1. Introduction
With the advent of increasingly sophisticated communication technologies and with progressive temporal departure from the historical circumstances that marked the “destruction of European Jewry” [
1] about 80 years ago, the employment of digital technology has emerged as a specific topic of research in the field of Holocaust studies. As a number of scholars have highlighted, “the cosmopolitan Holocaust memory of the new millennium is synonymous with digital technology” [
2] (p. 331). Efforts to save and preserve historical archives combined with attempts to safeguard the testimonies of the last survivors have resulted in numerous undertakings based on the use of advanced digital technologies. The first prominent initiative came from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Institute for Visual History and Education (formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation), a non-profit organization dedicated to recording interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides [
3]. Subsequently, progressive diminishment of the witness era [
4] has further marked the need to preserve testimonies through digital means. One such initiative, the New Dimensions in Testimony, gathers a collection of survivor testimonies in interactive 3D format in a quest to safeguard the possibility of real-time, question-and-answer virtual dialogue with survivors to learn about and appreciate their life experiences [
5,
6]. In this vein, the idea of a “virtual Holocaust memory” has advanced, embracing both digital and non-digital memory related to the Holocaust and, at the same time, drawing attention to the pervasive nature of the virtuality of memory itself [
7].
Overall, digital culture opens up new opportunities for externalising collective memories and, in this regard, social media settings may be considered the main arenas of mediatized memory that are increasingly globalised and transcultural [
8,
9,
10]. Due to technological transformation and the increasingly mediated nature of communication, digital memory is progressively becoming “unanchored” from localised contexts, making both individual and collective memory timeless and spaceless [
11,
12].
In this light, Holocaust memorials, remembrance centres, and institutions have had a solid presence on the Internet for a considerable time now, curating websites, mailing lists, and other digital services [
13,
14]. Museums use and produce diverse media to transmit and communicate memorial content, including standard printed media, multimedia productions, (often hands-on) media stations, interactive software, and web-based material and services. Franken-Wendelstorf, Greisinger, and Gries [
15] explained how the “learning location museum” has expanded into digital space. Furthermore, museums, libraries, and related cultural institutions have started using social media for the development of digital social archives [
16]. Indeed, social media have become standard means by which Holocaust museums, memorials, and institutions disseminate knowledge and reach out to the public, e.g., for publicising upcoming local events.
Within the specific research subfield of social media memory studies [
17], which investigates digital memory of historical events such as those related to the Holocaust [
11,
18], social media Holocaust studies have become a topic of scholarship in its own right. Some recent projects in this area, such as Eva.Stories on Instagram (
https://www.instagram.com/eva.stories/) and the Anne Frank video diary on YouTube (
https://www.youtube.com/annefrank), have raised considerable controversy. However, the interest in engaging new generations through novel forms of agency in relation to media witnessing and mediated memory is not something that can be dismissed in principle, as they exemplify the co-creation of socially mediated experiences [
19]. Although mass culture has increasingly become prominent in the provision of historical knowledge [
20], some scholars argue that traditional Holocaust memory environments, such as memorials, cinema, and television, are no longer suitable for contemporary digital users; they see the need to “resurrect” Holocaust commemoration, creating immersive and more engaging memories [
2].
For the most part, much critical debate about social media use has focused on so-called dark tourism at Holocaust memorial sites [
21], namely visitors taking selfies and other tourist photographs and subsequently sharing them on social media with hashtags [
22,
23,
24]. By contrast, little research has focused on proactive social media use by Holocaust institutions, such as memorials and museums [
21,
25,
26,
27]. In today’s digital age, Holocaust museums act both as physical monuments and as mediated and virtual spaces and are thus located at the intersection between commemorative memory and mediated memory [
12]. In this sense, they have a multifaceted mandate that covers commemoration, engagement/education of site visitors, enlightenment of the general public’s understanding of the past, as well as strengthening or challenging of historical narratives [
28]. Along with archives and libraries, Holocaust museums are public spaces that constitute prime social “memory institutions” and, today, represent the most significant repositories of national and community memories of the Nazi genocide [
29].
