Remembering “Memory”: The Emergence and Performance of an Institutional Keyword in Communication Studies

Abstract

“Memory” is an increasingly invoked yet disparately conceived keyword in communication scholarship. With different significances that are endemic to distinct disciplinary enclaves, scholars who read and apply the word risk mistreating it as a primitive term that is devoid of contestation. In order better to understand the term's historical emergence and various (and sometimes incommensurate) conceptualizations, this study tracks “memory” through the past 55 years of communication scholarship. In tracing its emergence and applications across cognitive, relational (group), and public/cultural conceptions, the term may be recognized as an important marker and purveyor of the communication discipline's ideological divisions and theoretical multiplicities.

Notes

1. The term “group memory” was, by 2003, already established, but with a different meaning and in the context of business information systems (see Satzinger, Garfield, & Nagasundaram, 1999).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Todd Kelshaw

Todd Kelshaw is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Montclair State University. Jeffrey St. John is Faculty Fellow in the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University