This paper will explore the convergences between silences and noise present in memorial narratives on the 9/11 Memorial & Museum Facebook page.
Examining the gaps, or silences, in memorial narratives are an important part of their wider analysis; these absences can tell us just as much as that which is present (Foote, 2016). However, as acknowledged by Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger, this is by nature difficult to do, as the researcher must look for what is not there (2010: 1103-4). Digital memorials can be very 'noisy' in contrast to their physical counterparts, with content regularly added and/or adapted, or through frequent posts on social media pages. Therefore, silences in digital memorials are even more worthy of investigation.
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York commemorates the victims of both the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and the 1993 WTC bombing, via the physical memorial and museum in Manhattan, and digitally. The organisation's digital offering includes a website and accounts on several popular social media platforms, including Facebook, which the organisation currently posts to daily. This page was created before the physical memorial opened, and documented the development of the physical site. Importantly, it also illustrates the similarities and differences in 9/11 memorial narratives over time.
Using Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the content posted by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum on their Facebook page during two specific time periods, this paper will identify the memorial narratives which were ignored, or overwritten, working from Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger's framework around overt and covert silences (2010), and consider how the interplay between these absent and present narratives framed the wider 9/11 memorial narrative during these time periods.
Foote, K (2016) 'On the Edge of Memory: Uneasy Legacies of Dissent, Terror, and Violence in the American Landscape'. Social Science Quarterly, 97(1), pp115-122.
Vinitzky-Seroussi, V and Teeger, C (2010) 'Unpacking the Unspoken: Silence in Collective Memory and Forgetting'. Social Forces, 88(3), pp1103–22.
