How Cultural Traumas Occur on Social Media: the Case of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933

Abstract

This article explores the construction of a century-old cultural trauma on social media today. After first mapping the history of a cultural trauma and its memorialization, the article proceeds to examine its construction on social media. Drawing both on the literature on cultural trauma and digital media and on scholarship on “dark” tourism and social media, the article argues that while the literature on cultural trauma discusses digital media as an alternative space for the articulation of contesting narratives against the mainstream media and the state, the role of social media in encouraging solidarity in cultural trauma-making between different institutional and noninstitutional actors also requires exploration. Without undermining the participatory potential of digital media, the article calls for further research on how social media affordances such as commercial practices and algorithms can influence the content of cultural trauma narratives online. The essay reconceptualizes the role of intellectuals and experts in the articulation of cultural trauma by suggesting that, in the digital age, everyone becomes a carrier of a cultural trauma narrative. Empirically, the article focuses on the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933 and the mediation on Instagram of its national memorial site in Kyiv. It studies how social media users discuss the historical tragedy, its victims, and its perpetrators through uploaded images from an offline memorial site to an online platform. The article concludes by calling for further research into the mediation of historical events on social media.