High School Students and Online Commemoration of the Group's Cultural Trauma

Abstract

This paper addresses the interaction of three equivalent issues: education, cultural trauma and the Internet. Theory suggests that the educational system plays an important role in the transmission and maintenance of the memory of a group's defining cultural trauma. However little is empirically known of the ways education influences the attitudes of younger members of a collective who struggle with the memory of the trauma. This study investigated the willingness of Jewish-Israeli high school students who relate to this trauma only through the educational system to engage in online commemoration of the trauma. Findings indicate a complex picture of how high school educational socialization is related to online commemoration of the group's cultural trauma, and suggest several future lines of research.