Microsoft Word - AoIR_PERFORMING DEATH AND TRAUMA_FullAbstract.docx


 
Selected Papers of #AoIR2022:  

The 23rd Annual Conference of the  
Association of Internet Researchers 

Dublin, Ireland / 2-5 Nov 2022 
 
 

 

Suggested Citation (APA): Divon, T, & Ebbrecht-Hartmann, T. (2022, November). Performing Death and 
Trauma? Participatory Mem(e)ory and The Holocaust in TikTok #POVChallenges. Paper presented at 
AoIR 2022: The 23rd Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Dublin, Ireland: 
AoIR. Retrieved from http://spir.aoir.org. 

PERFORMING DEATH AND TRAUMA? PARTICIPATORY MEM(E)ORY 
AND THE HOLOCAUST IN TIKTOK #POVCHALLENGES 
 
Tom Divon 
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann 
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Introduction 
 
TikTok is no longer the short-video platform for “silly dances.” Its transition from 
entertainment to an interest-based platform increased the visual volume of topics like 
politics, sexuality, identity, and history, enabled by the platform’s rich set of vernaculars 
that encourage young users’ participation in various socio-political activities (see Literat 
and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019; Hautea et al., 2021; Abidin and Zeng, 2021). Within this 
context, the memory of the Holocaust had gained specific attention, especially during 
August 2020 when a controversial meme-trend emerged under the hashtag 
#POVHolocaustChallenge, quickly accumulating 895.1 million views. In this challenge, 
creators (aka “TikTokers”) were encouraged to participate in a point-of-view (POV) 
performance in which they reenacted fictionalized memories of Holocaust victims. This 
memetic trend generated a public outcry calling it “trauma porn,” which motivated us to 
look beyond the voice of criticism and explore the culture of TikTok’s aesthetics (POV) 
and trends (#challenges) as performative engagements that enable users’ (re)mediation 
of knowledge on past events and afford them to facilitate personal connections to the 
memory of the Holocaust via video-memes.  
 
Memes, Memory and #POVchallenge 
 
This paper unpacks and contributes to the existing body of research about memes, 
practices of digital remembrance, and TikTok’s participatory culture. Memes on TikTok 
are complex multimodal structures of content often contextualized in the culture of 
challenges (Klug, 2020). Challenges focus on users’ gamified participation in social 
media, motivating content creation via a collaborative play-based task governed by a set 
of performative rules (text, sound, and movement). Challenges invite users to engage in 
the mimetic reproduction of popular content trends (Zulli and Zulli, 2020).  



 
The intensity of imitative content on TikTok increases challenges’ frequency, and rewards 
users with exposure on the platform’s individually-curated “for you page” (FYP), where 
most virality on the platform occurs. This study draws attention to the understudied and 
unique nature of the POV aesthetic on TikTok, especially via POV challenges as a series 
of fictional memes that mediate users’ self-reflections on various personal and collective 
issues. Memes related to historical events tend to stir affective reactions, increase 
engagement with the issues referred to, and articulate emotional attachments to past 
atrocities or collective traumas (Makhortykh, 2015; Trillò and Shifman, 2021). We argue 
that this is especially true when combining the creative participatory nature of challenges 
with the empathetic bent of the POV aesthetic, and thus this subset of memes is crucial 
to challenging rigid discussions of Holocaust memory online representation. 
 
Methods  
 

In an attempt to make this work a useful explanatory analysis to profoundly understand 
young creators’ performative engagements with the past, a set of multilayered questions 
is used. Focusing on the platform, we ask (Q1) how does intensified adoption of the 
platform’s memetic vernaculars in the #POVHolocaustChallenge enables TikTokers to 
“play” with Holocaust remembrance. Focusing on the participatory culture of TikTok, we 
ask (Q2) what motivated TikTokers to initiate and respond to #POVHolocaustChallenge? 
Finally, with a focus on the educational horizon, (Q3) we ask to what extent does the 
#POVHolocaustChallenge foster an empathetic dialogue about the Holocaust? 
 
The study was conducted as follows: (1) Multimodal thematic analysis of 250 videos 
manually scraped from the trending #POVHolocaustChallenge between August 20-28, 
2020. (2) Fifteen semi-structured in-depth interviews with TikTok users (ages 18-23) who 
participated in the challenge to learn about their motivations and illuminate their creative 
choices. (3) Five semi-structured in-depth interviews with educators from Holocaust 
institutions to understand the platform’s potential in enabling, encouraging, and mobilizing 
users’ curiosity about the memory of the Holocaust.  
 
We developed a codebook informed by grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 2017), and 
a coding framework inspired by Zeng and Abidin’s (2021) considerations of TikTok “meme 
categorization.” We analyzed our sample according to what we see as “memetic 
structure,” tracing the use of the platform’s vernacular by means of sound, visual, and 
performative elements, as well as users’ interplay with memory narratives of the 
Holocaust. We focused on embodied communicative forms like spoken and written 
language, still and moving images (videos), sound, body posture, and use of space 
(Jewitt, 2014), and multifaceted modes of communication like metalinguistics (emojis), 
hypertextuality (hashtags), temporality (looping), and technical choices (editing tools). 
 