In this vein, museums position themselves at the intersection of Holocaust memory studies and the emerging field of digital history by making content accessible beyond the physical spaces of museums, research institutions, or archives [
25]. However, today, the general expansion of social media into the realm of cultural heritage, not least that of Holocaust remembrance, also raises serious concerns about competing forms of local and national memory, including the narratives conveyed through museums [
30]. Despite controversial cases of “multidirectional memory” [
31], museums serve to reassure patrons thanks to the legitimacy and authority that people tend to accord to these cultural institutions, especially when set against the confusion of Internet sites promoting antisemitism and treating Holocaust denial as historical truth [
29,
32].
More recently, the restrictions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural institutions and heritage sites have accelerated the proliferation of digital memory [
33]; a growing use of social media has been a natural response to the limitations posed specifically on in situ socialisation, thereby giving impetus to a shift from complex onsite digital technology to online social media. Various campaigns, such as #RememberingFromHome and #ShoahNames, were launched by Yad Vashem [
34] to celebrate Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day and to foster engagement, participation, and users’ active response through sharing, posting, and commenting, thus configuring new memory ecologies [
35].
This study analyses how three Holocaust museums—Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Auschwitz–Birkenau Memorial and Museum—use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to engage their communities both at the content-page and at relational levels. The aim is to investigate what communication strategies the three museums adopt regarding generated content, interactivity, and popularity; these are examined in terms of typology of published content as well as engaging terms and hashtags.
6. Discussion
This study investigated how a sample of prominent Holocaust museums and organisations use social media to engage their audience about topics related to the Holocaust. The results of this preliminary investigation show that, in general, the three Holocaust organisations are quite active on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, although with differing capacities to attract followers and to engage with them. Overall, the three profiles are more active on Twitter than on the other two social media, and publication date does not seem to influence the capacity to attract followers or to frequently produce content. At the same time, notable differences emerged. While AMM’s activity is well established, especially on Twitter, with the highest number of followers and tweets published daily, USHMM is more (globally and daily) active and popular on Facebook; conversely, YV seems to invest more into YouTube videos. The particular popularity of AMM’s Twitter profile is highlighted by the high average number of retweets per tweet. USHMM’s Facebook page has the highest number of shared posts; they have had a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for more than 10 years now, and this testifies to their social media commitment. This prioritisation is also reflected in the declaration of the Auschwitz–Birkenau Memorial and Museum to invest in “a place for discussion which is not available on the official website” [
67] and to engage with Holocaust mockers and deniers [
68]. In a similar vein, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has recently released a document in which they advocate the role of social media in countering Holocaust denial and providing accurate knowledge for history lessons [
69]. Instagram adoption is a more recent phenomenon, and here, no significant differences emerge between the three museums except for the more pronounced growth rate for USHMM and AMM. With respect to YouTube activity, Yad Vashem has a long tradition of video production, which is also reflected in the number of subscribers/fans and interactions related to their channel.
Regarding the first research question (content type), the data show that the three museums tend to publish new or original contents on their social media profiles except for AMM’s Twitter profile, where there is a prevalence of reposted (retweeted) contents produced by third parties. This demonstrates that the Polish museum’s Twitter profile acts as a “bridge” among other Holocaust organisations’ profiles, thus contributing to cross-referencing and network-building among Holocaust commemoration bodies. Further research might investigate how social media is used for community building among Holocaust organisations, with opportunities for the development of cooperation strategies and experiences [
27]. As for content media typology, AMM and YV have a stronger tendency to publish Twitter content that contains images and/or links to external resources, while USHMM seems to prefer textual information. This trend is also reflected to some extent on Facebook, where USHMM tends to publish textual content accompanied by links to external resources while YV and AMM make extensive use of images and YV of video content. In this regard, future research might also investigate the relationship between the use of images and visual content and user engagement, following the example set by some recent forward-looking research studies [
46]. Finally, as far as Instagram is concerned, the only institution to make (limited) use of video in addition to the more standard picture or carousel posts is USHMM. However, further research is needed to study Instagram’s aesthetic visual communication and how Instagram grammar [
70] encourages conversation and empathy, especially in youth discourse [
22].
