Communicating family memory: Remembering in a changing media environment

Much has been said and written about the significance of families – and yet few studies have considered family memory against the backdrop of a changing media environment. This is the starting point for this special issue of Communications. Families cut across the public and the private, the individual and the collective.
For the majority of people in the western world, the nuclear and extended families are central features of feeling a sense of belonging, of having a place in the world. Even if destructive patterns and violence occur in the family, it nonetheless remains a central but damaging social formation in most people’s lives. If someone does not grow up in a family-like collectivity, he or she has to cope with the fragility of not having a family or with distancing him or herself from the family. The absence of family can therefore also be a key theme in a person’s development.