Abstract

In an era marked by the apparent saturation of terror and the ubiquitous mediation of all-things-past, the value of and the prospects for the remembering of terrorist attacks appear caught up in the velocity of the immediate circulation of media data and in the cyclical iterations of news images. Rather than these processes affecting a reduction or obliteration of memory, we discern how an interplay of individual and cultural frameworks is used for making sense of violent events in this environment through preliminary analysis of empirical work exploring the mediation and the commemoration of the 2005 London Bombings. We achieve this through cross-fertilizing psychological and media and cultural studies approaches via the concept of 'schema' to show how remembering is dynamically configured through socio-cultural practices and shifting media logics. In this way, we advocate a holistic approach to a 'new memory ecology', drawing upon the emergent field of 'memory studies'