Presentation at 6th European Conference on Social Media - ECSM 2019, 13-14 June 2019, Brighton, United Kingdom

1. Holocaust memorialisation and social media.
Investigating how memorials of former
concentration camps use Facebook and Twitter
STEFANIA MANCA
INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF ITALY, ITALY
STEFANIA.MANCA@ITD.CNR.IT

2. A Holocaust Story for the Social Media
Generation
https://youtu.be/tJecRvcVlZI

4. Study Background
“The next generation will tell their own story in their own words with whatever
means they have at their disposal. Our job is not to dissuade them from using their
voice and the technology at their fingertips but rather to encourage them to do it
with care, with dignity, and humanity” Branko Lustig, a Holocaust survivor
With the passing of the generation that witnessed the Holocaust, Holocaust
education will progressively rely on audio-visual testimonies and second and
third generation accounts. Advances in communication technology and the
ongoing expansion of the Internet will make new forms of Holocaust education
available, presenting a new range of opportunities and challenges (Gray, 2014).
Holocaust scholars recommend forms of Holocaust commemoration that engage
future generations via alternative accounts and perspectives that are
nonetheless firmly grounded in fact or based on respectful research (Berberich,
2018).

5. Teaching and learning about the Holocaust on social media:
An ecological learning perspective
• Informal
Learning
(Learning
ecologies)
• Survey tools,
interviews, focus
groups,
ethnography,
etc.
• Memorialisation
of the Holocaust
• History of the
Holocaust
Holocaust
education
Holocaust social
media pages and
profiles
Learning the
Holocaust on
social media
Field research
(secondary
school, out-of-
school, etc.)
Review of the literature, Social
Media data analytics, interviews to
social media managers, etc.

6. Some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to
Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s regime from 1933 to 1945.

7. Aims of this study
As stressed by Gray (2014: 105), “there is [still] a distinct absence of research on
how the internet and in particular social media impact on students’ knowledge and
understanding of the Holocaust, as well as the way that they perceive the subject in
terms of its relevance and importance”.
For this study we considered the main camp complexes under the SS Inspectorate of
Concentration Camps and the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office or
WVHA-D (the camps that historians have designated as “concentration camps”; see
Caplan & Wachsmann, 2009)
This study provides a preliminary analysis of Facebook pages and Twitter profiles of
23 memorials of former concentration camps located across Europe. The
overarching aim is to investigate how these memorial organisations engage the
public through social media, both at content page level and at relational level.

8. Out of the 23
memorials
organizations
investigated,
the majority
(N=17) have a
Facebook
page, while
only about a
third (N=9)
are active on
Twitter.

10. Methods and tools
To investigate the communication strategies of Facebook pages and
Twitter profiles, two sets of metrics were used to provide preliminary
evidence of memorials’ engagement at three levels: generated
content, interactivity and popularity.
This study used a quantitative approach based on a combination of
manual scraping and social media data analysis platforms such as
LikeAlyzer and Fanpage Karma to retrieve data from Facebook pages,
and Twitonomy from Twitter accounts.

11. Facebook page Twitter account
Content Number of posts (FPK)
Posts per day (FPK)
Post format (Photos, Links, Videos; %) (FPK)
Events (M)
Tweets (TWT)
Tweets per day (TWT)
Tweets with #hashtags (TWT)
Tweets with links (TWT)
Interactivity Fans can post (LA)
Post interaction (%) (FPK)
Engagement rate (%) (FPK)
Retweets by the profile (TWT)
Replies (TWT)
Tweets with @mentions (TWT)
Popularity People like this (M)
People follow this (M)
Reviews (M)
Likerank™ (LA)
Followers (TWT)
Following (TWT)
Followers ratio (TWT)
Likes (M)
Retweets by users (TWT)
Tweet favorites (TWT)
The complete list of metrics
FPK=Fanpage Karma; LA= LikeAlyzer; TWT=Twitonomy; M=Manual.

