Holocaust discourse on social media

What is it about?

How people remember and talk about the Holocaust on social media? The article looks at a wide range of ways this memory is used and sometimes misused, not just during official remembrance times. The analysis focuses on a phrase in Hebrew related to the law for "punishing Nazis and their collaborators". This phrase is often shortened on Twitter (X and their collaborators), to describe people, social groups and behaviours (X) as contemporary collaborators that resonate the traumatic event. We find that this phrase is used for respectful remembrance, but also for exploiting political purposes and in playful or inappropriate ways, leading to disagreements and moral questions. Our analysis therefore systematically outlines the spectrum of Holocaust discourse on social media, and sheds light on how people talk about the Holocaust "when they are not talking about the Holocaust".

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Photo by Àlex Folguera on Unsplash

Photo by Àlex Folguera on Unsplash