Trauma in the Digital Age. The Representation, Transmission, and Processing of Trauma on Social Media

Since the 2000s, social media networks have introduced major changes in the way people are regularly exposed to content related to the traumatic experiences of others (wars, catastrophes, individual disasters, violence, and rape). Social media provides information even in cases which mainstream (state-run) media do not cover. Exposure to traumatic content may have an unsettling effect on users, but social media is also used for processing trauma. This project investigates the representation, transmission, and processing of trauma – individual as well as collective, historical, and intergenerational – in the digital environment.

The project focusses on how each digital media platform shapes trauma-related communication according to their affordances. It draws on case studies linked to different social media platforms including Facebook groups related to the Holocaust; transnational migratory trauma in Hungarian migrants’ blogs; contemporary implications of the Treaty of Trianon as transmitted via YouTube; the resilience of gender-based trauma victims in connection with the #MeToo campaign on Twitter; and a comparative analysis of bystander behaviour during the Holocaust and in a digital context, including the study of cyberbullying on Facebook and Instagram.

CV: Anna Menyhért is Professor of Trauma Studies at the Budapest University of Jewish Studies. From 2016 to 2018, she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, she led the Trauma and Gender in Literature and Culture Research Group at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Her research interests include trauma studies, social media studies, memory studies, critical theory, and women’s writing.

Organized in collaboration with Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies /Das Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien (VWI).