Dr Benjamin Jacobsen benjamin.jacobsen@durham.ac.uk
Post Doctoral Research Associate
‘You Can’t Delete a Memory’: Managing the Data Past on Social Media in Everyday Life
Jacobsen, Benjamin N
Authors
Abstract
This article explores how the data past on social media, in the form of packaged ‘memories’, is managed by people in everyday life. Drawing on interview and focus group data, I examine how people make sense of data as ‘memories’ and how these are negotiated and managed when considered painful, awkward, or simply ‘out of place’. As such, the article outlines and discusses three specific ‘tactics’ used to manage the data past in everyday life. First, I explore the use of ‘deletion’ and how it foregrounds ways in which people seek to render certain aspects of their data past invisible, especially memories considered painful or inconsistent with the current view of self. Second, through the tactic of ‘delaying’, the article examines how some participants sought to delay emotional engagements with digital memories rather than to delete them. Finally, the tactic of ‘linking’ highlights the ways in which people sought to make sense of data as memories that were insufficiently contextualised, disjointed, or that felt simply out of place. As such, the article contributes to our understanding of the ways in which people make sense of data as well as some of the complex dynamics inherent in contemporary digital memory work.
Citation
Jacobsen, B. N. (2022). ‘You Can’t Delete a Memory’: Managing the Data Past on Social Media in Everyday Life. Sociological Research Online, 27(4), 1003 - 1019. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804221110237
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jun 9, 2022 |
Online Publication Date | Nov 7, 2022 |
Publication Date | 2022-12 |
Deposit Date | Apr 6, 2023 |
Publicly Available Date | Apr 11, 2023 |
Journal | Sociological Research Online |
Electronic ISSN | 1360-7804 |
Publisher | SAGE Publications |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 27 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 1003 - 1019 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804221110237 |
Files
Published Journal Article
(99 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
You might also like
Machine learning, meaning making: On reading computer science texts
(2023)
Journal Article
Machine learning and the politics of synthetic data
(2023)
Journal Article
The tensions of deepfakes
(2023)
Journal Article
When is the right time to remember?: Social media memories, temporality and the kairologic
(2022)
Journal Article
Regimes of recognition on algorithmic media
(2021)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search