Skip to main content

Reflections on the Underdeveloped Relations between Journalism and Memory Studies

  • Chapter
Journalism and Memory

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

In the 2008 inaugural issue of the journal Memory Studies, Barbie Zelizer claimed that ‘memory’s work on journalism does not reflect journalism’s work on memory.’ Her charge to colleagues was clear: ‘As journalism continues to function as one of contemporary society’s main institutions of recording and remembering, we need to invest more efforts in understanding how it remembers and why it remembers and why it remembers in the ways that it does.’ In the pages that follow, I take up this charge, albeit in a rather schematic fashion: for as a memory scholar and historian of memory studies (Olick and Robbins, 1998; Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy, 2011), I am one of the guilty who has not given journalism its due.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Assmann, A. and Conrad, S. (eds) (2010) Memory in a Global Age: Discourse, Practices, and Trajectories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartlett, F. (1995 [1932]) Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, P. and Luckman, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dayan, D. and Katz, E. (1994) Media Events: The Live Broadcast of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edy, A.J. (2006) Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Unrest. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erll A. (2011) ‘Travelling Memory,’ Parallax, 17(4), 4–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gitlin, T. (1981) The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gombrich, E.H. (1997) Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography. London: Phaidon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halbwachs, M. (1925) Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitch, C. (2005) Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lang, K. and Lang, G.E. (1989) ‘Collective Memory and the News,’ Communication, 11, 123–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levy, D. and Sznaider, N. (2005) The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neiger, M., Meyers, O. and Zandberg, E. (eds) (2011) On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nora, P. (ed.) (1984–92) Les Lieux de mémoire, 7 vols. Paris: Edition Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nora, P. (1989) ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,’ Representations, 26, 7–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olick, J.K. (2005) In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943–1949. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olick, J.K. and Robbins, J. (1998) ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,’ Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 105–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olick, J.K., Vinitzky-Seorussi, V. and Levy, D. (2011) The Collective Memory Reader. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, K. (2004) May ′68 and its Afterlives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothberg, M. (2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schudson, M. (1981) Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schudson, M. (1993) Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Starr, P. (2005) The Creation of the Media: Political Origins ofModern Communication. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sturken, M. (1997) Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuchman, G. (1980) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, B. (1992) Covering the Body: the Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, B. (2008) ‘Why Memory’s Work on Journalism Does Not Reflect Journalism’s Work on Memory,’ Memory Studies, 1(1), 75–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2014 Jeffrey K. Olick

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Olick, J.K. (2014). Reflections on the Underdeveloped Relations between Journalism and Memory Studies. In: Zelizer, B., Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K. (eds) Journalism and Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263940_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics