the exclusion of consideration of the broader social, cultural and political impacts of the very phenomenon under investigation. Furthermore, there has been a great deal of critical refl ection on the usefulness of the FBM metaphor, as well as memory-media metaphors more widely (Brown and Kulik 1977; Draaisma 2000; Neisser 2008). Despite the vast majority of the proliferating FBM studies focusing on the personal memory of publicly mediated events, there appears to be: 1) very few accounts that engage with literature, theories and methods drawn from media and communication studies; 2) a lack of any meaningful engagement with FBM and FBM studies by media and communication scholars, other than passing reference to the metaphor and to Brown and Kulik (there are, of course, some notable exceptions, such as Bourdon [2003]); and, 3) an absence of accounts that have an ambition to interrogate FBM and media, as equivalent objects of study. Indeed, until very recently, the idea that some analysis of media content (and accounting for subjects’ exposure to that media content) was needed although sometimes acknowledged by the psychological core of FBM studies, was rarely developed. And, even when there is analysis of the media in shaping the memories of events and FBMs, this is often subsumed under, for example, ‘sociological, historical and, cultural issues’ (Luminet and Curci, 2009: i), or a ‘socio-interactional approach’ (Hirst and Meksen, 2009: 207–225). What, then, would a Media Studies’ take on FBM look like today? In relation to the FBM of public events, psychological approaches have focused on the mass media, and often exclusively television. Notably, this is the remembering of the