Phenomena of online memorialization in times of a pandemic

between registering and memorializing a traumatic event

Abstract

This paper seeks to discuss the virtual forms of memorialization that manifested themselves in the context of the pandemic of covid-19, a disease that plagued the world during the year 2020 and reconfigured work, teaching, traffic, consumption, and leisure routines, according to the health indexes. Through the survey, identification, and content analysis of spontaneous, ephemeral or temporary (HANEY; LEIMER; LOWERY, 1997) or institutional phenomena of online memorialization on Instagram, the construction of networked “verbal-visual narratives” is discussed and on the Network as forms of self-expression and self-musealization (RENDEIRO; RIBEIRO, 2017), which represent a kind of diary of pandemic experiences and become “sociotransmitters” (CANDAU, 2012). It appears that this “memory will” (NORA, 1993) in the context of cyberculture (LEMOS, 2009) is enhanced in times of social isolation and indicates a collective memory in a process that, when taking over the public space of the Network, shows individual and collective forms of “mourning and resistance” (SELIGMANN-SILVA, 2016). Considering the relevance of the theme for the fields of social memory and museology, especially for cybermuseology (LESHCHENKO, 2015), this article aims to reflect on these contemporary phenomena of online memorialization as interfaces of social memory (OLIVEIRA, 2017), in the sense of understanding the process of elaborating and managing collective memory with regard to difficult experiences related to covid-19.