Commemorating
the Great War on Twitter
Frédéric Clavert, Asst Professor, C²DH
frederic.clavert@uni.lu
Institute for Historical Research, 7 January 2020
Introduction
the #ww1 project
Context of the Centenary
memory inflation and experience of history
- inflation of memory and commemoration since the 1980s
- a growing litterature…
- French example: Les cadres sociaux de la Mémoire (Halbwachs, 1925), Les lieux de mémoires (Nora, 1984, 1986, 1992), Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (Conan & Rousso, 1994), etc.
- Aleida & Jan Assman, Andreas Huyssen, etc.
- A changing regime of historicity?
- Koselleck / Hartog / Gumbrecht
- Globalization of cultural memory (Huyssen / Rousso)
Media and cultural memory
’We need a term to describe these processes [of collective remembering and forgettingM.T.] and to relate them to historical changes in the technology of storage systems, in the sociology of the groups concerned, in the media and in the structures of storage, tradition, and the circulation of cultural meaningin short, to encompass all such functional concepts as tradition forming, past reference, and political identity or imagination. That term is cultural memory.
Jan Assman quoted in Tamm Marek, « Beyond history and Memory: new Perspectives in Memory Studies », History Compass 11 (6), 2013, pp. 458–473.
Digital memory studies?
Memory has been lost to the hyperconnective illusion of an open access world of the availability, accessibility and reproduceability of the past. I say ‘illusion’ as our submergence in post-scarcity culture has also elided what is really at stake here: the loss of security of vision that the past once afforded (…) and a slippage of the grasp of what effect all our current entanglements with media will have on remembering and forgetting. The past has been stripped of its once retrospective coherence and stability, entangled in today’s melee of uncertainty.
Hoskins A. (éd.), Digital memory studies: media pasts in transition, Routledge, 2017, p. 5-6.
The WW1 Centenary and social media
⇒ A major commemoration in a time of commemoration and collective memory inflation.
⇒ The Centenary as the first large-scale commemoration in the era of social media
Many #ww1 initiatives are involving a large audience
- La grande collecte (2013-2014, BnF / Archives nationales de France). Linked to:
- Europeana 1914-1918 with a large number of national institutions
- Use of social media by museums
- Databases online
The #ww1 project: harvesting data
Twitter data only (1st April 2014 - 1st December 2019)
⇒ One 11th November outside the Centenary
The ww1 project: the state of the database
9,1 millions tweets (2/3 of RTs)
1 million users
- Methodology
- Global overview
- New practices and controversies
Methodology
Why Twitter?
Because we can.
- The Twitter Streaming API is relatively open
- Pieces of Software exist (analysis / harvesting),
relatively easy to use
The technical dispositif
The technical dispositif: IRaMuTeQ
Hierachical clustering
- unsupervised
- good old statistical method (1983 / French school of data analysis)
- clustering of segments of text and not words (in case of tweets: texts = segments of text = tweets)
A balanced corpus?
- Where are Jean Jaurès, Georges Clemenceau and the battles of the Marne?
- the #lestweforget issue
Global overview
General temporality
Linguistic temporality
French corpus clustering…
…and its temporality
English corpus clustering…
…and its temporality
The «network»
Unoriginal contents, new practices?
Amateur historians: #1j1p
Controversies: the commemoration of the battle of Verdun
(FREDERICK FLORIN / AFP)
Conclusion
General conclusions
Content vs Practices
Academic controversies vs social media controversies?
Digital bricolage
Levi-Strauss Claude, La pensée sauvage, Paris, Plon, 1962.
The allure of the archive in the digital era
Bibliography
Memory and history
- Assmann Aleida, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Huyssen Andreas, « Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia », Public Culture 12 (1), 2000, p. 19.
- Mosse George L, Fallen soldiers : reshaping the memory of the world wars, New York, Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Tamm Marek, « Beyond history and Memory: new Perspectives in Memory Studies », History Compass 11 (6), 2013, pp. 458–473.
Memory and history
French historiography
- Conan Éric et Rousso Henry, Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas, Nouv. éd, Messageries du Livre, 1996.
- Halbwachs Maurice, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire / Maurice Halbwachs ; postf. de Gérard Namer, Paris, Albin Michel, 1994 (Bibliothèque de l’évolution de l’humanité 8).
- Nora Pierre, Les lieux de mémoire, tome 1 : La République, Paris, Gallimard, 1984.
- Rousso Henry, Face au passé, Collection histoire-contemporaine, Paris, Belin, 2016.
- Rousso Henry, « Vers une mondialisation de la mémoire », Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire (94), 2007, pp. 3‑10.
Experience of history, broad present and presentism
- Gumbrecht Hans Ulrich, Our Broad Present: Time and Contemporary Culture, Columbia University Press, 2014.
- Hartog François, Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, Paris, Le Seuil, 2003.
- Koselleck Reinhart, L’expérience de l’histoire, Points, 2011.
IRaMuTeQ
- Marchand Pascal et Ratinaud Pierre, « L’analyse de similitude appliquée aux corpus textuels: les primaires socialistes pour l’élection présidentielle française (septembre-octobre 2011) », s. d. En ligne:.
- Ratinaud Pierre et Dejean S., « IRaMuTeQ : implémentation de la méthode ALCESTE d’analyse de texte dans un logiciel libre. », in: Modélisation Appliquée aux Sciences Humaines et Sociales, Toulouse, 2009. En ligne.
- Reinert Max, « Les “mondes lexicaux” et leur “logique” à travers l’analyse statistique d’un corpus de récits de cauchemars », Langage et société 66 (1), 1993, pp. 5‑39. En ligne. Reinert Max, « Une méthode de classification descendante hiérarchique: application à l’analyse lexicale par contexte », Les cahiers de l’analyse des données 8 (2), 1983, pp. 187‑198.
- Smyrnaios Nikos et Ratinaud Pierre, « The Charlie Hebdo Attacks on Twitter: A Comparative Analysis of a Political Controversy in English and French », Social Media + Society 3 (1), 01.01.2017, p. 2056305117693647. En ligne
- Smyrnaios Nikos et Ratinaud Pierre, « Comment articuler analyse des réseaux et des discours sur Twitter », tic&société (Vol. 7, N° 2), 31.05.2014. En ligne.
Digital memory studies and #ww1
- Hoskins Andrew (éd.), Digital memory studies: media pasts in transition, New York, Routledge, 2018.
- Clavert Frédéric, « Face au passé : la Grande Guerre sur Twitter », Le Temps des médias. Revue d’histoire (31), 12.2018, pp. 173‑186.
- Clavert Frédéric, Grandjean Martin et Méadel Cécile (éds.), Le temps long des réseaux sociaux numériques, Paris, Nouveau Monde Editions, 2018 (Le Temps des Médias. Revue d’histoire 31).
The allure of the archive
- Clavert Frédéric et Muller Caroline (éds.), Le goût de l’archive à l’ère numérique, en ligne, 2017-… En ligne.
- Farge Arlette, Le goût de l’archive, Paris, Seuil, 1997.
- Steedman Carolyn, Dust, 1 edition, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2002.
- Levi-Strauss Claude, La pensée sauvage, Paris, Plon, 1962.
Background images
- Monument aux Morts, Place de la République Strasbourg
- Taxis de la Marne (Renault, 7 septembre 1914)
- Charles Seignobos
- L’Humanité, 1st August 1914, «Jaurès assassiné»
- English soldiers (1915)
- Henri Alban Fournier (Alain Fournier), mort pour la France (base de données des morts pour la France)
