Constructing Cultural Memory Through Commemorative Journalism: Memory Assemblages in The Oklahoman 's Route 66 Coverage

This study examines how The Oklahoman , Oklahoma's leading newspaper, constructs collective memory through its commemorative coverage of Route 66. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 411 articles published between 1981 and 2024, we identify five recurring memory assemblages in the newspaper's representation of Route 66: nostalgia and romanticization, freedom and mobility, commemoration and cultural heritage, economic revitalization and tourism, and selective memory and exclusion. Rather than treating these as isolated themes, we interpret them through Memory Assemblage Theory, an interpretive framework that conceptualizes commemorative journalism as bringing together symbolic, affective, spatial, and ideological elements within news discourse. Our findings show how The Oklahoman repeatedly assembles these elements to produce a coherent public memory of Route 66 that celebrates regional identity while privileging some histories and marginalizing others. By applying assemblage thinking to a longitudinal corpus of local news coverage, this study contributes to scholarship on journalism, cultural memory, and commemorative reporting by demonstrating how local newspapers organize multiple dimensions of memory into durable narrative formations.