In Dishonor Of: The Assemblage of Counter-Memory as Networked Resistance on Twitter

  • “performance of counter-memory in the intersection of networked publics, counter-discourses, and technologies of memories” ⤴️
  • “counter-commemoration” ⤴️
  • “We theorize the “assemblage of counter-memory” as the connective, discursive, and material assemblage that has the capacity to privilege subjugated knowledge, reconstruct history, and shape the trajectories of reality.” ⤴️
  • “a counter-structure to the order of knowledge of history, built on the substructure rendered by the affordances of digital media.” ⤴️
  • ““relational” agency that emerges and reemerges to resist both established historical orders and systematic political manipulation.” ⤴️
  • “it can reconfigure itself to respond to new issues and contexts” ⤴️
  • “weave counter-memory practices with contemporary forms of political participation.” ⤴️
  • “When institutions fail to sanction the past and history is contested, memory becomes susceptible to political manipulation.” ⤴️
  • “The hashtag was once again circulated on the same day in the following years (2021–2023), and similar online countermovements emerged w” ⤴️
  • “digital media facilitate the negotiation of memory by new actors in contexts and forms outside established historical traditions.” ⤴️
  • “Conventions of remembrance are normalized through performance in mass media, which serve as technologies of memories (Van House & Churchill, 2008) to embody the politics of the dominant mnemonic regime. Digital media disrupt and transform these forms of memory making by enabling participatory, connective, and mediatized practices through their new materialities and social conditions (Brown & Hoskins, 2010; Liu, 2018; Reading, 2011).” ⤴️
  • “scrutinizing and rewriting oppressive historical narratives that preserve cultures of impunity against minorities and marginalized (Bosch, 2017; Merrill, Keightley, & Daphi, 2020; Smit, Heinrich, & Broersma, 2018).” ⤴️
  • “Digital media have also been exploited by political actors to pervert and weaponize the past to advance political agenda and undermine democratic processes, such as in the case of the presidential campaign of Marcos Jr. in the Philippines (Allington, 2017; Kozachenko, 2019; Soriano & Gaw, 2022).” ⤴️
  • “digital media as technologies of memory not only alter memory formation but also reconfigure power relations in memory construction.” ⤴️
  • “counter-memory (Foucault, 1977),” ⤴️
  • “digital media set the conditions to perform alternative, creative, and subversive ways of remembering in resistance to prevailing historical and political structures” ⤴️
  • “intersection of networked publics, counter-discourses, and technologies of memories” ⤴️
  • “using social network analysis (SNA) and discourse analysis.” ⤴️
  • ““assemblage of counter-memory” as the connective, discursive, and material assemblage that has the capacity to privilege subjugated knowledge, reconstruct history, and shape the trajectories of reality.” ⤴️
  • “the intersection of memory studies, social movement studies, media studies, and disinformation studies” ⤴️
  • “the systematic reconstruction of public memory is a long-game influence operation that co-opts political resentment into political imaginaries based on perverted narratives of a glorious past. T” ⤴️
  • “assemblage of counter-memory functions as an analytical framework t” ⤴️
  • “such records are constantly subjected to “technical, institutional, and political decisions” (Van House & Churchill, 2008, p. 296). What is remembered is based on what can be captured, stored, and retrieved; and what is captured, stored, and retrieved is determined and shaped by the constantly changing social and technical practices in the media.” ⤴️
  • “The expansion and evolution of technologies of memory enhance a group’s skills and expand resources needed for commemoration, known as mnemonic capacity (Armstrong & Crage, 2006);” ⤴️
  • ”. While memories may have been produced by individuals for personal use, they are mobilized and dispersed to and by the global publics to new sites and different contexts.” ⤴️
  • “memories are subjected to digitization processes” ⤴️
  • “the translation of human memory to binary code and intermediation through the “unseen social relations of protocols, algorithms, and database” (Reading, 2011, p. 242).” ⤴️
  • “shift from the “collective” discourse in memory studies to a perspective in “connective” memory work, highlighting the dynamics of connectivity (i.e., accessibility, ubiquity, and velocity) in the construction of memory in digital technologies of memory (Brown & Hoskins, 2010).” ⤴️
  • “Brown and Hoskins (2010), memory work in digital media takes place within the “new memory ecology” (p. 94), in which memory is constructed through the constantly shifting logic of digital media as well as the socio-technical and sociocultural practices involved when people engage with these technologies. A” ⤴️
  • “memories can be potentially reconstructed and transformed in an infinite number of ways” ⤴️
  • “the opportunity to (re)construct memories is opened to nontraditional actors, challenging the “monopoly on the mechanisms of memory production held by authorities” (Liu, 2018, p. 1688).” ⤴️
  • “digital media as a technology of memory can aggregate these alternative and counter-memories through its networked design, and in doing so, connect previously dispersed individuals with silenced, isolated, or marginalized experiences” ⤴️
