Paper short abstract:

I propose an analysis of digital environments as social spaces. In particular, collective blogs of war veterans as sites for social research. I want to explore the porosity between digital and non-digital practices and social dynamics on the study of mnemonic formation in online communities.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I propose an analysis of digital environments as social spaces where daily practices are extended in time and space. Collective blogs of war veterans are here explored as sites for social research. In particular, the porosity between digital and non-digital practices and social dynamics on the study of mnemonic community formation. Thus, I will offer some answers to the following questions: How can the digital be explored in the field of memory studies through a digital ethnographic approach? What are the advantages and disadvantages of exploring ethnographic case studies that are based on communities formed on the internet? To do so, I will start by describing the research that leads to my forthcoming dissertation about digital memories of colonial war veterans and the representation of the colonial war (1961-1974) on Wikipedia. This last platform is analyzed as a site of knowledge production and sharing. Here the digital is a place of community formation and mnemonic (re)production, where the (re)mediation of private archives and the creation of mnemonic narratives about the past are made by a community of men assembled through the internet with the aim of making sense of striking and fragmented experience. A fragmented experience transformed into a whole by them in the process of history-making on collective blogs.