When Forgetting Becomes Digital: Social Memory in the Age of Digital Reproduction

The structure of social memory is in a process of significant change as social operations of forgetting and remembering are increasingly written in IT and mediated in digital media. Based on an in-depth case study about the digitalization of memory institutions (libraries, archives, museums), the paper demonstrates the emergence of a digital social memory structure that stores data as a means of forgetting. Building on such a concept, we explain the shifting structure of social memory from pre-defined, taxonomic order to algorithmic computation of artefacts and ordering. Finally, we draw implications from our study with regards to core organizational concepts of institutions and platforms as well as broader categories of information infrastructures and a sociology of digital knowledge.