Findings  
 

The multimodal analysis illuminates three imaginative narratives in users’ (re)mediations 
of memories that resulted in a series of memetic POV structures, which we call 
mem(e)ories. Testimonial (n=83). This mem(e)ory structure shows mini “conversations” 
happening in Heaven as TikTokers welcome the viewers to observe a dialogue with an 
imagined other that asks how they ended up in Heaven “so young.” Given their testimony, 
in response, they tell the story of an anonymous victim using visceral memory work 



 
composed of a combination of historical facts and imagined fragmented narratives (e.g., 
“I was sent to the gas chamber”), covered with heavy makeup (Figure 1). 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             
Figure 1: Author screenshots of examples of testimonial mem(e)ories.  
 
Punitive mem(e)ory (n=80). This mem(e)ory structure shows TikTokers playing prisoners 
who are “chained” in the present (2020) and being sent back to tragic events as 
punishment for their crimes. The video starts with a caption saying, “this one was sent to 
the Holocaust,” while the TikToker, with the help of the green-screen feature, manipulates 
a transformation from the present into a Holocaust-related setting like a concentration 
camps or ghetto (Figure 2). 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 2: Author screenshots of examples of punitive mem(e)ories.  
 
Escapist mem(e)ory (n=87). This mem(e)ory structure shows TikTokers’ use of the 
platform’s popular narrative of time traveling as they merge the 1940 with and 2020 in a 
complex temporal interplay with the viewers. TikTokers, acting as victims, get the chance 
for a momentary escape from their horrifying present of the Holocaust (the viewers’ past) 
by going to an imagined future (the viewers’ present), but eventually are sent back to find 
their tragic death (Figure 3). 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 3: Author screenshots of examples of Escapist mem(e)ories.  



 
In all three mem(e)ories, TikTokers carefully alter their environment to sustain an 
“authentic” experience of the victim’s story re-enactment. They utilize the platform’s 
features (like Green Screen) to convey aesthetics that relate to Holocaust memories, such 
as using Holocaust-related symbols (artifacts, customs, makeup, historical images, etc.), 
wearing ragged clothes (like concentration camp uniforms with yellow stars), and using 
makeup mimicking cuts, bruises, exhaustion, and malnourishment. 
 
Interviews with TikTokers raised intriguing motivations and production decisions in their 
#POVHolocaustChallenge mem(e)ories: (1) TikTokers expressed the sense of 
importance they felt when engaging with topics like the Holocaust in a “superficial 
environment” like TikTok; (2) TikTokers emphasized the significance of the POV as an 
aesthetic that enables creativity and empathetic interpretation; (3) TikTokers mentioned 
the topic's relevance as they compared feelings of victimization to their COVID-19 reality 
and their attempts to combat TikTok’s toxic environment of Holocaust denial.  
 
Interviews with the representatives of Holocaust-related institutions emphasized the 
platform’s memetic momentum and access to new audiences. Three thematic ideas were 
raised: (1) Holocaust-related challenges on TikTok as a hook for Gen-Z attention; (2) The 
#POVHolocaustChallenge as a commemorative act that can foster historical empathy; (3) 
TikTok as a space for institutionalized Holocaust education and an opportunity for 
remodeling traditional learning concepts. 
 
Conclusion  
 
Unlike common beliefs that social media of collective remembrance are often embedded 
in rigid traditional institutional power structures of memory (Kansteiner, 2017), the 
platform’s plural and memetic nature illustrate TikTok’s potential in Holocaust education 
and commemoration. Findings show that TikTok’s culture of #POVchallenges fosters 
complex dialogic modes of digital witnessing of the past, corresponding with Van Alphen’s 
(2001, p. 69) speculation about whether “there is a place for ‘playing the Holocaust’ in 
Holocaust remembrance.” The diverse POV aesthetics can beneficially influence users’ 
empathy as they can imagine, relate to, and share the emotions of others (Vossen & 
Valkenburg, 2016). This quality of the #POVHolocaustChallenge enabled TikTokers to 
empathetically “play” with the memory of the Holocaust by using audiovisual memes as 
vehicles for victim perspectives.  
 
Inserting Holocaust victims into the contemporary digital ecology of TikTok is a gesture 
that embodies the seemingly insurmountable tension that surrounds Holocaust memorial 
culture. However, concluding from the interviews with the creators and education 
practitioners, it seems that the platform’s infrastructural dissemination of Holocaust-
related memories enables opportunities for creating historical empathy and 
consciousness-raising among younger generations. When provided with the educational 
context, Holocaust institutions on TikTok can spark conversation, interpretation, and 
reflection among youth reacting to and participating in the creation of user-generated 
content related to the Holocaust, an outcome hopefully following from this work. The 
#POVHolocaustChallenge invites the inscription of Holocaust memory and other past 
atrocities into Gen-Z's (social media) lives. 
 



 
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