Geographies of Commemoration in a Digital World

‘How does Anzac feel? Why does it continue to have such a hold on the Australian imagination? And how are digital technologies affecting the ways that we experience Anzac? These are the questions at the heart of this compelling and innovative new book by Danielle Drozdzewski, Shanti Sumartojo and Emma Waterton. It argues convincingly for a new geography of commemoration that recognises the complex ways that digital commemoration interacts with traditional forms. The authors’ insights have important applications in enabling scholars across disciplines to better understand the affective appeal of state-sponsored mythologies.’—Dr Carolyn Holbrook, DECRA Senior Research Fellow, Deakin University, Australia
‘This accessible book reveals the deep, emotional and mnemonic digital and cultural work of the public during national commemorations. This is cultural work through the co-produced methodology that offers the reader new ways of undertaking participatory research in memory studies. Story becomes action (real-time and remembered) as the authors reveal the phatic experience of Australia’s Anzac memories online as a constellation of digital places and feelings and fresh empirical evidence of non-conformity. The originality of this book lies in its collaborative methods across different but inter-related approaches to researching remembrance in the 21st century.’—Joanne Garde-Hansen, Professor of Culture, Media & Communication, University of Warwick, UK
​This book reframes commemoration through distinctly geographical lenses, locating it within experiential and digital worlds. It interrogates the role of power in representations of memory and shows how experiences of commemoration sit within, alongside and in contrast to its official normative forms. The book charts how memories, places and experiences of commemoration play out and have, or have not, changed in and through a digital world. Key to the book’s exploration is a new epistemology of memory, underpinned by an embodied research approach.