From "silent generation" to cyber-psy-site, story and history: The 14th Tank Brigade battles on public collective memory and official recognition

Miri Gal-Ezer

doi:10.5817/CP2012-2-4

From "silent generation" to cyber-psy-site, story and history: The 14th Tank Brigade battles on public collective memory and official recognition

Vol.6,No.2(2012)
Special issue: Generation and mediated relations

Miri Gal-Ezer

https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2012-2-4

How to Cite:

Gal-Ezer, M. (2012). From "silent generation" to cyber-psy-site, story and history: The 14th Tank Brigade battles on public collective memory and official recognition. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 6(2), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2012-2-4

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Abstract

This audience research case study focuses on the Israeli 14^th Tank Brigade veterans, who were involved in the 1973 Yom Kippur War horrific battles against the Egyptians in the Sinai Desert. In 2007, this offline traumatised remembrance community constructed an online commemorative and historical website to advance their unrelenting struggle on public recognition in the Israeli national collective memory and military history. The theoretical framework combines diverse perspectives: the Yom Kippur War and its consequences on Israeli society; theories of generations and media generations, war and trauma, war and remembrance; and Israel's collective memory and culture of remembrance. An integrated methodology offline and online was conducted: multi-sited and multimodal "Thick Description" ethnography and netnography; critical discourse analysis and semiotics of texts and artifacts; and in-depth interviews with veterans and historians. Findings are constructed on three levels: first - analysis of veterans’ interrelations with common Israeli culture of memory, and their active participation as a "remembrance community" in creating cultural artifacts offline and online; second – interpretation of Israeli cultural codes in battlefield "actuality", even under the most traumatic conditions; and third - the universal state level, analysis of the deep conflict impelling the remembrance community to write the Yom Kippur War battles also as history in their cybersite, thus attaining public recognition. This case study demonstrates the war veterans’ ability of "Breaking the Silence", empowering their traumatised community by bridging the "generation gap" of their "actual" "media generation", by merging their comradeship and high cultural capital, towards official affirmation within Israeli military history.

Keywords:
media generations; battle-trauma; remembrance community; digital memorialisation; cultural capital; netnography; multi-sited and multimodal ethnography

Author biography

Miri Gal-Ezer

Miri Gal-Ezer (Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a Lecturer at the Department of Communication, Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel. Her research interests include: visual communication, documentary, TV and digital genres, personal and collective memory, sociology of language and CDA, audience reception studies, sociology of art and culture, media and feminism, and the body. Recently, she was a guest editor for the special issue of the academic journal Language and Intercultural Communication; she serves as a peer reviewer to this journal and more. She has published both in international and Israeli journals, won research grants and stipends, and is currently involved in several studies - audience reception study of TV series, Israeli Arab middle class, the Israeli social protest, communities of remembrance. She also works as an art advisor, researcher and curator; is a member of Israeli public art committees. She is involved in Israeli journal special issue initiatives and guest editing, art exhibition for 2013 and more. Her book: Israeli Canonic Art Field was accepted for publication (Hebrew). Formerly – lecturer in Emek Yezrael College, Hebrew University and more. Programme planner, Founder and Director of Art Education Centre, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art; Founder and Director of on-job training programme in Communication Studies for high school teachers - Oranim College, and a supervisor for the Ministry of Education Media Studies for teachers.

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