In this chapter, we focus our attention on “Noi, L’Aquila”, a local memory website created in L’Aquila (Italy) some months after the 2009 earthquake, where city dwellers can write and share memories, stories and photographs. In contrast to the excess of mediated depictions of the tragedy and its aftermath produced by the national and international news networks, this project aims to collect the narratives of ordinary people directly through their voices and thus contributes to preserving the social memory of the city before the disaster. In order to explore users’ practices and investigate the role of “Noi, L’Aquila” in storing, processing and sharing community memories after a collective tragedy, we collected and analysed all the posts written on the website from the launch of the platform until the end of November 2011 (N=278). Through an integrated approach, based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the narratives, we carried out a content analysis to identify the most common categories of discourse; investigate the narrative characteristics of the memories and their relationship with the past; and examine the kind of location individuals find important to remember.
Geolocating the past: Online memories after an earthquake
FARINOSI, Manuela
;
2016-01-01
Abstract
In this chapter, we focus our attention on “Noi, L’Aquila”, a local memory website created in L’Aquila (Italy) some months after the 2009 earthquake, where city dwellers can write and share memories, stories and photographs. In contrast to the excess of mediated depictions of the tragedy and its aftermath produced by the national and international news networks, this project aims to collect the narratives of ordinary people directly through their voices and thus contributes to preserving the social memory of the city before the disaster. In order to explore users’ practices and investigate the role of “Noi, L’Aquila” in storing, processing and sharing community memories after a collective tragedy, we collected and analysed all the posts written on the website from the launch of the platform until the end of November 2011 (N=278). Through an integrated approach, based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the narratives, we carried out a content analysis to identify the most common categories of discourse; investigate the narrative characteristics of the memories and their relationship with the past; and examine the kind of location individuals find important to remember.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
