to a comment made by Croatian President Kolinda recent work I explore and discuss the noticeable
Grabar-Kitarović, who on her official state visit to turn towards online platforms for purposes of online
Israel in July 2019 allegedly referred to neighboring commemoration and advocacy, and the growing use
Bosnia-Herzegovina as an unstable country taken over of hashtags by memory activists in their memory
by militant Islam, many twitter users included the work. In light of the ‘connective turn’ (Hoskins,
hashtag #undercontrolofmilitantislam in their tweets, 2018), the field of memory studies is undergoing
to protest and mock the president’s comments (see developments and changes. According to Hoskins,
image 2). “digital technologies and media have transformed
Approaching the internet as a cultural space
remembering and forgetting”. Here I aim to shed
in which meaningful human interactions occur light on the ways these technologies and changes
(Markham 2018: 657) allows us to connect the study have also nuanced, enriched, or otherwise affected
of hashtag activism and hashtag memory activism to mnemonic practices and the ways memory activists
discussions of frameworks such as digitally mediated use hashtags in their memory work, which I refer to
connective action (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012) and as Hashtag Memory Activism.
mediated mobilisation (Lievrouw, 2011).
Memory activism has been the focus of my
research for more than a decade now, and in my
The use of hashtags has become prominent in
the growing phenomena of online commemoration
and online memory activism. In my current research
Left, Kosovo ambassador to the US tweet, May 30, 2019
Right, Emir Suljagić tweet, July 31, 2019
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