"Remembering Baidu Tieba": Individual Memory Writing And Collective Memory Construction Of Netizens

With the development of Internet technology and new social media,the choices of netizens are becoming more and more diverse.Netizens who used to use Baidu Tieba are slowly reducing the frequency of Tieba use or have given up using it.On May 13,2019(hereinafter referred to as the "513" event),Baidu announced that it was "unable to access posts made before 2017",and the deletion of the Tieba incident sparked a lot of discussion among posters.Although the Tieba is not as "hot" as usual or has been withdrawn from the lives of many posters,due to their common identity as "former posters",netizens from different regions and backgrounds have regrouped under the issue of Zhihu.However,because of their common identity as "former posters," netizens from different regions and backgrounds reunited under the Zhihu issue and established a community of "nostalgic posters," through which netizens gained a sense of spiritual identity and belonging.In their eyes,although the Tieba life has become a thing of the past,the past "Tieba life" has been preserved as a "collective memory".The construction of collective memory needs to be based on communication media,and every change of media is pushing the transformation of social structure and changing the subject and way of constructing collective memory.Social media have changed the inequality between the transmitter and the receiver in the era of mass communication by empowering individuals to narrate and be heard,and individuals are playing an increasingly important role in the construction of collective memory.Previous studies have tended to focus on the shaping of individuals’ "memory" and "identity" by systems and organizations and other subjects of power,ignoring the initiative and motivation of individuals to construct collective memory as subjects of memory practices,and concealing individuals’ ontological needs for identity.This paper is based on the "513" concept.This paper is based on the Tieba of netizens on Zhihu platform that focus on nostalgia for the past after the "513" incident and the collective memory formed onthe Internet.The study explores how posters construct collective memory from the bottom up through personal memory writing and interaction in the social media environment,and examines the three core issues of memory research: "content of memory","path of memory construction",and "reflection on memory",The study explains the performance and characteristics of "memory reflection" in the social media era.This study finds that the Zhihu platform enables posters from different generations to write and interact with each other across time and space through temporal defusion and contextual reconstruction,constructing collective memories through the interweaving and reproduction of individual memories and strengthening identity and emotional belonging,enabling people to find a sense of security and belonging in a society full of modernity crisis.It not only alleviates the anxiety caused by the rapid changes in social media,but also allows the posters to feel the pleasure and spiritual comfort of confiding in each other.From the perspective of "the shimmer of memory",this paper focuses on the writing and interaction of individual memories with spirituality and texture,presenting the complex interaction between individual memories and collective memories in the social media environment,clarifying that individuals also have the meaningful need to seek identity and emotional belonging in the interaction of memories within a group or system,and also focusing on the meaningful need to seek identity and emotional belonging because of the "513" incident.We also summarize and reflect on the results of individual memory writing and collective memory construction as a result of the "513" incident.