Birthdays, anniversaries, and temporalities: Or how the past is represented as relevant through on-this-date media

Abstract

This article explores the mediatization of birthdays and anniversaries through the concept of “on-this-date” media as a way to understand the representation and circulation of media content that occurred in previous years, on that exact date. Drawing on journalism studies and mediated memory work, I argue that past events are made relevant and then irrelevant through a frame of on-this-date media. By juxtaposing Facebook Birthdays and Memories with the Associated Press’s “Today In History” feed, I analyze the multiple temporalities at work across analog and digital media platforms. Drawing on Keightley’s zones of intermediacy, I examine how time is mediated through the textual, technological, and social aspects of media, in sometimes conflicting ways. Thus, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of mediatization by examining how media institutions structure, organize, and represent mediated temporalities.