Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the 2005 London Bombings

人们通常通过将个人叙述与公共事件交织在一起来记忆和利用过去。人们记得戏剧性事件发生时他们在哪里。在电影、电视和印刷品中，这些可能是高度中介化的记忆，但它们仍然是我们非常真实的个人和集体记忆的一部分。个人传记正是以这种含蓄的方式与历史相交，根据更大的社会事件——正在形成的历史——来定位日常生活中正在展开的细节。该项目通过比较电视的即时和存档能力与人们自己对事件的复述，追踪媒体与我们对过去事件的日常记忆之间的联系。最近，在英国，配备摄像头和视频的手机的可用性和使用量大幅增加，这导致旁观者拍摄的图像和视频被用来帮助创造和塑造“突发新闻”故事。我们的研究将调查这些“个人”媒体和“个人”账户对创伤事件（2005年7月伦敦爆炸事件）的电视新闻报道的影响，以及这些事件后来如何在电视上被纪念，以及它们最终如何被公众记住。我们并不认为电视抹杀了记忆和感觉——不管它多么可能将复杂的事件简化为声音片段和谈话内容——我们认为电视也可能使记忆保持鲜活和动态。

People routinely remember and use the past by interwining personal narratives with public events. People remember where they were when dramatic events occurred. These may be highly mediated memories, in film, on television, and in print, but they are still part of our very real personal and collective memories. Personal biography intersects with history in just this implicit way, locating the unfolding details of everyday life in terms of the events of the larger society - history in the making. This project traces the linkages between the media and our everyday remembering of past events through comparing the instant and archival capacities of television with people's own retellings of events.Very recently, there has been a massive increase in the availability and use of mobile phones equipped with cameras and videos in the UK which has led to images and film captured by bystanders being used to help create and shape 'breaking news' stories. Our research will investigate the impact of these 'personal' media and 'individual' accounts on television news coverage of traumatic events (the July 2005 London bombings) and also on how these events are later commemorated on television, and how they ultimately come to be remembered by the public. Rather than argue that television wipes out memory and feeling - however much it may reduce complex events to soundbites and talking heads - we suggest that television may also keep memories alive and dynamic.