  • “Creative memorialization practices also demonstrate the emancipatory potential of new technologies of memory by harnessing their networked design and the vast volumes of data” ⤴️
  • “employ hashtags to unite others in” ⤴️
  • “conversations, and create antiestablishment memes and other user-generated content that reference memories and events to delegitimize political regimes (Chenou & Cepeda-Másmela, 2019; Makhortykh & González Aguilar, 2020).” ⤴️
  • “packaging them as entertainment and Internet subcultures, and persuaded the public to start “moving on” instead of “remembering” the past (Ong, 2022; Ong & Cabañes, 2018; Ong & Cabbuag, 2022).” ⤴️
  • “mnemonic regime of Duterte” ⤴️
  • “an opportunity for “reconciliation to those with different political persuasions” (Galvez, 2023, para. 1). The Department of Education recently revised history textbooks to refer to the era not as “Marcos dictatorship” but simply as “dictatorship” (Chi, 2023). Amidst these political maneuvers, counter-memory movements have been present in opposition to this systematic erasure of the brutality and hardships of the Marcos era.” ⤴️
  • “Originating from the work of Foucault (1977, 2003), counter-memory is the resistance to history as established, propagated, and institutionalized by dominant social groups.” ⤴️
  • “history not as a coherent, linear, and logical account but as an “unstable assemblage of faults, fissures, and heterogeneous layers that threaten the fragile inheritor from within or from underneath” (Foucault, 1977, p. 146). A” ⤴️
  • ““subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 2003) of marginalized groups, silenced narratives, and objectionable mnemonic practices.” ⤴️
  • “Subjugated knowledges struggle for recognition and contend for power to shape historical trajectories by “resisting the ‘omissions’ and distortions of official histories” and “returning to lost voices and forgotten experiences” (Medina, 2011, p. 13).” ⤴️
  • “rejected mnemonic devices become counter-memory when they produce “epistemic friction” (Medina, 2011) as they rise through the crevices of history and destabilize the power relations that built and maintained the dominant historical order.” ⤴️
  • “Counter-memory has been integrated into the vocabulary of memory studies in characterizing the memory work performed by marginalized communities to reassert their historical accounts into public memory using archiving and activism (Gutman, 2017; Kidman & O’Malley, 2020). D” ⤴️
  • “connective memory, where the networked structure of social media facilitates the connections among public articulations of the self to form ad hoc social mobilizations (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Liu, 2018; Merrill et al., 2020). I” ⤴️
  • “the locus of counter-memory construction is disproportionately located in community practices, discursive movements, or media technologies. T” ⤴️
  • “intervention through the concept of assemblage to underline counter-memory as a force that can breach the dominance of history in the structure of knowledge.” ⤴️
  • “Originating from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), assemblage (or agencement in French) refers to the “multiplicity of heterogenous objects, whose unity comes solely from the fact that these items function together, that they ‘work’ together as a functional entity” (Patton, 1994, p. 158).” ⤴️
  • “It is constituted not by the assortment of bodies, materials, and affect but from a set of relations that emerges as they interact and intersect in the assemblage. The configurations of the elements, therefore, forge the meaning, capacity, and trajectory of the assemblage (Nail, 2017).” ⤴️
  • “Memory, unlike history, functions as an assemblage as new evidence, experiences, and performances perpetually shape its forms. I” ⤴️
  • “draws from its constitutive heterogeneous relations to disrupt existing power relations i” ⤴️
  • “We performed SNA to characterize the structure and dynamics between and among individual users tweeting #ArawNgMagnanakaw. The focus of analysis in SNA is on individuals’ position and location within the network, and influence is calculated based on how central individual nodes are relative to the rest of the network. We calculated each actor’s degree centrality, which refers to the total amount of connections a node has to other nodes. We also examined the formation of communities within the network using the Clauset-Newman-Moore algorithm. We then visualized the network using Gephi, color coding the nodes based on user categorization, and sizing each node based on centrality.” ⤴️
  • “To examine the next layers of heterogeneous elements in the assemblage, we analyzed #ArawNgMagnanakaw tweets through Jones, Chik, and Hafner’s (2015) analytical lens of discourse as digital practices. This approach emphasizes the inextricable relationship between textual digital data and their contexts of use, analyzed as “‘assemblages’ of actions involving tools associated with digital technologies…” ⤴️
  • “reproducing particular sets of social relationships” (Jones et al., 2015, p. 3).” ⤴️
  • “examined the emergent power relations between them as they “create certain ‘versions of reality’” (Jones et al., 2015, p. 4).” ⤴️
  • “identified the multimodal expressive and material elements used” ⤴️
