Never forget? : Narrating, commemorating and negotiating the remembrance of Irish participation in the First World War in Irish daily newspapers, 1980-2024

Sammanfattning

This master’s thesis is concerned with collective remembrance and understandings of the First World War in the Republic of Ireland after 1980. Its aim is to demonstrate how Irish participation in and Irish remembrance of the First World War have been depicted in Irish newspaper reporting and how this has contributed to the creation of a modern, Irish national identity. It draws upon two roles of post-war war reporting, as identified by Adrian Bingham – the narrations of histories of the war and the reporting of rituals and ceremonies of commemoration – in order to gain access to collective remembrances of the war as they appear in the newspapers. A key area of interest is the processes of contest and struggle which serve to coordinate individual and group memories. The study draws upon digitised newspapers from the three major national daily newspapers in the Republic of Ireland: the Irish Examiner, the Irish Independent, and the Irish Times. It uses a combined method of keyword searches and key dates in order to find newspaper material related to the First World War, and uses a textual analysis to analyse the material. The main results show that: (1) historical narrations of the First World War had strong emphases on the Irish experience and were published irregularly throughout the period. Most often, publication was connected to significant anniversaries and/or contemporary events, emphasising that contemporary concerns likely dictated what was chosen to be remembered at a specific time. (2) Rituals and ceremonies of First World War commemoration were often reported on. Annual commemorations were often overlain with contemporary preoccupations, and four major processes of contest were identified. (3) Through official remembrance, contemporary political interests, and by being appointed a shared piece of history, the First World War has been connected to an Irish national identity. The Irish daily newspapers have likely contributed to this process.