A new generation is changing the face of Holocaust remembrance, a morally laden subject that continues to captivate public imagination, spark controversy and generate dialogue, now by using social media. In summer 2010, controversy erupted worldwide as “Dancing Auschwitz,” a YouTube video of a Jewish family dancing at various Holocaust remembrance sites, defied the existing cultural narrative through a novel expression of Holocaust remembrance. The artifact exemplifies the larger debate whether technology aids memory as successfully as we believe or whether by freeing us from the burden encourages us to forget. We argue that virtual memorials can fulfill roles left vacant by more traditional forms of remembrance and open new avenues of communication and expression that allow participants, especially Germans and Jews, to re-mediate their identities. Virtual memorials can enhance the remembrance experience by cultivating fluid, interactive and creative spaces that encourage high degrees of participation, collaboration and self-expression. In the case study, YouTube users implemented three forms of remediation: role switching, redefinition, and disassociation. Despite the obstacles (e.g., destructive identity forces, commercial culture, and temporalities of social media trends), technology ultimately act as an aid to humanity’s deep-seated desire to remember.

Communicational criticism focuses on the ethics of literary address. It tends to show that writers who try to send some particular message may thereby allow their addressees relatively little scope for their own perceptions and evaluations. Other writers, by contrast, offer their audiences an opportunity to compare notes about life from within more than one life-world, so agreeing, as it were, to dis-agree when necessary. By engaging in this more “genuine” kind of literary communication, such writers can promote the post-postmodern goal of a globalization that is non-hegemonic, and not least through their handling of cultural memory. When they loosen up one-to-one correlations between particular ranges of memory and particular communities, cultural memory becomes a polyvalent resource for both personal hybridities and rainbow coalitions. In the present article, I illustrate this process from Anglophone literature, paying special attention to a number of postmodern novelists and an early modern poet.

Vietnamese Buddhism took hold and developed in France partly because it was able to obtain a monopoly on funeral rites and mourning rites. Many exiled families see the interest of this and delegate their ancestor worship to the monks. By combining the spiritual, socio-cultural, eschatological and political domains, and despite whatever generation gaps may exist, the pagoda allows families to reconstruct a social and family ethic in a context of social acculturation. It provides a fitting answer to the question inherent to the migratory context: how to find new symbolic resources outside of Vietnam? And it can thus implement a communication strategy that officialises, in the land of exile, the inextricable link between the pagoda and the assumption of responsibility for the memory of exiled ancestors.

Different disciplines and fields of study seem to be heralding the rise of an interdisciplinary scientific and intellectual movement focused on digital heritage, operationally defined as the ensemble of documents and information created in digital formats and subjected to preservation policies developed by individuals, companies and institutions. This article seeks to address some of the methodological challenges that – notwithstanding a diverse, thriving body of work that is currently contributing to the establishment of the scholarship on digital heritage – are currently facing scholarly attempts to consider digital heritage in its plurality. At the present, exploratory stage of the digital heritage scientific/intellectual movement, contributions to a reflection on the very foundations of this movement are needed, so as to refine the possible approaches of future digital heritage-related studies. This article is meant to provide such a contribution, drawing on the authors’ experience with interdisciplinary approaches to subjects of study such as alternative, decentralized infrastructures for Internet services, or the techno-legal governance of data, the commons and the public domain. The article reflects on practical tools, and epistemological/theoretical foundations, allowing to define and to include in the analysis all the facets of digital heritage – its archives, traces and instruments.

This article examines the preserving of the memory shared by collectors and mediators of objects from the Great War in the context of museum mediation. The notion of the memory is understood in this article as the body of knowledge acquired, held and shared by these collectors within the framework of their practice of collection and mediation. We look firstly at the informational and communicative dimension of these collectors’ memory. We show that the collector’s memory relating to the objects collected takes a variety of different forms and that it is primarily communicated in oral and gestural form. The results of our analysis lead us to the conclusion that, today, only audiovisual recording techniques allow preserving a precise copy of memories for the long term. The second part of our analysis presents an audiovisual protocol for preparing, recording and storage of these memory traces.