  • “constructed the counter- memory discourses in the assemblage in their entanglement with key discursive components detached or deviating from dominant historical narratives as well as characterized the counter-memory practices in reference to conventional commemorative practices and the platform vernaculars of Twitter.” ⤴️
  • “exhaustively refute the revisionist narratives by drawing documentary evidence from books, reports, and records” ⤴️
  • ”(“nakakagalit, nakaksuklam, nakakatakot, nakakagimbal”; personal communication, September 11, 2020).” ⤴️
  • “The second discursive thread is the temporal relocation of the discourse from the past to the present. Users reappropriate the hashtag #ArawNgMagnanakaw to include political figures also deemed to be “thieves” in their commemoration. T” ⤴️
  • “the “utmost dangers of forgetting” (” ⤴️
  • “these narratives when translated into tweets are reconstructed by the subjective agencies of users as they reconcile the conflicting social memory espoused by the competing dominant political group” ⤴️
  • “these discourses are transformed to become counter-memory as they are fortified by a network of diverse memory agents and are embodied in cultural practices vernacular to Twitter.” ⤴️
  • “Participants of the discourse engage primarily through amplification (74.2%) by echoing content by others using the retweet function of Twitter.” ⤴️
  • “around 10.5% of the network relationships were formed through this interaction—they linked other users’ content and used it to validate or invalidate others’ messages in the discourse.” ⤴️
  • “Counter-memory discourses are provided additional texture and depth as users corroborate, contest, and negotiate with others participating in the network. On Twitter, users “quote tweet” (a type of retweet) to build on others’ posts, state their reactions, or even contradict them while amplifying the original message.” ⤴️
  • “micro-celebrities (e.g., Miss Krizzy, 2020; King, n.d.), academics and subject-matter experts (e.g., Pasion, 2020; Presto, n.d.), ordinary or nonaffiliated users, and even unidentified users. Based on degree centrality, nontraditional sources were more dominant in the counter-memory network than traditional sources. M” ⤴️
  • “co-option and rejection of the conventions of commemoration through semantic, material, and creative practices facilitated by Twitter.” ⤴️
  • “to “remind(s) us of the horrors of the past”” ⤴️
  • “Users evoked juxtapositions between the extravagance of the Marcoses and the poverty of the Filipinos” ⤴️
  • “Users primarily pieced together records, evidence, and reports from international and local agencies and media that were otherwise obscured and separated from each other to materialize the immense wealth that the Marcoses stole from the Philippine government.” ⤴️
  • “Some tweets contained links to declassified documents previously unavailable to the public, which showed Marcos having “engineered” martial law to stay in power. Photos of the assets of the Marcoses displaying their exuberant lifestyles,” ⤴️
  • “tweets crowdsourcing literature, videos, and other educational references about the Marcos era, as well as those appealing to report social media accounts peddling historical disinformation.” ⤴️
  • “History is not truth but a perspective of it through “a deliberate appraisal, affirmation, or negation” of the order of knowledge (Foucault, 1977, pp. 156–157).” ⤴️
  • “history is contingent on shifting power relations, and the prevailing mnemonic regime in the context of this article was the Duterte administration allied with the Marcoses and their reclaimed political power.” ⤴️
  • “Counter-memory also works within this framework by “insurrecting” subjugated knowledges (Medina, 2011) through the fractures and disjunctures in the organization of historical knowledge. It resists the meta-narrative of history by infringing its unity, stability, and consistency to open new sites of contestations (Pickett, 1996). Our critique of this dominant line of analysis, particularly of contemporary counter-memory practices, rests on its assumption that the power of counter-memory is in its resistance to history.” ⤴️
  • “Power is purportedly drawn from the “critical potential of [publics’] dejected experiences and memories” to challenge dominant systems of knowledge production (Medina, 2011, p. 11). The problem with this is that history is only partly about what and whose memories are recognized and is primarily about how such memories are organized, remembered, and performed. To undermine history is to undermine its order of knowledge and for counter-memory to be mobilized as a counter-structure “to overcome the rulers through their own rules” (Foucault, 1977, p. 151).” ⤴️
  • “We propose the assemblage of counter-memory as an analytical framework to map the emergent counter-structures of remembering in and through digital media to subvert the historical order/s engineered by political establishments.” ⤴️
  • ““political agency emerges at the intersection of socially and technologically embedded media practices and experiences” (Kaun, Kyriakidou, & Uldam, 2016, p. 2). Political agency renders entities the “capacity to make a difference” (Giddens, 1984, p. 14) by undermining and appropriating political, social, and cultural structures. While individual counter-memory actors have this agency, it is the political agency that emerges from the relationships among individuals, narratives, and technology that changes the conditions of the assemblage’s “capacity” to resist history. This “relational” agency renders the assemblage a capacity beyond the rediscovery or rectification of memory (Foucault, 1977, and towards the reconstruction of history to shape the trajectories of reality.” ⤴️
