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Researching Holocaust Education and Activism on Social Media

by Dr Stefania Manca How is Holocaust memory being reshaped in the age of TikTok, Instagram, and digital activism? Drawing on her journey from educational technology to digital Holocaust memory and education, our latest visiting fellow explores how social media can both distort and revitalise the memory of the Holocaust. I have been a researcher in educational technology for almost 30 years, focusing on the opportunities and challenges of using digital tools in education. My background in education sciences has helped me develop methods and strategies to integrate digital practices into teaching and learning. In 2018–2019, I decided to connect this professional expertise with my long-standing personal interest in the Holocaust. This step marked the beginning of my engagement with Holocaust memory and education through a digital lens. I started a Doctoral programme in Education and ICT (e-learning) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain, with a project entitled “Teaching and learning about the Holocaust on social media: A learning ecology perspective.” Since 2011, I had already been studying the use of social media in education, so it felt natural to bring these two fields together. At the time, research in this area was still scarce, as highlighted in [...]

By |2025-09-11T11:48:51+01:0011 September 2025|
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Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised about #AI #Auschwitz, and What We Can Do About It

By Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Last week the BBC reported on spammers sharing ‘AI slop’ images of Auschwitz for profit. In this week’s blog, we respond to their article, reflecting on our years of research into Holocaust memory and AI. On Friday 29th August, the BBC published an article with the headline: ‘BBC reveals web of spammers profiting from AI Holocaust images.’ Whilst this might seem shocking, it shouldn’t be, and far from ‘spamming’, which can be considered a flippant action, the individuals involved in these profit-making schemes are using social media in conscious and sophisticated ways – as its logics intend it to be used. This should make us stop and ask: are platforms like Facebook good for Holocaust memory? On one hand, it would be easy (especially in the current political climate) to say, ‘not really’. On the other hand, if Holocaust museums and educational organisations want their authority to remain recognised widely, they need to be not only be present on these sites but enhance their visibility. As our previous research has argued (Walden 2021), professional Holocaust organisations need to adopt the strategies of apparent ‘bad actors’ if they want their messages to circulate as much as [...]

By |2025-09-02T13:32:24+01:002 September 2025|
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Digital Holocaust Memory – Resources and Readings

Over the summer, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab team members are busy taking well-deserved breaks. Whilst our blog goes on hiatus, here are some suggested reads from our back catalogue which might help inspire or inform your autumn teaching, research and practice. The remit of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab is broad – we conceptualise ‘the digital’ as socio-technical and thus connective, and as an entanglement of human and computational actancies. But what does this mean in practice? Firstly, it means our research covers a range of different digital media, this includes computer games. Last year we hosted an international junior research associate, Austin Xie, from the University of Chicago who thought through the challenges of navigating Holocaust memory in computer games shared in two blogs on our site, part I and part II. We also launched recommendations for using VR, XR and computer games. We captured more on these topics in our blog archive, check out pieces on Playing Memories,  Reading Call of Duty, and student ideas for Holocaust computer games. The first series of our new Digital Memory Dialogues also focuses on this topic asking to what extent can the Holocaust be made playable in computer games? This [...]

By |2025-08-28T13:23:52+01:0014 August 2025|
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Three Phases of Digital Holocaust Memory Development

By Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Through artificial intelligence, machine learning, crowdsourcing, digitisation, VR, AR and computer games, we take you on a tour of some of the world’s most prolific digital Holocaust memory initiatives by way of the theory of the ‘three stages’ of development. To argue that there are three phases of digital Holocaust memory development is not to suggest a clear and simple historical chronology from the 1990s – when digital technologies were first introduced into this arena – to now. Rather, this proposition offers a framework for mapping the different types of approaches organisations take when adopting digital media for the sake of Holocaust memory. These three phases are: the experimental, the normative, and the connective, and they define the different relationships organisations have with digital technology and cultures through their work. Let’s take a closer look at each of them. Experimental Phase This phase acknowledges periods of enthusiasm for a new medium, often led by a ‘what if?’ curiosity among a handful of digital advocates or a desire to shake up the status quo. During this phase, creators are explorative and playful with a medium’s possibilities, they’re not afraid to take risks and can be inquisitive [...]