For a long time the question of the location of economic activities was reduced to the location of producers, the location of consumers being considered as a variable of secondary importance. However, with the increase of tourism mobilities, people tend to consume outside of the place they are used to living and in the future the presence or the absence of these temporary consumers could be an important stake for local economies. This paper aims at defining theses stakes by measuring these displacements of consumption between French areas.

What happens to a memory when it has been externalised and embodied but has not reached its addressee yet? A letter that has been written but has not been read, a monument before it is unveiled or a Neolithic tool buried in the ground – all these objects harbour human memories engrained in their physicality; messages intended for those who will read the letter, admire the monument and hold the tool. According to Ilyenkov’s theory of objective idealism, the conscious and wilful input encoded in all manmade objects as the ‘ideal’ has an objective existence, independent from the author, but this existence lasts only while memories are shared between communicating parties. If all human minds were absent from the world for a period of time, the ‘ideal’, or memories, would cease to exist. They would spring back to existence, however, once humans re-entered the world. Ilyenkov’s analysis of memories existing outside an individual human consciousness is informative and thorough but, following his line of thought, we would have to accept an ontological gap in the process of memory acquisition, storage and transmission. If there is a period, following memory acquisition and preceding its transmission, when memories plainly do not exist, then each time a new reader, spectator or user perceives them, he or she must create the author’s memories ex nihilo. Bergson’s theory of duration and intuition can help us to resolve this paradox. This paper will explore the ontological characteristics of memory passage in communication taken at different stages of the process. There will be an indication of how the findings of this investigation could be applicable to concrete cases of memory transmission. In particular, this concerns intergenerational communication, technological memory, the use of digital devices and the Internet.

One constant idea emerges from all of the studies regarding the relationship between journalists and PR practitioners: this relationship is a complex and ambiguous one. It is quite obvious that both participants aim at holding control over the production and distribution of information; despite this aim, it is certain that none of the two can develop a monopoly over such a process. The inter-dependency between the actors involved in this game is based on the interest in mutual co-operation showed by each of the participants. This very study stands for the fact that by means of the values they referred to, the Romanian journalists and PR professionals express attitudes that are similar to those of their colleagues from other countries where these two professions have a longer tradition behind.

The category of the “open” is currently spreading in discourses describing how the circulation of digitized cultural heritage should be implemented. Israel’s National Photographic collection recently underwent a change in its copyright policy: it seeks to enhance the circulation of the collection on digital networks while at the same controlling the political uses of these images. What are the conditions framing the publication and reuse of this archive on the Internet? The possible re-appropriations of this visual memory raise a legal and political debate around “open content” and its instrumentalization by propaganda.

If the witness becomes a part of the relationship between memory and communication, we contribute to the evolution of research on the testimony, particularly exposing the individual and collective patterns that form the basis of the gesture. Drawing on the work of interactionist sociology, in particular occupational groups, we propose in this article to trace key moments in the career of a witness and clarify the evolutionary relationship that he has with a group and / or society.

That manifest background needs to be elucidated as against intentional memory and imagination habits structured by our learning and operating with rules and pictures (representations) of language. That’s the background which is concealed by our very demonstrative forms of expressions meaning and speaking habits expressed by intentional gestures and gesticulations of meaning the surrounding differences and identities: As if they are self essential representative of their own truth and certainty, which is supposed to be meant by the demonstrative, intentional form of the expression. While on the other hand, such intentional demonstrative gestures and gesticulations of meaning operate as conditioned forms of expressions of truth beliefs of imagination and memory habits expressed in reaction to the differences and identities pictured (represented by names and descriptions) in deep oblivion of the internal signifying connections of the Use of pictures.

In this article I want to discuss the question if and how the World Wide Web changes social memory practices. Therefore I examine the relationship between the World Wide Web, social memory practices and public discourses. Towards discussing mediated memory processes I focus on the online discourse about the trial against the former concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk.

