Introduction: Unpicking the Automation of Memory Making

Abstract

In the introduction, we suggest that social media platforms increasingly seek out ways to recirculate people’s past content and to render it meaningful for the individual user, selecting what should be visible and rendering it manageable. In short, the book conceptualises social media as automated systems that are actively sorting the past on behalf of the user, whilst highlighting the way in which processes of classification and ranking operate together to enable memories to be resurfaced on social media and throwback features. The introduction situates this argument within the wider fields of the social study of metrics, quantification, and digital identities. It also provides an overview of the throwback feature called Facebook Memories, outlining its underlying logic as well as its conceptualisation of memories.