Abstract:
Using 189 current affairs news articles addressing biomedical issues, this study sought to describe and define the context and structure of non-commemoration in the news by observing references to a past event in the collective memory--the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The study results indicate that collective memory context relies less on official news sources and more on assumed public knowledge over time. Additionally, despite scholarship suggesting a singular collective memory, collective memory contexts are manifested in various narratives. These findings are among the first to propose a structure of non-commemoration, further suggesting a process theory of mediated collective memory.