Public managers are graduated young people who passed trough an accelerated development program preparing them for careers at the highest levels of the Civil Service. Civil Service fast streamers are exposed to a range of placements in government departments and agencies and they are placed in regularly changing roles of intensive responsibility to prepare them for future senior managerial positions. Methodology: Interviews with major stakeholders took place in order to find out their opinions on the overall impact of public managers on the Romanian Civil Service over the last 3 years. More than 25 senior civil servants and 40 Public Managers were interviewed using both face to face and phone interviews. The research is the more important as the studies on the subject are almost inexistent and it approaches a group of people being in essence, policy advisers, project leaders, experts, liaison and many other job titles all in one. Therefore, it is highly important to understand the challanges and future prospects of those Public Managers as they represent a group of people able to meet the fresh challanges that come from the rapidly changing business and political environment.

Today, tourism is one of the major challenges for many countries and territories. The balance of payments, an ever-increasing number of visitors and the significant development of the tourism offer clearly illustrate the booming trend in this sector. This macro-economic approach is often used by the organizations in charge of tourism, WTO for instance. Quantitative assessments which consider the satisfaction of customers’ needs as an end in itself have prevailed both in tourism development schemes and in prospective approaches since the sixties.

Storytelling is old, but in our digital age its means are new. When an event of huge cultural significance occurs (such as the sinking of the Costa Concordia, the “Occupy Wall Street” Protest, or the coming of Boat-People to Europe) stories ricochet from TV to Internet, from cell phone to text message with a speed and proliferation unknown even a decade ago. We need new and effective ways to understand the making of cultural processes in a multi-media environment in order to learn and develop strategies to make sense of cultural shifts in a reduced and very limited span of time. My essay draws on research in both Memory Studies, Literary Studies and Media Ecology to open up the study of storytelling to old and new media psycho-dynamics so to start to develop a methodology of investigation that will facilitate a deeper understanding of the role of multimedia storytelling in the ways in which both individuals and groups cognitively and emotionally navigate profound cultural shift, as well as in the ways in which they create and preserve their memories through time and technological change.

More than two decades have passed since the fall of communism; meanwhile, a new generation has come to age in the post-communist countries, with no direct experience of the past, yet still influenced by it. In the pages to follow I try to bring the voice of young Romanians to the fore, for it is a voice which has scarcely been heard. How do young people communicate about a past that they did not experience but which nevertheless influences them? How do they appropriate the past and what does it mean for them? The hypothesis emerging from empirical exploration is that “communist” is the term that the youth uses to mark their distinction and rebellion against the adult generation. It is not as much a political category but an everyday term that would silence the “other” of youth, the adults. “Communists” are described as authoritarian, dictatorial, limited, rigid, and indoctrinated. While “communist” is a term that seems easy to describe, there is no clear and coherent opinion when it comes to “communism”. More often than not, young people adopt the standardised version of history textbooks and combine it with the stories heard from their parents. It is to be pointed out that often the two versions collide, the textbooks presenting the recent past in dark colours as abusive, dictatorial, totalitarian, while many parents emphasise the safety of work and lodgings

After taking care to redefine the concepts of trace, heritage and memory, we focus on the heritage process, which begins with the selection of traces and finishes with their interpretation until they become a collective memory. We shall examine in particular the dynamics of popular cultures, as opposed to academic cultures. Finally, we strive to evidence two major trend characteristics of the recent valorization of the popular heritage.

The Romanian seaside, a magnet for Scandinavian tourists in the past, encounters nowadays difficulties in finding its own place in the regional context of the Black Sea. Despite stagnation in modernising tourism structures, during the months of July and August the coast is full of tourists. The main focus of this survey is to identify the raisons of the tourist choices and the main issues in Romanian coastal tourism.

According to the authors of this paper, mass tourism does not generate the development of local communities but rather their devitalization. This paper presents a cross-literature survey on community-based tourism and local community development. It proposes some links between these two approaches and asserts that community-based tourism can be a strategy to trigger local community development. It address the conditions under which the convergence of these two approaches may allow the launching of development initiatives liable to counter the devitalization and impoverishment process which characterizes certain mass tourism oriented places.