By |2024-11-11T14:29:45+00:0023 October 2024|
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Listening in Latin America: Digital Holocaust Memory and Education in Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador

by Dr Kate Marrison Research fellow Dr Kate Marrison recently returned from Lima where she held a roundtable discussion with professionals working in the field of Holocaust education from Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador. This is what she found out. While there is a proliferation of scholarly interest in the digital development of Holocaust commemoration and education across Europe and the US, little attention has been paid to this work in Latin America. Last month the Memory Studies Association annual conference took place in Lima, so we took the opportunity to bring together colleagues to discuss their work within Holocaust organisations in Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú. To kick off, I asked contributors what digital interventions they had brought to their organisations and what are the challenges and opportunities they bring. Participants discussed some fascinating examples of their practice. They included a virtual tour of Museo del Holocausto de Buenos Aires and the first survivor interactive biography to be recorded in Spanish as part of the Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) project in collaboration with The Latin American Network for Education on the Shoah. Examples from Brazil included open-access online educational materials created by Museu [...]

By |2024-11-28T11:17:01+00:0022 August 2024|
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Holocaust Education and Social Media: What Young People Really Think 

by Dr Kate Marrison Dr Marrison reports from a recent event which brought together young people from across the UK to further their understanding of the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance.  We’re familiar with the pros and cons of social media, but what role can it play in Holocaust education, memorialisation and commemoration? This was the topic of a workshop I ran this month in London with an audience of 30 16-to 25 year olds at the Holocaust Educational Trust’s annual Ambassador Conference (AmCon). The Ambassadors come from across the UK and from a range of backgrounds. The initiative tasks young people to be ‘the driving force’ behind efforts to make sure that British people understand and remember the Holocaust.  Holocaust survivors and other educators were also present.  The workshop explored how museums, memorial sites and professional memory institutions harness social media. We kicked off with a quiz asking which were the most popular social media platforms they engage with – Instagram, Tiktok and Snapchat – and which three words describe their thoughts about social media being used for Holocaust education.  Attitudes varied from those optimistic about the potential of social media (‘educational’, ‘important’ and ‘useful’), to those who expressed [...]

By |2024-11-28T11:17:22+00:001 August 2024|
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Capturing Experiential Authenticity at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

For many people, a visit to the Auschwitz Museum is a highly affective and important event. The thoughts, feelings and memories created during a visit constitute an authentic experience, which museumgoers are keen to capture and remember. This is often undertaken through the use of digital devices and social media posts – but what are the potential challenges of using technology onsite, and how does the Museum respond to this form of memory-making? On Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, we welcome guest blogger Imogen Dalziel, who explores these issues and suggests how the physical and digital can come together to further shape visitors’ experiences. Auschwitz's Authenticities The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum prides itself on being an ‘authentic site’ (e.g., Cywiński 2015). This term is oft used in public discourse to describe historical places, particularly those where atrocities happened. These sites provide material evidence of the tragedies enacted here. In academic literature, however, the concept of authenticity is a complicated one, long-debated and widely interpreted across a diverse range of academic fields, reaching far beyond ideas of what is real or true (see: Trilling 1972; Handler 1986; Phillips 1997; Lovell and Bull 2018, and others). Due to spatial constraints, I shall not fully [...]

By |2024-11-28T11:24:04+00:0027 January 2021|
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TikTok #HolocaustChallenge

A few weeks ago on Twitter, I pondered whether there was a place for Holocaust institutions on TikTok, then posts with the hashtag ‘#HolocaustChallenge’ went viral on the platform and hit international headlines. It has taken me a while to come to write something on this topic. As soon as I took some much needed leave (with no internet signal), of course, a major digital Holocaust memory debate took place. Context: From Holocaust Denial to Holocaust Distortion There is increasing and necessary discussion taking place within the Holocaust education sector about not only online Holocaust denial, but Holocaust distortion. Yehuda Bauer, Honorary Chairman of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) has recently argued in a series of keynote lectures that Holocaust distortion is one of the greatest threats to the work of those who are trying to educate about this past. We see examples of distortion at political levels – such as the controversial ‘Holocaust Law’ in Poland, which tries to prevent acknowledgement that some Polish individuals and communities were antisemitic and/or were responsible for the murder of Jewish individuals during Nazi Occupation of Polish land. We also see examples of distortion through trivialisation of the Holocaust into commercial products such as face [...]

By |2024-11-28T11:23:02+00:0010 September 2020|
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Contact

Landecker Digital Memory Lab
University of Sussex
Falmer Campus
Brighton and Hove
East Sussex
BN1 9RH
LandeckerDigitalMemoryLab@sussex.ac.uk

Contact

Landecker Digital Memory Lab
University of Sussex
Falmer Campus
Brighton and Hove
East Sussex
BN1 9RH
LandeckerDigitalMemoryLab@sussex.ac.uk

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