The empire strikes back? Transnational commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide online

How do former colonists engage with commemoration of mass atrocities suffered by their subjects?

Building on the scholarship on transnational memory activism and autocratic strategic narratives, we analyse the multilingual Twitter/X conversations about the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, with particular attention to the prominence of Turkish-language participation. Using over 300,000 posts related to #Srebrenica (2006--2024), we conduct the analysis of interaction networks, compare engagement types (retweets, quote tweets, mentions, replies), identify thematic patterns in the multilingual data and examine the actors

We find sharp, anniversary-driven mobilisation-especially among Turkish-language accounts-without a corresponding rise in exchange: interaction remains highly segmented, and engagement is dominated by retweets and quote tweets rather than replies, consistent with amplification of the narratives more than dialogue. We also find that commemoration carries different meanings across publics: Turkish-language discourse more often connects Srebrenica to broader identity, security, and geopolitical narratives, while Balkan publics more frequently foreground mourning, justice, and locally grounded remembrance.

Together, the findings show how transnational digital commemoration can be wide-reaching but inward-faced and weakly dialogic, preserving boundaries between former colonists and their subjects even around a shared commemorative focal point. Taking a postcolonial perspective, these findings contribute to research on transnational memory politics and the internationalisation of commemoration, and to work on autocratic strategic narratives.

Meet our speakers

Lanabi La Lova (LSE), Denisa Kostovicova (LSE), Ivor Sokolic (University of Hertfordshire, LSE)

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