The study of the town of Marrakech allows one to map the evolution of touristic housing, as well as the different ways of viewing the world attached to these accommodations. One can divide them into three big categories. Hotel clubs make up the first, unrated hotels the second, and Riad Guest Houses (RGH), the third. The three aforementioned categories represent three distinct stages in the evolution of touristic practices, with the later stages being characterized by a rejection of the now disparaged status of “tourist”. Hotel clubs are synonymous with mindless mass tourism while unrated hotels are generally patronized by cleverer backpacker and/or adventurer types. The third category is representative of a new generation aspiring to blend in to the point of becoming residents. While mass tourism is plainly associated with a dehumanized economic presence, the wish to adopt the status of resident can be read as a desire to legitimate one’s presence in the country, as well as to show one’s human and sensitive side. However, these changes have not yet managed to expunge from collective representations the figure of the tourist as a dim-witted and ridiculous putz – the “voyage idiot”. The reason for this is that the tourists themselves do not question this representation, especially not those who wish to distance themselves from it. Indeed they use it as a way to promote their own alternative touristic practices, symbolized by the unrated hotel and the Riad Guest House.

Based on the analysis of the diary’s textual form, this paper examines the way the latter is quoted and transformed with digital devices. Reviewing handwritten or digitised diaries, weblogs and Facebook, we observe the transformations of this textual form as well as the values invested by its users, devices and media. We compare the link with memory in each medium and the way it can – or cannot – be analysed in terms of writing the self, according to Foucault.

The dynamics of digitisation and globalisation are synergetically and dialectically changing the ways in which human beings individually and collectively capture, document, share and preserve memories of the past. This paper develops further the concept of the “globital memory field” with a discursive overview of the development of “digital memory” and the significance of zero in the meaning and practice of digital memory. The paper then explains the key elements of this epistemology, with an emphasis on the significance of zero or nothing in relation to two contrasting examples of the medical imaging of the human fœtus to the capturing and sending back to Earth by NASA’s Curiosity robot images from the surface of Mars.

Nowadays, the economic model of ski resort is perturbed by new pressure on lodging and development of short stays. Suburban resorts are particularly facing these new challenges. This article considers them as laboratories and aims to present the results of a consumers’survey.

Saly Portudal resort and Petite Côte are more and more privileged destinations for Europeans and French people, especially elderly. They tend to become permanent resident. They only go back to Europe just to have medical care or to pay visit to their relatives. This inversion of stay durations has a lot of economic and social stakes at a local level.

This article addresses the issue of the relationship between national and European dimensions, as overlapping identity structures of Romanian citizenship in the last years. The problem of a European identity became prominent in the context of the recent integration of Romania into the European structures. This paper presents a textual analysis of political platforms concerning European and national identities, as presented on the official sites of Romanian political parties during the 2009 European elections campaign.

This paper seeks to define commotional media cases, to describe their structure and to provide a few examples, for the period following the economic and social crisis in Argentina in 2001. Specifically, the article aims to highlight some features of the production of these cases, which facilitate their penetration into social memory. Thus, some routines are used to record news output into memory. Repetition is a mark of the production process of these cases: cases pass from one medium to another and from one day to another, every medium repeats the background in every news story and associates news with other similar cases which generates “waves” with other news of the same type, and appeals to the archive for editing timelines to synchronize with the news. Journalists often use an earlier case as a model for the interpretation of a new case, hence, bringing it back to life. Sometimes these cases disseminate impacting images, which synthesize the content of the crisis they represent. Many cases serve a mythic function, to which politicians appeal for building their own government myths, thus nourishing collective memory. Frequently interest groups arise from these cases, which are very informed audiences affected by an issue and that appear in the public space to defend a cause. These audiences create slogans and specific forms of social protest, and actively use the media to disseminate their frame, adding their discourse of the case onto other discourses.