  • “the locus of remembrance shifts from individual actors and personal commemorative practices to the assemblage of heterogeneous elements composed of actors,” ⤴️
  • “objects, and narratives that enact, materialize, and facilitate connective practices of remembering. We argue that “epistemic friction” (Medina, 2011) emerges when official histories not only contend with counter- memories but also with interfaces, algorithms, and platforms that construct and materialize “subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 2003) through the ways they govern the memory production, circulation, and consumption.” ⤴️
  • “the “connective” practices (Bennett & Segerberg, 2011) of remembering.” ⤴️
  • “As counter-memory and alternative histories about the Marcos regime become digitally embodied, they are consolidated within a networked structure and become malleable to the constantly shifting functionalities of the platform and the algorithmic logics that configure the network.” ⤴️
  • ““Openness, collaboration, aggregation, reinvigoration, and sustainability” (Liu, 2018, p. 1689) characterize memory construction online, afforded and linked by platforms to form a convergence of discursive formations from which memory is (re)constructed.” ⤴️
  • “the assemblage is about the reconfiguration of memory attuned to the political sensibilities of the time—on what is important to remember now and how it should be remembered in this context.” ⤴️
  • “Anger over the misrepresentation of the Marcos era as the “Golden age of the Philippines” spills over to the frustration about corruption by present-day government officials.” ⤴️
  • “The discourses have also positioned counter-memory as a heuristic by designating categories and boundaries to inform political judgment.” ⤴️
  • “capacitated the assemblage to reconstruct history “into totally new domains of generalization, practices and transformation” (Foucault, 1977, p. 134). When the “more usual forms of counter-memory” (Sheftel, 2012, p. 147) are futile in the face of political manipulation, there is a need to enlist the alternative of the alternative and breach the bounds of memory work.” ⤴️
  • “The emergence of nontraditional agents of memory attests to the role of platforms as alternative sites for memory construction, where individuals can “question, criticize, and satirize” institution-based historical agents and undermine sanctioned memory (Liu, 2018, p. 1685).” ⤴️
  • “The vulnerability of collective memory is buttressed by personal frames of remembering (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012),” ⤴️
  • “the formalities of public tributes are reappropriated into colloquial, everyday rituals in social media.” ⤴️
  • “Artifacts, references, and evidence are transformed into a bricolage where any point can be the beginning and can mesh with other materials in both contemporary history and ephemeral events.” ⤴️
  • “customary within the “conventions” of Twitter and its cultures of use. As such, the assemblage creates the conditions where these practices are signified as transgressive while also being allowed to persist as it creates its own conventions from the relationships of its components.” ⤴️
  • “What the assemblage does is push them as mainstream sensibilities and confer on them the power to shape the trajectories of the assemblage. Agency in an assemblage becomes mutable, introducing new capacities and transforming existing ones, and it magnifies (or erodes) its power to shape politics.” ⤴️
  • “the assemblage of counter-memory leverage the tensions of contested memory and draw from socially constructed narratives to buttress their historical accounts.” ⤴️
  • “contingent on political initiatives converging in mediated social spaces in a” ⤴️
  • “web of alternative remembering. T” ⤴️
  • “The multiplicity of intent and dynamism of the assemblage allows memory formation to coexist with political relationships” ⤴️
  • “Assemblages serve as the counter-structure requisite to disrupt history, reconfigure dominant systems of knowledge production, and resist memories and forms of commemoration that come from and are enacted by a select few” ⤴️
  • “By looking at counter-memory from an assemblage perspective, we depart from focusing on counter-memory as based on individual, community, or institutional acts of remembering; counter- commemoration is located in “new memory ecologies” (Brown & Hoskins, 2010, p. 94)” ⤴️
  • “a dynamic process constituted by heterogeneous elements actively engaged in connective practices” ⤴️
  • “Future work on counter-memory or the mobilization of memories for social action can use the assemblage approach to disentangle the complexities of remembering as it takes place in new media environments.” ⤴️
  • “Political opposition can gain inspiration from other data activism efforts that harness digital media by engaging it alongside “analog” forms of activism to maximize its potential for social change” ⤴️
  • “the power of counter-memory as enacted in digital spaces makes memory constantly accessible as scattered traces online, each possessing the potential to be (re)constituted by and within new assemblages.” ⤴️
  • “the centrality of actors deliberately using the informal communicative structures of social media to “make ad hoc connections around particular protest issues and events” (Poell & Rajagopalan, 2015, p. 1).” ⤴️