The aim of the project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is to investigate the construction, mediation and trans/national reception of Latin American history and memory through telenovelas and television series, as well as their effects on political attitudes. In Latin America, the production of telenovelas and series dealing with the region's recent past has grown significantly over the last twenty years. These cultural products influence viewers' perceptions of the past, and therefore also their historical consciousness and political formation. In doing so, they have an impact far beyond Latin America, reaching even exiled Latin Americans and migrant communities in the United States or Europe. A deeper understanding of the investigated processes is of scientific and socio-political relevance, as this understanding sheds new light on the reception of political and historical contexts via entertainment media. The intended results should reveal how entertainment media, in which the past is interpreted and staged, can be utilized for the purposes of political education.

The use of digital methods for the collection and evaluation of source material plays a central role, as does data from social media, particularly the development of algorithms for the acquisition of mediated memory images. These will subsequently form the methodological basis for the establishment of the Laboratory for Memory Research and Digital Methods at the Free University of Berlin, which will serve as a space for interdisciplinary experimentation in the development of digital methods for research in the humanities and social sciences.