12. Demographics
Facebook page Twitter account
Name Links
to SM
Creation date Unique or main
languages
Creation date Unique or main
languages
Natzweiler-Struthof No 5/2/2014 French - -
Kamp Vught No 25/5/2011 Dutch 16/10/2011 Dutch
Dachau No 25/9/2010 German - -
Flossenbürg No 20/12/2010 German - -
Buchenwald Yes 5/8/2011 German - -
Mittelbau-Dora Yes 15/10/2013 German - -
Sachsenhausen No 17/6/2016 German/English 6/7/2016 German
Ravensbrück No 5/1/2012 German - -
Bergen-Belsen Yes 6/10/2010 German 3/11/2017 German
Neuengamme Yes 26/6/2013 German/English 7/10/2014 German
Mauthausen Yes 28/12/2016 German - -
Ebensee Yes 1/10/2017 German - -
Gusen Yes - - 21/12/2009 English
Terezín Yes 11/3/2013 Czech 11/5/2017 Czech
Auschwitz Yes 13/10/2009 English 21/5/2012 English
Gross-Rosen No 23/7/2012 Polish - -
Majdanek Yes 17/2/2013 Polish/ English 18/10/2016 Polish/English
Stutthof Yes 1/12/2010 Polish 11/12/2010 Polish

13. Results: Content, interactivity and
popularity of Facebook pages
Great variance
among the
various social
media services
was observed,
with many
showing limited
activity or low
engagement
levels
Data refer to the
period
6/11/2018-
3/12/2018
Content Interactivity Popularity
No.of
posts
Posts
per
day
Post
format
(Photos –
Links –
Videos) (%)
Eve
nts
Fan
can
post
Post
interac
tion
(%)
Engage
ment
rate
(%)
People like/follow
this
No. of reviews
and (rating)
Lik
era
nk
™
Natzweiler-Struthof 40 0.3 55-23-23 27 Yes 3.27 1.05 4801/4831 123 (4.8) 71
Kamp Vught 96 0.7 46-40-15 0 Yes 0.46 0.33 3228/3122 188 (4.7) 65
Dachau 1 0.0 100-0-0 8 No 3.23 0.12 4705/4795 3095 (4.4) 50
Flossenbürg 17 0.3 59-35-0 7 No 1.47 0.37 2042/2061 106 (4.8) 55
Buchenwald 34 0.3 6-91-3 15 No 0.69 0.22 5926/5990 629 (4.9) 52
Mittelbau-Dora 8 0.0 63-13-0 5 No 0.82 0.03 1627/1642 105 (4.7) 53
Sachsenhausen 15 0.1 53-47-0 25 No 1.23 0.13 1714/1803 309 (4.7) 54
Ravensbrück 30 0.4 80-17-0 6 Yes 1.32 0.47 1647/1686 87 (4.5) 66
Bergen-Belsen 39 0.4 31-64-5 3 Yes 2.62 1.12 3108/3151 649 (4.4) 73
Neuengamme 21 0.3 48-52-0 24 No 2.71 0.87 2178/2226 276 (4.5) 66
Mauthausen 52 0.6 60-29-12 3 No 1.08 0.7 3963/4051 240 (4.6) 59
Ebensee 0 0.0 0-0-0 0 No 0.0 0.0 222/227 3 (5.0) 24
Terezín 22 0.2 45-50-5 3 Yes 0.83 0.18 2915/2924 708 (4.5) 64
Auschwitz 31 0.6 68-23-3 0 Yes 0.4 0.24 265.946/257.027 14.604 (4.7) 70
Gross-Rosen 6 0.0 83-17-0 1 Yes 0.95 0.1 1939/1929 72 (4.7) 55
Majdanek 71 0.9 80-7-11 10 Yes 1.08 0.93 5151/5147 81 (4.6) 76
Stutthof 43 0.3 58-37-0 4 No 0.6 0.22 4219/4194 - 54

