The role of emotions in the dynamics of remembering/forgetting the collective traumatic event 9/11 2001 from September 11 to Iraq war
The role of emotions in the dynamics of remembering/forgetting the collective traumatic event 9/11 2001 from September 11 to Iraq war

Summary/Abstract: The article concerns the role of images and their emotional impact in the construction of social memory mediated by the new scenarios in mass communications systems. It starts with considerations of a theoretical nature by critically discussing the statute of images in flashbulb Memories paradigm which still remains anchored to an informative and computational model –and in the almost ignored field of study about the iconic representations and their invisibility in psychological research on social representations and collective memory. The data analyses focus on the mediated role of emotions in the collective remembering: realized then and then re-elicited 5 weeks, 7 months, 1 year, 15, 17 and 18 months after the traumatic media event of the attack on the World Trade Centre in the United States and the day after the invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-American-Australian coalition. The results are presented in a double temporal (then/now and in a time frame lasted 18 months) and social (between individual and collective memory) perspective.

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