Remember, Remember, 11 September: Memorializing 9/11 on the Internet

The events of 11 September 2001 continue to attract the interest of political elites and publics across the world. This article takes as its focus an unusual and contemporary collection of efforts to commemorate those attacks and their victims, exploring the emergence of a series of Internet memorials dedicated to the preservation of their memory. By positioning these memorials both historically and politically via an investigation of their form and their functions, two lines of argument are pursued. First, that their multi-textual construction, participatory potential and dynamism signal an interesting and important mnemonic shift within social memory practices. And second, that the appeal of these websites lies in their location at the intersection of two related political logics: the first a politics of symbolic exchange, the second a promissory politics of hope.