Public Memory

Public memory refers to the ongoing choices made when a group of people (typically, a nation) remembers a particular part of its history, highlights that part of history within a container available for everyone to experience, and locates that container within a social, cultural, and political context. Public memory can be thought of as a communicative process similar to creating a scrapbook or sharing one’s life through social media; both processes involve selection (one can’t include every element of a life in a scrapbook or social media site nor can a group of people remember everything about its history), interpretation (some people will find a social image hilarious whereas others may see it as inappropriate, just as some people will interpret a public ...