14. Results: Content, interactivity and
popularity of Twitter profiles
Great variance
among the
various social
media services
was observed,
with many
showing limited
activity or low
engagement
levels
Data refer to the
period
1/1/2018-
24/11/2018
Kamp
Vught
Sachse
nhaus
en
Bergen
-
Belsen
Neuen
gamm
e
Gusen Terezí
n
Ausch
witz
Majda
nek
Stutth
of
Content Total tweets 2995 328 2462 4253 562 78 56178 545 1419
Tweets analysed* 559 99 2271 986 107 42 3200 194 143
Tweets per day* 1.7 0.3 6.92 3.01 0.33 0.13 9.76 0.59 0.44
Hashtags per tweet* 0.04 0 0.1 1.03 1.79 0.14 0.34 0.61 0.42
Links per tweet* 0.47 0.93 0.04 0.48 0.99 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.73
Interactivity % of tweets being retweets 36.49 6.06 85.16 11.56 0 30.95 16.31 10.82 4.9
% of tweets being replies 13.77 0 5.81 19.07 0.93 7.14 61 12.37 2.1
@mentions per tweet* 0.51 0 0.13 0.49 0.08 0.14 1.15 0.66 0.13
Popularity Followers 953 686 1118 2518 1036 119 11857
2
1043 628
Following 100 25 111 1079 234 206 887 129 81
Followers ratio 9.53 27.44 10.07 2.33 4.43 0.58 133.68 8.09 7.75
Likes 1281 20 4078 8811 259 56 29900 138 241
% of tweets being
retweeted*
27.73 39.39 8.94 67.95 81.31 19.05 40.31 68.56 81.82
% of tweets being
favorited*
45.62 45.45 12.73 82.76 83.18 64.29 59.25 75.26 92.31

15. Findings
Apart from the Auschwitz museum which has a far higher profile, and hence greater visitor traffic
volumes than the others, results show a very different public visibility levels of the various memorials
themselves.
1. The majority of the 23 memorials in the sample have a Facebook page, while only 40 percent have
a Twitter account. While memorials started using Facebook around the time of the Facebook
boom at the end of the 2000s and early 2010s, Twitter was mostly a recent adoption.
2. It seems that more followers do not guarantee more likes or comments and thus a higher post
interaction rate, while two-way communication is crucial to attract and maintain the loyalty of
followers.
3. Most of the Facebook pages have adopted a one-way communication mode (followers are not
able to post content) and in Twitter accounts, with one exception, the rate of followers’ response
remains low.
4. The majority of memorials post content in their national languages, thus mostly addressing a local
audience. It would be interesting to investigate to what extent this strategy, as stressed by some
scholars (Gonzales, 2017), helps connect the memorials to their local community.

16. Conclusion and future research
Since limited two-way communication is commonly adopted by account owners who foresee
that their page is likely to be a target for persistent trolling and even hate speech, further
investigation is needed to understand if this is a factor potentially conditioning the way
memorials approach and embrace social media.
Content analysis of Facebook and Twitter posts is needed to evaluate museums/memorials’
qualitative engagement and to obtain a clear picture of their communication strategy.
There is also a need to investigate other social media like Instagram, which has been
documented as surpassing major platforms like Twitter and Facebook among younger users and
new communication strategies to engage with the millennial generation.
Further studies need to be conducted to provide a more complex operationalisation of
engagement measurement using sophisticated metrics.

17. Contact me @
Email: stefania.manca@itd.cnr.it
Twitter: @StefaniaManca
LinkedIn: http://it.linkedin.com/in/stefaniamanca
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefania_Manca/
Academia.edu: https://cnr-it.academia.edu/StefaniaManca

18. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/08/instagram
-holocaust-diary-evastories-sparks-debate-in-israel
HTTPS://WWW.NYTIMES.COM/2019/04/30/WORLD/MIDDLEEAST/EV
A-HEYMAN-INSTAGRAM-HOLOCAUST.HTML