Elicited Memory : Holocaust memory on social media between everyday discourse and crisis-driven intensification

Abstract

This article develops the concept of Elicited Memory to explain how Holocaust discourse on social media shifts from persistent mnemonic undercurrents to heightened public salience during moments of crisis. Rather than treating Holocaust memory as either formally commemorative or diffusely embedded within everyday discourse, the article conceptualizes Elicited Memory as a crisis-driven mode of mediated remembrance in which historical analogies are activated as particularly prominent interpretive frameworks within networked media environments. The analysis draws on more than 9,000 Hebrew-language X posts collected during two major crises in Israel in 2023: the first 100 days of the judicial overhaul protests, and the first 100 days following the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing Gaza war. Using a mixed-methods approach organized around three dimensions – temporality, directionality, and vernacular articulation – the findings show that Holocaust references persist as a continuous mnemonic undercurrent within Israeli social media discourse while intensifying sharply during moments of political conflict and collective trauma. These intensifications emerge through interactions between elite interventions and networked circulation, alongside shifts from relatively flexible and often ironic Holocaust analogies during the protest period to narrower and more emotionally charged invocations during the war period. The findings suggest that existing distinctions between commemorative and non-commemorative memory do not fully explain how Holocaust discourse operates within networked crises. Instead, Holocaust memory functions as a dynamic interpretive resource through which political conflict, collective trauma, and moral uncertainty are publicly negotiated within digital media environments.