Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest

Using the Watts riots and the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention as examples, Jill Edy tells how collective memories of troubled pasts emerge in public discourse and how these memories shape the representation of contemporary events. Edy develops a framework that identifies how collective memories are negotiated in the news, the characteristics of collective memory narratives, how those stories influence and are influenced by more recent events, and whose interests they serve. In so doing she offers contributions to the literatures on collective memory, media and politics, and theories of framing. She explores relationships among political leaders, journalists, and citizens and explores how competing frameworks of memory are synthesized or abandoned in response to changing power relationships and current events.