checkpoints. By doing so, it allowed them to place to help people better understand the Palestinian
Palestinian heritage, the memories of expulsion and struggle. It allows diaspora Palestinians, mostly
the narratives of the refugees themselves, at the from North America, to connect and act together in
center of the story, and of the commemoration of the the digital sphere.
Nakba 70 years later.
These very short excerpts from my current
Situating these narratives and images of the
research on Hashtag Memory Activism highlight
Palestinian presence and culture from the early 20th the importance and innovation of this framework
century in Palestine, participants assert not just of analysis in the study of memory politics. This
their membership of a culture but also their political framework can be used for the examination of
mnemonic claims. As Yousef Munayyer, a US-based mnemonic struggles both in and after conflict
Palestinian rights advocacy activist put it: and helps to retrieve a rich body of empirical
4
data through social network analysis methods.
“there is a tremendous
amount of ignorance and
misinformation and even myths
about Palestinians in general,
and Arabs and Muslims more
broadly… as being uncivilised
cave-dwellers who only came
to existence once Israel did…
when I posted my thread, I
placed a picture of my family,
of my grandparents wedding
day in the 1920s… in the popular
imagination, such images of
Each hashtag has its own genealogy, political
and mnemonic context, and various creative uses
as a mnemonic practice. Each one thus reflects
processes of participation and articulation as well as
dynamics of change, and highlights the importance
of the study of memory activism and online
commemorations and its contribution to critical
peace and conflict studies.
Bibliography
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people… an image that does
not fit the limited stereotype
of Palestinians as terrorists….”
(Interview with the author, Skype, May 7, 2019) (see
Image 5).
The decision to use the hashtag only in English
and not in Arabic reflects the effort to target the
campaign at a Western audience and, more broadly,
overview
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