The Politics of Memory

在许多国家，人们应该如何记住过去，这一点存在争议。为什么？因为集体记忆--群体对过去的共同表征--既强大又具有可塑性。它们之所以具有可塑性，是因为它们并非完全基于历史“事实”。他们是强大的，因为控制过去的记忆意味着定义过去、现在和应该是什么的权力(例如，通过对大英帝国历史的记忆在多大程度上塑造了公众在世界背景下如何看待这个国家)。为了争夺这种权力，政治演员、艺术家和学者似乎是记忆企业家，旨在保护或挑战无处不在的叙事。共同记忆创业行动的范围从政客们关于如何记忆过去的声明，到政府引入记忆法，活动家拆除雕像，或者学者写书。记忆企业家的行为如何塑造集体记忆？尽管已有研究研究了政治领导人如何以及为什么看起来像记忆企业家，但最近的研究指出，我们对集体记忆的实质内容、可塑性以及记忆企业家行为对集体记忆的影响知之甚少--尽管它们具有共性。研究集体记忆的一个关键挑战在于集体记忆的测量。关于受访者如何记住过去事件的反复调查是最有效的选择，但其可扩展性有限，而且很少有在不同时间点和/或不同国家询问记忆问题的情况。这个项目提出了一个综合的理论和测量框架，以应对这一挑战，并使我能够阐明国家对其过去的叙述是如何随着时间的推移而演变的，以及记忆创业行为何时以及如何塑造它们。利用自然语言处理(NLP)的最新进展和维基百科可以自由编辑的事实，以及每一篇维基百科文章的完整修订历史都是公开的，我介绍并推动使用维基百科关于历史人物、地点和事件的修订历史作为衡量各自语言社区集体记忆的基础。为了使用维基百科的内容数据对集体记忆内容和变化进行实证分析，我将重点关注两个案例研究：-政治激进主义和殖民主义：英国的黑人生活和大英帝国-本土主义民粹主义和二战：历史学家、政客和波兰和德国的大屠杀这两个案例研究都涉及处于国家认同核心的叙事，这些叙事最近受到了争议，并以有大量维基百科的语言存在。与此同时，他们表现出不同的记忆企业家，他们采取的行动，以及他们发挥的国家/语言。我将收集关于波兰二战的所有波兰语和德语维基百科内容的所有版本，以及2001至2025年间关于大英帝国的所有英文维基百科内容。此外，我将系统地收集英国、波兰和德国各自的集体记忆中哪些记忆企业家何时以及如何干预的数据。使用这些数据、自然语言处理技术和因果推理方法，我将描述二战/大屠杀和大英帝国/殖民主义记忆延展性，考察记忆企业家的行为如何塑造他们(重点关注英国黑人生活马特抗议活动以及波兰和德国本土主义民粹主义政党的政策和声明)，并得出记忆创业效应的潜在范围条件。我创造性地结合和推进社会心理学、记忆、政党、身份政治、历史和测量方面的研究。除了学院，我还将提供与在线信息平台及其贡献者直接相关的知识，以及参与集体记忆形成的行为者和记录此类行动的组织。

How the past should be remembered is contested in many countries. Why? Because collective memories-groups' shared representations of the past-are both powerful and malleable. They are malleable because they are not exclusively based on historical "facts". And they are powerful, because controlling the memory of the past means power to define what was, is and should be (illustrated, for example, by the extent to which remembrance of Britain's imperial past shapes how the public see the nation in a world context).Vying for this power, political actors, artists, and academics appear as memory entrepreneurs, aiming to preserve or challenge pervasive narratives. Common memory entrepreneurial actions range from statements by politicians about how the past should be remembered, to governments introducing memory laws, activists removing statues, or academics writing books. How do actions by memory entrepreneurs shape collective memory?While existing research studies how and why political leaders appear as memory entrepreneurs, recent research points out that we know less about the substantive content of collective memories, their malleability and, relatedly, the consequences of memory entrepreneurs' actions for collective memory-despite their commonness. A key challenge involved in researching collective memory lies in its measurement. Repeated surveys about how respondents remember past events are the most valid option, but their scalability is limited and there are few contexts in which memory questions have been asked at different points in time and/or across different countries. This project proposes an integrated theoretical and measurement framework that tackles this challenge and allows me to shed light on how nations' narratives about their past evolve over time and when and how memory entrepreneurial actions shape them. Leveraging recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) and the fact that Wikipedia is freely editable, and a complete revision history of each Wikipedia article is publicly available, I introduce and advance the use of revision histories of Wikipedia articles on historic figures, places and events as a basis for measuring respective language communities' collective memories. To empirically analyse collective memory content and change using Wikipedia content data, I will focus on two case studies: - Political activism and colonialism: BlackLivesMatter and the British Empire in the UK- Nativist populism and WWII: Historians, Politicians and the Holocaust in Poland and GermanyBoth case studies deal with narratives at the core of national identities which have recently been contested and exist in languages that have large Wikipedias. At the same time, they exhibit variation in terms of the memory entrepreneurs involved, the actions they take, and the countries/languages in which they play out. I will collect all versions of all Polish, and German Wikipedia content on WWII in Poland and of all English Wikipedia content on the British Empire between 2001 and 2025. In addition, I will systematically collect data on which memory entrepreneurs intervened when and how in the respective collective memories in the UK, Poland and Germany. Using these data, NLP techniques, and causal inference methods, I will describe WWII/Holocaust and British Empire/colonialism memory malleability, examine how memory entrepreneurs' actions shape them (with a focus on UK BlackLivesMatter protests and Polish and German nativist populist parties' policies and statements), and derive potential scope conditions for memory entrepreneurial effects.I creatively combine and advance research on social psychology, memory, political parties, identity politics, history, and measurement. Beyond the academy, I will also provide knowledge that is directly relevant for online information platforms and its contributors, as well as actors engaging in collective memory formation and organisations documenting such actions.