Journalism and mnemonic practices in Chinese social media: Remembering catastrophic events on Weibo

Abstract

This study examines how collective memories of a public event, along with various journalistic practices, take shape in social media as the event develops. By analyzing messages posted during the first 8 days after a 23 July 2011 high-speed train collision accident in China on Weibo, a leading Chinese micro-blogging platform, this study finds three types of mnemonic practices on this platform: online commemoration, memory accumulation, and the first draft of history. The extensive media coverage, nonstop updates, and blurred lines between reporting and archiving produce firsthand accounts and fragmented narratives for collective memory. Weibo allows the use of language from which journalists and media-affiliated groups reap greatest benefit. Journalism draws on mnemonic practices to organize collective pondering over crises and current power structures in a shrinking space of online expression. Within the rapidly changing landscape of Chinese social media, this memory pattern developed earlier gradually loses its political meaning, although it persists in subsequent events. Theoretical implications of this study for the impact of digital media on collective memory are also discussed.