[Commlist] CfP Mnemohistory: Towards Long-Term Computational Research Approaches (TMG - Journal for Media History)

Call for Papers: Mnemohistory: Towards Long-Term Computational Research 
Approaches
Guest editors: Pieter Van den Heede & Berber Hagedoorn

URL: 
https://tmgonline.nl/announcements#call-for-papers:-mnemohistory:-towards-long-term-computational-research-approaches

General note: to contribute to this special issue, no payment of the 
authors is required.


General description:
The goal of this special issue of TMG-Journal of Media History is to 
explore how computational research methods, aimed at analysing 
large-scale media corpora, can complement existing research on what 
cultural historians Jan Assmann (1997) and Marek Tamm (2013) have called 
‘mnemohistory’. Mnemohistory refers to the history of how events, people 
and other developments in the past have been remembered over longer 
periods of time, in particular via diverse media forms (ranging from 
newspapers to broadcasting, social media, and beyond). Within this 
research tradition, the emphasis has long been placed on analysing 
individual case studies. For example, how individual commemorations of 
events such as national remembrance days have evolved over time (e.g., 
Raaijmakers, 2018). These histories have often been investigated using 
interpretative ‘close readings’, including of various media collections, 
resulting in analyses that examine these mediated commemorations in 
isolation without embedding them in wider commemorative patterns. This 
raises various questions. Do such individual commemorative histories 
align or deviate from wider (transnational...) ones? Can we identify 
broader commemorative trends within and across media formats when 
adopting large-scale data-driven approaches? And how do these approaches 
recalibrate how we study mnemohistory?
      Computational approaches, such as natural language processing 
(NLP), ‘distant viewing’ (Arnold & Tilton, 2019) and ‘computer vision’ 
(Smits & Wevers, 2021), can help us address these and related questions. 
Recent scholarship in this area has both yielded compelling empirical 
results and highlighted various methodological challenges. For example, 
Smits & Ros (2023) have demonstrated how online circulations of the 
iconic ‘Tank Man’ image, made during the Tiananmen protest in Beijing on 
4 June 1989, increased significantly in 2014 and 2019 in light of 
pro-democratic protests in Hong Kong – an observation that would have 
remained unnoticed without the adoption of computational approaches. In 
a study on how the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has been covered by Dutch 
television since 1986, on the other hand, Van Gorp & Van der Deure 
(2025) have shown how AI-technologies such as Automatic Speech 
Recognition (ASR), while promising tools for future research, raise 
various new methodological challenges that need to be identified and 
critically discussed first.
      With this special issue for TMG, we want to build on the current 
momentum to further deepen our understanding of mnemohistory through 
computational means. We especially want to do so by focusing on 
developments over longer periods of time, across decades or even 
centuries, in line with what French historian of the ‘Annales’ school 
Fernand Braudel described as the ‘longue durée’ (Braudel, 1958; 
Williams, 1974).

Central question:
How does the use of computational research approaches change our 
understanding of how the past has been remembered through various media 
over time?

Conceptual starting points:
For this call, we build on the following key concepts:
- ‘Mnemohistory’ (Assmann, 1997; Tamm, 2013): the study of changing 
memory cultures through various media over time
- Longue durée (Braudel, 1958; Williams, 1974): the study of media as 
evolving structural processes over longer time periods


Examples of possible topics:
We welcome articles on topics such as, but not limited to:

- Analyses of how specific events, people… have been commemorated 
through (public) broadcasting
- Comparative and entangled historical analyses of commemorations 
through print, film, television and other (digital) media
- Analyses of how social media recalibrate older commemorative 
discourses surrounding specific events, people…
- Analyses on voices and silences in mediated commemorations through time
- Analyses of how visual representations of historical events during 
commemorative moments have evolved through time


Methodological starting points:
For this special issue, we are explicitly seeking empirical 
contributions that utilise computational research approaches. We welcome 
contributions that employ natural language processing (NLP) methods, 
focus on audio-visual corpora, or target multiple data types (image, 
sound, text) simultaneously. Contributors are encouraged to critically 
reflect on the uses and limitations of the adopted methodologies in 
light of their empirical contributions.


Criteria for contributions:

Contributions need to be the following:
- Explicitly historical, preferably covering a period of multiple 
decades or longer
- Based on the computational analysis of large-scale (textual, 
audio-visual…) corpora
- Able to demonstrate the added value of a computational analysis (in 
comparison to an interpretative close reading)

Timeline:
- Abstract (max. 500 words): 15 October 2026
- Notification of acceptance: 26 October 2026
- Full contribution: 1 February 2027
- Peer review: February-April 2027
- Full paper deadline (if accepted): 15 June 2027
- Expected publication date: November 2027


Abstracts (including a short author bio) can be submitted to the guest 
editors of the special issue of the TMG Journal for Media History, dr. 
Pieter Van den Heede ((vandenheede /at/ eshcc.eur.nl)) and dr. Berber Hagedoorn 
((b.hagedoorn /at/ rug.nl)).

Contributions should be in English. Authors are to submit original 
papers that are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. No 
payment from the authors will be required. Final acceptance depends on a 
double-blind peer-review process of the manuscripts. Contributions that 
receive positive reviews but are not accepted for the special issue may 
be considered for publication in another issue of TMG Journal for Media 
History.

References:
- Arnold, T., & Tilton, L. (2019). Distant Viewing: Analyzing Large 
Visual Corpora. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 34(1), i3-i16. 
https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz013.
- Assmann, J. (1997). Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western 
Monotheism. Harvard University Press.
- Braudel, F. (1958). Histoire et Sciences Sociales: La Longue Durée. 
Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 13(4), 725-753.
- Raaijmakers, I. (2018). De Stilte en De Storm: 4 en 5 Mei Sinds 1945. 
Amsterdam University Press.
- Smits, T., & Ros, R. (2023). Space and Place in Online Visual Memory: 
The Tank Man in Hong Kong, 2013- 2020. In A. Rigney & T. Smits (Eds.), 
The Visual Memory of Protest (pp. 201-224).
- Smits, T., & Wevers, M. (2021). The Agency of Computer Vision Models 
as Optical Instruments. Visual Communication, 21(2), 329-349. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357221992097.
- Tamm, M. (2013). Beyond History and Memory: New Perspectives in Memory 
Studies. History Compass, 11(6), 458–473. 
https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12050.
- Van Gorp, J., & van der Deure, M.J. (2025). Speech-To-Local Data: 
Exploring ASR Files of Archived Television News (2004–2018) on the 1986 
Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and 
Television, 45(3), 600-619. https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2025.2522488.
- Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology and Cultural Form. 
Schocken Boks.


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