Connecting with the past through social media: the ‘Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost’ Facebook group

Abstract

This article examines responses to the loss of heritage places through an analysis of a Facebook group, ‘Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost’, which includes photos and discussion about buildings and places that have been demolished or obliterated in the city of Perth, Western Australia. In doing so, it grapples with a number of issues; feelings about the loss of heritage, the nature of social media and the social capital it generates, and emotional communities and nostalgia. It argues that in showcasing lost buildings and places from the past, social media such as Facebook enhances both awareness of and collective attachment to the past by facilitating public expression of emotional responses to the past and forming an emotional community that can be utilised to generate the social capital needed to mobilise against the destruction of heritage buildings and places.

Keywords:

• social media
• social curation
• heritage loss
• nostalgia
• emotional communities
• social capital

Acknowledgements

A preliminary version of this article was delivered at ‘Why Does the Past Matter?’, a conference held by the Center for Heritage & Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 4–7 May 2011. Thanks to two anonymous IJHS reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments on this article.

Notes

1. This article refers to Facebook ‘groups’ and ‘pages’. Facebook differentiates between them as follows. ‘Groups provide a closed space for small groups of people to communicate about shared interests. Groups can be created by anyone. More privacy settings (open, closed, secret) are available for groups. Group members must be approved or added by other members. When a group reaches a certain size, some features are limited. Pages allow real organisations, businesses, celebrities and brands to communicate broadly with people who like them. Pages may only be created and managed by official representatives. Page information and posts are public and generally available to everyone on Facebook. Anyone can like a Page to become connected with it and get News Feed updates. There is no limit to how many people can like a Page’. The ‘Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost – a photo history’ is a group.

2. In 2012, Facebook advised that the group would have to be archived and migrated to Facebook’s new design. This design altered the way groups could be set-up and, although the content was retained, members had to rejoin. In October 2013, it had a membership of 929.

3. A simple alphabetical and date formula was devised to code comments. This used the initial of the commentator’s first name and a number that denoted date order of comment. e.g. Jenny, 1 January = J1; Jane, 2 January = J2; John, 3 January = J3; Jim, 4 January = J4; etc.

4. There has been considerable theoretical discussion about the distinction between emotion and affect (Leys 2011). The focus of this article is on emotion as opposed to affect.