1-2 . Commemoration material of the European Parliament on the 70th anniversary of the Schuman ’ s Declaration | © European Parliament
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This was one of the first online phenomena analysed by the Online Memories project , which was sponsored by the European Observatory on Memories in 2019 with the primary aim of collecting European narratives and online debates over commemorations and holidays in the EU context . Clearly , the technological shift instigated in the nineteennineties and the new forms of political participation through social media arising in the twentyfirst century have transformed the past decade , consolidating social media spaces since 2010 as lively structures with a major potential to have an impact on election campaigns and social mobilisations , to name but a few examples . However , relatively little attention has been given to the capacity of the various agents in these spaces to generate new discourses that can also serve as political weapons in the context of EU commemorations ( as shall be seen in the analysis of Europe Day ). This study focuses not only on the narratives themselves , but also on identifying the countries where the commemorations have had a greater or lesser impact online and on making comparisons of the year-on-year results for the same holidays . The principal challenge , however ,
involves the methodology – or to put it better , the creation of a new methodology .
In the field of history and in studies of historical memory , our familiarity with the use of procedures for online data mining is still limited . This is a shortcoming that calls for attention in the training given within the disciplines in question , because the internet of today amounts to the archives of tomorrow – and tomorrow is clearly here now . In order to prepare future biographies , the public profiles on social media will obviously provide crucial information ; today ’ s political conflicts and processes , such as Brexit or the Covid-19 crisis , have an online footprint that contains key data for any future historical reconstruction and analysis . The field of historical memory is not – nor should it be – apart or immune from this reality . Teamwork among professionals trained in the field of new technologies is vital to formulating the new methodologies that are required . For the present study , the collaboration of Dr . Mari Luz Congosto has proved crucial . Dr . Congosto has taken charge of collecting and processing the metadata used in the analysis and training the researchers on the project
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