#Reunification : A Corpus- and Discourse-Linguistic Study of Memory Cultures of the German Reunification on Twitter

This dissertation investigates how the memory of German reunification is negotiated on Twitter and how the platform functions as a digital site of memory. Twitter is approached as a medium of negotiation and a many-to-many environment that links individual and collective memory processes as well as private and public forms of remembering. Drawing on cultural, communicative and connective memory theories (Assmann, Sabrow, Erll, Hoskins), the study adapts classical models of memory to platform logics and conceptualizes Twitter as a hybrid, dynamic memory environment. The analysis is based on a large Twitter corpus comprising more than 3.5 million German-language tweets collected between October 2019 and November 2020, enriched with relevant metadata. The methodological approach combines discourse-linguistic, corpus-linguistic and big-social-data perspectives to examine linguistic patterns, interactional dynamics and event-driven peaks. The study additionally distinguishes productive and reproductive linguistic practices to analyse how memory discourse is generated, circulated and reconfigured. Situated within research on digital memory cultures, the study shows that commemoration on Twitter is fragmented, selective and strongly oriented toward present concerns. The past is invoked largely for contemporary interpretation, often within counter-public settings. Memory communities form not through stable shared narratives but through interaction patterns, clustering and the affordances provided by the platform. The findings reveal that mnemonic content appears predominantly as short, keyword-driven expressions, influenced by the platform’s 280-character limit. Clear temporal peaks occur around major anniversaries, and transhistorical analogies (e.g. equating the peaceful revolution of 1989 with the 2020 corona demonstrations) and transhistorical continuities (e.g. attributing contemporary political decisions to presumed ideological legacies) strongly shape discursive framing. Dominant fields include historical guilt attribution, democracy and freedom of speech, East-West identity and right-wing extremism. Sabrow’s dictatorship memory predominates, while arrangement memories remain marginal. Discursive shaping power is unevenly distributed: male West-German users and journalistic accounts occupy central positions in shaping memory discourse, and delegitimizing strategies frequently draw on GDR biographies. The study identifies four types of digital memory communities: follower-based, reply-based, hashtag-based and cluster-based. It also shows that Twitter’s theoretical democratizing potential is curtailed by algorithmic visibility, unequal reach and the prevalence of reproductive content. Overall, the dissertation offers empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of digital memory culture, conceptualizes transhistorical analogies as a key mnemonic practice and adapts classical memory frameworks to platformized publics. It demonstrates how references to the GDR and reunification are mobilized to delegitimize contemporary actors and how East-West identities are negotiated in the digital sphere.