In response to the second research question, interactivity was found to be globally higher on Instagram, where no major difference emerged among the three museums in terms of post interaction and general interactivity, although USHMM and AMM posts seem to attract more comments. More specifically, the situation changes completely when considering Twitter, where AMM has by far the highest engagement level, also borne out of the high number of likes per tweet that it attracts. However, if we look at the average number of tweet responses to tweets on a given day in relation to the number of followers (Twitter interaction), there is no significant difference between YV and AMM, showing that more content published does not necessarily mean more user interaction. On YouTube, we found a significant level of passive participation, with a high number of views and likes but no active responses in terms of comments left. However, the most interesting outcomes from the data analysis are in regards to Facebook. The multifaceted metrics available on Facebook activity such as the number of fan posts and interaction with these posts allows for a deeper analysis of how content co-construction unfolds on this social media platform. While USHMM’s Facebook page allows users to post their own photos or other content, the other two profiles do not allow active participation in their page content. Despite this, USHMM has a very low reaction rate to visitors’ posts and, more generally, there is a lack of interaction among the page users themselves. This points to a broadcast-mode use of social media, which is broadly in line with previous studies showing a tendency towards mono-directional communication [
26,
47]. This trend has been emphasised in other studies, which have highlighted the passivity of “Holocaust institutions whose staff members prefer one-directional communication, ‘broadcasting’ a carefully shaped, widely acceptable message via social media but refusing to engage further and bring their considerable expertise to bear on the difficult moral questions of how to develop an appropriate communicative memory of war crimes and what political consequences to draw from that memory” [
2] (pp. 323–324). However, as stressed in other studies [
24], the way in which AMM, for instance, engages with Instagram followers shows that it can be possible to exert less control over new channels of communication and representation, thus allowing Holocaust-focused institutions to assume an increasingly visible role in transnational social media Holocaust discourse. Nevertheless, further study and more rigorous methodological approaches are required to understand how Holocaust institutions are placing users (and their responsibility for the content they choose to post on social media) at the centre of the debate on sociohistorical agency in the digital age. In the case of this preliminary study, no specific evidence emerges that there has been an erosion of institutional power over how Holocaust organisations and Holocaust memory are presented and curated [
24] or how social media users are exercising agency in the co-construction of Holocaust digital memories [
42]. Further research is needed to support these claims as well as to investigate how the perceived threat and actual manifestation of antisemitic and hate speech may be factors potentially conditioning the way memorials approach and embrace social media [
26].
Finally, the third research question regards the type of content that mostly strongly engages fans/followers. This entailed latent semantic analysis of the most frequently used hashtags and words. The analysis has revealed a set of terms and hashtags that refer to the basic lexicon of Holocaust history, which attests to users’ strong interest in historical knowledge and less emphasis on the recent past or on analogies between contemporary events and WWII history. In this light, as Kansteiner [
2] (p. 324) has highlighted, Holocaust-themed social media pages seem mostly to represent “a cyberspace address where [the subscribers] can hang out with peers, pursue their genocide memory interests by adding a thoughtful facet to their virtual selves, and then return to their comfortable lives”. Another matter of concern relates to the centrality of Auschwitz, both as a hashtag used by Holocaust organisations and as a broad topic of Holocaust discourse. This is reflected in the dominant popular perception of the Holocaust in which Auschwitz and related imagery represents an icon of the spatiality of the Jewish genocide [
71,
72,
73]. Whether the centrality of “Auschwitz” overshadows—and hence inhibits—topical discourses on final solution topics that are less familiar to the wider public is an issue worthy of more in-depth future research, as is whether it poses problems of the overall paucity of Holocaust remembrance, such as the Holocaust by bullets [
74].