Memory Activism and the uses of Community Narratives on Facebook in Cyprus

Culture can play an important role in widening the understandings, representations and, remembrances of history. Societies today, engage with the complexities of the processes of history making and remember the past in the age of modern technology. There is a tendency to create virtual spaces using photographic images through digital technology and social media on the Internet. The use of visual images on the web-memorializing process affects the articulation of memory and creates mediated memories and alternative histories in this networked age. In this paper, I argue that, on certain networks, especially Facebook groups, the uses of community storytelling activates collective memory not for just honouring or remembering the past but also for enabling each other to change the way people see the current material world and re-imagine future possibilities. Groups on the social networking site Facebook that aim to create a memory of the past, to develop Cypriot life, unity and friendship via the representations of the past. They aim to create new or renewed versions of a local cultural past in which the role of Cypriot communities is acknowledged and restored, where community storytelling activates collective memory and history is re-made with the uses of memory activism through Facebook. These groups remember their pasts not for just ‘honouring or remembering a new past’ but helping each other to change the way they see the current material world and re-imagining future possibilities.