Fenômenos memorialísticos online: cartografia da memória compartilhada da covid-19 no Instagram

Abstract

This work, "Online Memoir Phenomena: Mapping the Shared Memory of COVID-19 on Instagram," addresses the COVID-19 pandemic as a cultural trauma and explores how social media, particularly Instagram, have served as spaces for sharing and archiving collective memory, facilitating the construction of an uncomfortable heritage regarding COVID-19. The overarching aim of this investigation was to describe the process of memorializing COVID-19 through the cartography of shared traumatic memory on the Instagram platform from January 2020 to August 2023. The research began with the hypotheses that (a) the memorialization of COVID-19 in cyberspace is facilitated by the interactive power of interfaces and, at the same time, constitutes a creative, tactical, and collective appropriation of online platforms; (b) online memoir phenomena related to COVID-19 are rooted in the "museum phenomenology" and, in the Brazilian context, become potent tools for processing grief and recognizing cultural trauma, essential instruments for constructing a memory policy about COVID-19 in the country. Regarding the methodological procedures, this research employed a qualitativequantitative approach, considering the numerical aspects inherent to the digital realm. Through cartography with elements of ethnography, it was possible to immerse and intervene in the research field to construct an object of study. From an affective perspective, a map of the shared memory of COVID-19 on Instagram was created, identifying the space, connections, and affections related to the atypical experiences of the pandemic in Brazil and worldwide. With an emphasis on the Brazilian reality, it was possible to conclude that testimonial narratives and their archiving provide a unique insight into the Brazilian pandemic experience. Fragmented and controversial, the memorial performances on Instagram highlight new ways of remembering, silencing, and forgetting in the era of online platforms. Simultaneously, art and literature, within the mapped phenomena, created opportunities for encounter and reconnection with the sensibilities of survival amid chaos. Finally, it falls upon us, researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities, in the absence of therapy for collective trauma, to engage in the work of writing and memory, reintroducing that which cannot be denied or repressed in the present—the uncomfortable pandemic heritage. Therefore, I defend a museum and memory ethics that is at the service of developing a policy for the memories of Covid-19 in Brazil.