Memorial Museums in Guatemala: Social Media and the Notion of ‘Never Again’

In the aftermath of genocide and mass atrocity crimes, memorialisation in general, and museums in particular, perform a significant transitional justice role in post genocidal societies. Memorial museums function as sites of healing, places to bear witness, and aids in truth and justice initiatives with their chronicle of atrocity crimes. Memorial museums also perform an educative function that aid in the prevention of future genocides through awareness of these events as they occurred in their own societies. For us, this memory museum function begs the question—can social media allow memory museums to foster a sense of responsibility on the part of their virtual visitors to advocate for ‘never again’ in the face of genocide? The idea that memorialisation through museums can advance a preventative function is gaining traction in the literature on transitional justice, especially as non-punitive, restorative justice mechanisms. This chapter thus, assesses the efficacy of various social media platforms as educative tools against a museum’s respective mission statements. It explores the take-away of visitors to these spaces both in the virtual world and in the physical museum. We develop a typology of the comments we call “memory-words” left by visitors recorded in guest logs/visitor books by in person visitors and compare these to the memory-words left by virtual visitors on their social media sites. We examine whether each museum’s typology of memory-words resulted in a particular message (specific to Guatemala) or a universal message of never again and if so, in what context, which languages, which locations, for example.