UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

e-mediations thereof, is used in selected Facebook profiles particularly in relation to dealing
with present socio-political situations in post-Yugoslavia. Moreover, I investigate the potentiality
of this SNS as a vernacular memorial platform for re-articulation of ideas of ‗new
Yugoslavia/Yugoslavism.‘
The analysis approaches the (multimodal mobile media) object of investigation as a digital
memorial whereas the related digital storytelling practices (as elaborated on in the previous
Chapters) are understood as the central tenets of co-creating historical and memorial narratives on
Facebook. Importantly, the analysed ‗historical profiles‘ are seen as digital memorials because the
space of remembering and sociability they create facilitates the emergence of very loose, on-thefly
communities, members of which co-creatively partake in the ‗construction‘ of that space by
sharing-in their individual/intimate thoughts, songs, videos. By posting links to videos and other
content, by commenting on and discussing various topics a process is underway of creating a
complex digital memorial. This process, significantly, facilitates the remediation of audiovisual
and textual records of the Yugoslav past. Albeit in a radically transient manner.
The co-creation in this case, on the one hand, effectively presupposes individual externalisation of
memory (in a decidedly many-to-many manner). On the other hand, a vernacular individual
externalisation at least to some extent (not necessarily ‗on purpose‘) features as a memorial
(although quite imperfect in terms of longevity/access). Audiovisual and textual content is posted
into the public space and thence collectively wrought into a fragmented, perpetually evolving
narrative. With this in mind I argue that as much as memory in DME can be seen as on-the-fly, so
can digital memorials: constantly shifting and changing, growing or withering, and, as 4MOs,
constantly on the move between users, subject to mediality.
A note on 4MO is in order: historical Facebook profiles are understood here as 4MO in that they
‗host‘ and serve as a crossroads of intertwining textual comments, descriptions, discussions and
(embedded) videos, links to news/web sites, particular articles more or less directly related to the
past, present and future of Yugoslavia; at that they also fulfil the condition of mobility of digital
media objects. 324 The key feature that makes a (not only historical) Facebook profile a 4MO are
the networked characteristics of the synergy of the posted content (status updates, video links,
news) and user activities (discussions, comments) and the externalisations of memory and
remembering at work in such co-created environment. The underlying question here is: How and
for what purposes the Yugoslavia related Facebook profiles utilise Facebook functionalities? What
324 In this C hapter I am not looking at ‗real personal‘ profiles but exclusively at profiles that ‗personalise‘ Yugoslavia
or a particular aspect of the country‘s past.
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