Frictional memory: The afterlives of lynching in the digital public spheres

This article investigates the digital afterlives of lynching, how its memory is invoked, refracted, and contested on Twitter. Drawing on a hybrid methodological approach that combines computational analysis of tweet corpora with interpretive readings, the research examines how histories of racial violence circulate within the algorithmically mediated space. While lynching remains a central symbol of anti-Black terror in the United States, its meaning in public discourse has become increasingly unstable. On Twitter, lynching is deployed as a historical referent, a metaphor, political claim, and rhetorical provocation, thereby surfacing in divergent frames. We theorize this instability as frictional memory: a dynamic of circulation under constraint, operating through temporal traction (mnemonic pivots that attach past to present), semantic abrasion (collisions that produce drift, contestation, and repair), and visibility routing (platform-mediated asymmetries of attention). This framework shows how histories of racial violence are not simply recalled online but continually reconfigured in digital architectures.