Memory From Below: An Ethnohistory of Disaster in Digital Archives on the Aceh Tsunami, the Padang Earthquake, and the Merapi Eruption

This article examines the representation of community disaster memory in community-based digital archives, particularly personal and community blogs, through an ethnohistorical and public history framework. It analyzes how disaster memory is represented, how these archives function as spaces of public history in shaping collective memory, and how they connect past experience with contextual and sustainable disaster mitigation practices. Using a qualitative approach, the study combines web-based data collection with interpretive narrative analysis of digital narratives concerning three major disasters in Indonesia: the Aceh Tsunami (2004), the Padang Earthquake (2009), and the Merapi Eruption (2010). Of 42 initial entries, 28 sources, comprising personal blogs, community websites, and media articles based on firsthand testimony, met the criteria for community narratives and formed the primary corpus. Personal and community blogs dominate the corpus (61%), indicating that disaster memory emerges largely "from below" rather than from official institutions. Seven recurring narrative themes were identified, with solidarity and mutual cooperation (gotong royong) (59.5%) and trauma-anxiety (57.1%) the most prominent, although patterns varied by disaster type. The study identifies five roles of digital archives in linking collective memory to mitigation: memory preservation, a knowledge base for mitigation, a space for public participation, a bridge between local knowledge and formal policy, and an instrument of advocacy and accountability. The findings suggest that community digital archives constitute an alternative historiography of "history from below" with considerable potential for context-based mitigation. However, their subjective and vulnerable nature, as an "inverted archive," requires critical use.