This chapter examines the growing prevalence of digital memory activism and online commemorations on social media, emblematic of what Hoskins calls the ‘connective turn – the sudden abundance, pervasiveness, and immediacy of digital media’ (2018a, 1). I propose the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework as an analytical approach to studying digital memory activism and online commemorations, and define hashtag memory activism as the online commemoration of contested pasts on social media utilizing hashtags as a mnemonic practice. Thus, hashtag memory activism is a mnemonic tactic that enables and even strengthens the creation of alternative platforms for remembrance, through the sharing and disseminating of alternative knowledge about a contested past in the midst of or after conflict. I examine the ways memory activists use existing online platforms, particularly social media applications such as Twitter (as well as Facebook and YouTube), to innovate and complement their existing ongoing mnemonic practices. Indeed, hashtag memory activism, as well as online commemorations, are never isolated online actions but appear in connection to local memory politics unfolding onsite, demonstrating the inseparability of digital communications from the practices and processes of remembering (Merrill et al. 2020).

The use of hashtags as a mnemonic practice, and one that has become most common among the younger (second) generation of memory activists, is my focus here.