Communicating Awe ― Media Memory and Holocaust Commemoration

How can a society communicate a collective trauma? This book offers a cross-media exploration of Israeli media on Holocaust Remembrance Day, one of Israel's most sacred national rituals, over the past six decades. It investigates the way in which variables such as medium, structure of ownership, genre and targeted audiences shape the collective recollection of traumatic memories. Following their previous conceptual work on media memory, the authors argue that a combination of the aforementioned factors, anchored in the political arena as well as in the realm of media practices and conventions, lead Israeli media to operate on Holocaust Remembrance in a manner that 'acts out' the collective trauma. Thus, the underlying narrative that is performed by the media on Holocaust Remembrance Day frames the Holocaust as a current, ongoing Israeli event, rather than an event that took place in Europe and ended decades ago.

Oren Meyers is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Israel. His research interests include journalistic values and practices, collective memory and popular culture. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Review, Journalism Studies, Media, Culture and Society, Culture and Critique and the Journal of Popular Culture.

Motti Neiger is Dean of the School of Communication, Netanya Academic College, Israel. He served as the president of the Israel Communication Association (2006-2009) and as the founding Editor of Media Frames: Israeli Journal of Communication. His academic interests include various aspects of the interrelations between media and culture: mediated collective memory, journalism during conflicts, and the role of culture mediators. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Review, Television and New Media, Journalism and Communication, Culture and Critique.

Eyal Zandberg is Senior Lecture at the School of Communication, Netanya Academic College, Israel. His research interests focus on the interrelations between collective memory and the media, especially within the context of the construction of the memory of the Holocaust in popular culture and on journalistic practices during times of war and conflict. He has published articles in journals such as the Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Review, Media, Culture and Society and Communication, Culture and Critique.