Making mediated memory work: Cuban-Americans, Miami media and the doings of diaspora memories

Abstract

How are mediated memories brought into being? In other words, how can we understand the ways personal and public memories are enacted in environments that have become increasingly digitally networked? Following this fundamental question for current interrogations of the entanglement of media and memory, we first develop a concept of mediated memory work. Instituting experiences and senses of the past, these time- and space-bound efforts interweave with arrangements of people and their social relations, cultural discourses, objects and media environments. Capitalizing on such an understanding of mediated memory work, the article demonstrates how and to what ends the enactment of memories can be empirically studied by using the example of the Cuban-American community in Miami. In particular, building on participant observation, in-depth interviews and media ethnography, we outline practices, cultural artefacts, communal bonds, compassionate relations and a media manifold that have been employed by different segments of a diasporic collective in shaping how the country of origin and the exile is to be remembered.