Collective Memory and Narrative Cohesion: A Computational Study of Palestinian Refugee Oral Histories in Lebanon
This research deepens understanding of collective memory in diasporic settings, emphasizing oral histories' role in safeguarding Palestinian identity, though it is incremental in applying existing computational methods to new data.
The study analyzed Palestinian refugee oral histories in Lebanon to understand how shared origin and residence influence narrative cohesion, finding that shared origin strongly determines similarity in themes and semantics, and that shared residence amplifies this effect, with women's narratives showing heightened thematic cohesion.
This study uses the Palestinian Oral History Archive (POHA) to investigate how Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon sustain a cohesive collective memory of the Nakba through shared narratives. Grounded in Halbwachs' theory of group memory, we employ statistical analysis of pairwise similarity of narratives, focusing on the influence of shared gender and location. We use textual representation and semantic embeddings of narratives to represent the interviews themselves. Our analysis demonstrates that shared origin is a powerful determinant of narrative similarity across thematic keywords, landmarks, and significant figures, as well as in semantic embeddings of the narratives. Meanwhile, shared residence fosters cohesion, with its impact significantly amplified when paired with shared origin. Additionally, women's narratives exhibit heightened thematic cohesion, particularly in recounting experiences of the British occupation, underscoring the gendered dimensions of memory formation. This research deepens the understanding of collective memory in diasporic settings, emphasizing the critical role of oral histories in safeguarding Palestinian identity and resisting erasure.