Historical Injustice in Digital Media

Timetable

The course is scheduled for winter semester 2026/2027, detailes will be given in September (hybrid classes)

Module aim (aims)

This module introduces students to memory conflicts over the meaning of the past, fought through contemporary media ecosystems (social media platforms, YouTube, Wikipedia, visual culture). Students learn how such conflicts intersect with historical injustice (genocide, mass violence, reparations, symbolic recognition, competing victimhood) and how they are represented, contested, and instrumentalised in digital and popular media.

The module combines:

• theoretical foundations (cultural memory; historical injustice; politics of history),

• methodological training (content analysis, discourse/framing, metaphor analysis, platform-sensitive approaches),

• case studies (Eastern Europe as a key laboratory of “web wars”, plus selected comparative examples).

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

• English at A2 level (reading academic texts).

• Basic digital literacy (search, platform navigation, basic data handling).

• Openness to discussing sensitive topics (memory conflicts) with academic rigor and respect.

Syllabus

1. Mapping Europe’s memory conflicts over historical injustice
   (Intro + course logic; what “historical injustice” means in practice.)

2. How the Past Becomes Public: Cultural Memory in Action
   (Foundations: cultural/communicative memory, debated pasts.)

3. Historical Injustice: Vocabulary, Claims, Disputes
   (Core concepts; recognition, responsibility, contestation.)

4. From History to Now: When the Past Enters the Present
   (Presentism, political time, “unfinished histories”.)

5. Metaphors That Move Politics
   (Cognitive metaphor as a tool for analysing memory and injustice talk.)

6. Seeing Injustice: Images, Icons, Visual Narratives
   (Visual semiotics / iconography as method; media literacy for visual claims.)

7. Platform Arenas I: Where Memory Wars Actually Happen Online
   (Affordances, attention, algorithmic amplification — general platform logic.)

8. Platform Arenas II: Video Cultures and Historical Storytelling
   (Video as a narrative machine; creators, audiences, comment cultures.)

9. Platform Arenas III: Encyclopedic Authority and Edit Conflicts
   (Neutrality, sourcing battles, credibility contests; “edit wars” logic.)

10. Workshop: Building a Mini-Corpus (Ethics + Sampling + Documentation)
    (How to create a manageable dataset for a final project.)

11. Workshop: Coding Narratives (Content Analysis for Memory Conflicts)
    (Actors/events/values; blame and victimhood grammars.)

12. Workshop: Frames, Claims-Making, and Discursive Strategies
    (How different actors “make” injustice legible and politically usable.)

13. Regional Case Cluster: Eastern Europe
    (As an example module label — details/countries set later.)

14. Regional Case Cluster: Central Europe
    (As an example module label — details/countries set later.)

15. Regional Case Cluster: Southern Europe
    (As an example module label — includes room for reparations/occupation memory debates.)

Reading list

1. Rutten, E., Fedor, J., & Zvereva, V. (Eds.). (2013). Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States. Routledge.
   https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203083635 (primo.bgu.ac.il)

2. Assmann, A. (2021). Cultural Memory. In A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva, & V. D. Volkan (Eds.), Social Trauma – An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 25–36). Springer, Cham.
   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47817-9_3 (Springer)

3. Assmann, J. (2011). Communicative and Cultural Memory. In P. Meusburger, M. Heffernan, & E. Wunder (Eds.), Cultural Memories (Knowledge and Space, Vol. 4). Springer, Dordrecht.
   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8945-8_2 (Springer)

4. Werner, W., & Vovchuk, L. (2023). Central Figures and Events of Ukrainian History in the Light of Content Analysis of the Ukrainian Historical YouTube Channels from 2014 to 2022. East European Historical Bulletin, 28, 239–252.
   https://doi.org/10.24919/2519-058X.28.287545 (ResearchGate)

5. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language. The Journal of Philosophy, 77(8), 453–486.
   https://doi.org/10.2307/2025464 (pdcnet.org)

6. Gralik, D., Trzoss, A., & Werner, W. (2021). Polish Historical Narration and National Identity in the Light of Studies at YouTube. Historyka Studia Metodologiczne, 51(Special Issue), 223–249.
   https://doi.org/10.24425/hsm.2021.138887 (journals.pan.pl)

7. Werner, W. (2016). Land, History and Imagination, or Remarks on the Foundations of the New Patriotism. Historia@Teoria, 1(2), 13–29.
   https://doi.org/10.14746/ht.2016.1.2.02 (pressto.amu.edu.pl)