Evolving empowerment in an online community collection memories of Amsterdam East

In this article we study the evolvement of empowering and dis-empowering aspects of a local memory website, initiated by the Amsterdam Museum and currently active for more than a decade. The results partly fill a gap in the available literature about this field, because the relation between collective empowerment and online behaviour in these communities has been underexposed. Departing from a narrative perspective on memories as resources for empowerment, we show how the online dynamics around these memories exhibit collective processes of identity formation, social learning and networking. However, certain patterns in the online dynamics also uncover that, although the online activity is increasing, the diversity in the content and the number of participants are decreasing. Describing the organizational development of the local memory community, we argue that the growth into a self-organizing community is the cause of increasing activity and decreasing participation. This implies that the online community has become a small, empowered group, which at the same time has developed dis-empowering characteristics, i.e. limitations to include ‘other’ locals, neighbourhoods and topics. We illustrate how the current self-organization, unintentionally, fuels the decreasing diversity in content by a natural selection process of a rather homogeneous group of participants. In addition, the conviction of what constitutes a successful online community is discussed for emphasizing individual empowerment and attracting empowered locals instead of vulnerable ones

Collective Empowerment through Local Memory Websites : balancing between group interest and common good

The research in this dissertation explores the social significance of local memory websites. Local memory websites offer local residents a platform where they collect and share memories about particular places or experiences in their neighbourhoods and districts. Following a systematic review and a broad field study, a narrative approach is developed to study collective levels of empowerment within the ‘Memory of East’ and the ‘Memory of West’, both in Amsterdam. Two empirical questions steer a double case study: 1) ‘How does the organizational development influence the online dynamics?’ and 2) ‘What collective empowerment do the online dynamics express?’ With its stronger social capital, the Memory of East is more likely to resist official memory intuitions, commercial popular culture and local politics than the Memory of West. On the other hand, with its more inclusive character, the Memory of West is more representative for the broad cultural backgrounds of its inhabitants than the Memory of East. These findings are shown to be related to five organizational continuums on which both websites are plotted to indicate their crucial organizational differences. Apart from a claim about the theoretical value of this model, it is illustrated how it functions as a discursive tool for the core groups behind both websites

New directions in research about local memory websites

Recent studies apply highly variable terminology in explaining the benefits of interventions using local memory websites. Our literature review systematizes this terminology into three, clearer levels of analysis that fit neatly into the empowerment framework: concepts on the micro level for individual benefits, on the meso level for group gains and on the macro level for community strengthening processes. On the macro level we distinguish three conce