Collective Memory Of "New Media Incident"

The research of collective memory on new media events is a challenging academic frontier that not studied deeply. In this paper, we started from the concept of collective memory, analyzed the group of college students’collective memory on new media events, which included the problems of whether a collective memory on a certain new media events had been formed, how many sides one collective memory could have and how it worked.We adopted qualitative method, mainly focus group, as well as questionnaire survey method. Firstly, the results show that the group of college students does have a set of collective memories on the new media events. Secondly, different genres of new media events have differences in the content of collective memories, the emotions and opinions and the process that collective memories are formed and the behaviors of the audiences. Thirdly, the agent of college students, the content of media and media use do have different influences on collective memories. As an exploratory study, this research focused on the collective memory of new media events for the first time in the Communication field.From aspects of audiences, this study enriched the connotation both of collective memory and new media events. At the same time, this study contributes to an understanding of the new media events, as well as the formation of the collective memory whose impact is huge on current Chinese society, and also an understanding of the group of college students, which would be valuable for guiding and educating the college students.