italian studies, Vol. 67 No. 3, November 2012, 375–96 © The Society for Italian Studies 2012 DOI 10.1179/0075163412Z.00000000025 ‘Mmmmm quanti, ma quanti ricordi mi evocano queste foto . . .’: Facebook and the 1977 Family Album: The Digital (R)evolution of a Protest Generation 1 Andrea Hajek Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick Memories are increasingly shaped and shared through the media, in par- ticular visual media such as photography. However, it is not just the images that allow for memories to enter our individual and collective identities: the latter take shape in the mediation of the past through images. In other words, the very act of selecting, storing, and sharing visual data has an impact on the way the past is recalled and identities are reconstructed in the present. What happens, though, when photo albums go digital, and private snapshots become available to all? This article analyses the collective shar- ing of a series of photo albums of the 1977 student movement in Bologna, on the social networking site Facebook, in 2011. It explores how the collec- tive (hi)story of the 1977 generation is reproduced online, why this specific medium was so successful in reconnecting these people thirty-five years later, and what the impact is of digital media and social networks on the reconstruction of collective identities in the present. keywords photo albums, digital memories, social networks, 1977 student movement, Bologna Introduction It is commonly accepted among scholars of memory and media studies that tech- nologies, such as television and new media, have transformed memory ‘by making possible an unprecedented circulation of images and narratives about the past’. In other words, ‘[t]hrough the technologies of mass culture, it becomes possible for these 1 The quote was taken from a comment on Enrico Scuro’s photo album ‘On the Road’ on the social network site Facebook, posted on 11 April 2011.