This book offers a relevant contribution to the studies of streaming media and transmediality with an original approach of cultural sustainability perfectly intertwined with cultural memory beyond borders. By critically reflecting on popular streaming media series, the book identifies their impact on the global circulation of cultural memory, their learning potential for educational purposes, and the societal challenges and opportunities that emerge from the ubiquitous streaming media penetration and potential for participatory practices. It also investigates how series available worldwide on commercial platforms such as Netflix and Max contribute to the global circulation of cultural memories, in addition to illuminating the ethical, (un)sustainable, and educational concerns involved in the fictionalization of the past. Drawing on the authors’ expertise in media studies and history, this transdisciplinary book will interest scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, memory studies, history, transmedia studies, education, postdigital studies, television studies, social communication, sociology, and philosophy.

Introductory paragraph: The highly successful South Korean Netflix series Squid Game significantly contributes to the circulation of cultural memory—particularly through its nostalgic portrayal of childhood experiences—within a global postdigital framework. Despite its strong reliance on South Korean culture and childhood reminiscences, Squid Game has emerged as the most successful Netflix series to date (Garcia-Navarro, 2024). The narrative centers on six childhood games, including the widely recognized game Red Light, Green Light (known as Statues in North and South America, or Fairy Footsteps in the United Kingdom).

Focusing on the 2019 HBO mini-series Chernobyl, this study discusses the potential ethical implications of the fictionalization of historical events represented across multiple media platforms to examine the potential impact fictionalization has on what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten. Theoretically, the paper is based on the conceptualization of cultural memory (Assmann 2011; Erll 2011) and the Peircean conceptualization of ethics (Shepperson 2009) applied to a transmedia context (Gambarato and Nanì 2016) to discuss potential ethical implications for and impacts on what is remembered and what is forgotten regarding the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster (Gambarato, Heuman and Lindberg 2022). Methodologically, the paper is structured as a case study underpinned by the multidimensional analytical model developed by Erll (2010), adopted to elucidate how the cultural memory of the mini-series Chernobyl is mediated amid its ethical implications shaped by the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction spread across multiple media platforms. This analytical model involves the intra-medial aspects of how memory is expressed within the representation itself, the inter-medial relations that designate the interplay with other representations of the same historical event, and the pluri-medial contexts in which memory-making representations are received and exert influence, encompassing reception and discussions in diverse media spheres. The research findings indicate that a deeper understanding of historical fiction as a genre has the potential to alleviate the ethical implications of the series, thus enriching the audience interaction and guiding public discussions toward new perspectives. The inherent tension within the genre not only gives rise to ethical considerations for the audience as they navigate the gray area between fact and fiction but also accentuates the compelling nature of Chernobyl as a representation that ingrains memories of the nuclear disaster into the public sphere.

References

Assmann, Jan 2011. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Erll, Astrid 2010. Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory. In: Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds.) A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter, 389–398.

Erll, Astrid 2011. Memory in Culture. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo and Alessandro Nanì 2016. Blurring Boundaries, Transmedia Storytelling and the Ethics of C.S. Peirce. In: Steven Maras (ed.) Ethics in Screenwriting: New Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan,147–175.

Gambarato, R. R., J. Heuman and Y. Lindberg 2022. Streaming media and the dynamics of remembering and forgetting: The Chernobyl case. Memory Studies 15 (2): 271–286.

Shepperson, Arnold 2009. Realism, logic and social communication: C.S. Peirce’s classification of science in communication studies and journalism. Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies 22 (2): 242–294.

The aim of this study is to discuss the potential ethical implications of the fictionalization of historical events represented across multiple media platforms – under the powerful umbrella of streaming media services en général and Netflix in particular – to examine the potential impact fictionalization has on what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten. Combining theoretical approaches from transmedia studies and cultural memory, the article addresses possible ethical conundrums involved in the Netflix historical drama series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: The Crown. Methodologically, the article is structured as a case study underpinned by the multidimensional analytical model proposed by Erll, chosen to explore how the blurred lines between fact and fiction of the flagship historical drama The Crown could have ethical implications for and impact on what is remembered and what is forgotten regarding recent memories of the British Royal Family. The research findings indicate that a deeper understanding of the conventions of the historical fiction genre, as well as the transmedial ramifications of streaming media productions, could potentially mitigate the ethical implications of The Crown, going above and beyond fact and fiction.

The aim of this article is to contribute to a discussion on the challenges of and opportunities for using major streaming media platforms and fictional streaming series in an educational context. The article departs from research on the post-digital condition, platformization, cultural memory, and cultural sustainability. The tangible interest in cultural memory and heritage studies indicates the current need to include streaming services in these research fields, as the platforms for streaming media are vectors of popular culture and heritage in terms of digital archives. With the help of Astrid Erll’s analytical model, the authors argue that perspectives from cultural memory studies are useful for deepening the learning potential of fictional series on streaming platforms. The article also supports the idea that major streaming services can be used in education as a supplement to other cultural resources if the potential sustainability risks are considered.

The decolonization of Algeria with the Algerian War of Independence from 1954?1962 placed Jews in a vulnerable situation. The purpose of this study is to expose to what extent and in what way the French anti-racist organizations paid attention to the situation of Algerian Jews before, during, and after decolonization. The focus is on the Paris-based Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l?antisémitisme (LICA, today LICRA), the Mouvement contre le racisme, l?antisémitisme et pour la paix (MRAP) and the Ligue des droits de l?homme (LDH). Although the organizations? attitudes differed, ranging from ignorance to commitment to the Jews in Algeria, they did not support the Jews in Algeria with any important campaigns or demonstrations. While the LDH largely ignored the Jewish dilemma, the MRAP tended to portray the future of Jews in independent Algeria as bright. The LICA was the only one of the three anti-racist organizations that openly denounced antisemitism in the Arab world, while it never initiated any anti-racist campaigns in favour of Jews in Algeria. Overall, the article argues that the lack of significant anti-racist responses is characteristic of the silent disappearance of Jewish culture and society from Algeria.

The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a shift from campus classrooms to distance education in higher education worldwide, shaping not only students’ experiences, but also those of teachers, especially those who never have taught online. In addition, the pandemic created a meta-context that has positioned distance education as something different from previous efforts. This study aimed to investigate higher education teachers’ experiences during the transition from classroom to online teaching by using a collective auto-ethnography method based on 13 personal stories from Swedish faculty. For the abductive approach in the analysis, a framework that combines lifelong learning theory with the context collapse concept has been applied. The disjuncture that the pandemic has elicited created a situation in which teachers had to make sense of the fact that their previous experiences did not completely fit the new situation. Context collapse, a term used to describe encounters with many audiences in social media, has been introduced to highlight the clash between professional and private contexts in online educational platforms. Based on lifelong learning theories, we suggest that context collapse should be examined in terms of how it can help improve higher education, as it holds the potential to include the entire person – body and mind – in education.