Daffodils Campaign. Media and market-oriented identification of community remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Abstract

2023 marked the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19th – May 16th 2023). After many years of political disputes and manipulations the memory of this event became part of new Polish historical culture, shaped by globalized logic of late capitalism. The most expressive example of participation in contemporary, market-oriented culture of memory is social-educational Daffodils Campaign, organized by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which entails pinning paper flowers to clothes. After ten years, not only does it deserve statistical summary, but also an attempt at academic reflection. The pur-pose of this article is to subsume the Campaign under the contexts of cultural memory research, related to the development of the participatory culture. Therefore, the most important criteria demonstrating that the creators of the campaign have built a new memory circulation, using the solutions characteristic for contemporary brands and cultural franchises will be discussed. The analysis is based on netnographic research covering the content of social media and autoethnographic observations conducted in Warsaw on April 19th 2023.