This report examines how 127 global organisations with a remit for Holocaust memory and education are navigating the contemporary digital environment. While digital tools have been widely adopted across the sector, the findings point to a persistent and often underappreciated gap between technological uptake and genuine institutional capacity, resilience, and strategic direction.
The single most critical challenge identified is staffing. 42.52% of surveyed organisations operate with fewer than one full-time digital staff member equivalent, and staff shortage is the most commonly reported difficulty across the sector. This constraint affects not only day-to-day operations but also the ability to develop, implement, and sustain digital initiatives over time.
A second major concern is online hostility. Only 28.35% – fewer than one third – of the organisations surveyed reported that they have never encountered hostility online. 47.25% of organisations that encountered hostile content historically reported an increase since 7 October 2023. This is a concerning statistic. The sector lacks consistent protocols for responding to online hate and distortion, as well as structural wellbeing support and training for staff who are exposed to such content.
Against this backdrop, emerging technologies do not appear to offer straightforward solutions. Although 37.80% of organisations surveyed report using AI tools, AI adoption does not reduce staff-related challenges. In fact, organisations using AI are slightly more likely to experience technology-related difficulties than those that do not. AI is therefore not a substitute for adequate staffing, training, or infrastructure.
Perhaps more counterintuitively, having a written digital strategy has no statistically significant association with lower levels of challenge, although 80.31% of organisations surveyed do not have one. What matters is not the existence of a documented strategy but whether it is backed by implementation, resources, training, and institutional culture. A strategy on paper, without organisational follow-through, is effectively meaningless. Strategies need to be understood as dynamic documents informed by changes in practice that respond to the rapidly reshaping digital landscape, rather than rigid and static guidance from above.
The sector also remains caught between outdated digital paradigms and emerging ones. Most institutional practice in Holocaust memory still reflects a logic somewhere between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and is also often characterised by one-way broadcasting to a presume ‘mass audience’ (as typical of pre-digital media) rather than embracing genuine participation with visitors/ users. 93.70% of organisations surveyed use at least one social media platform, with Meta’s Facebook and Instagram being the most popular. 92.91% of organisations surveyed also have an official website. Meanwhile, digital media culture is moving towards Web 3.0, with generative AI and decentralised models. New interactive media like VR/AR and immersive experiences, computer games, and chatbots are emerging but remain very niche in the sector. This growing misalignment means that heritage and education organisations have not yet fully realised the distinctive potentials of digital tools: working at scale, visualising networks, and connecting micro-level historical sources to macro-level narratives. These remain substantial unrealised opportunities. The sector is struggling to keep up with the pace of digital change.
Funding models further undermine sustainability. Project-based funding leaves organisations struggling to maintain digital assets once a project ends. Sustained support for maintenance, staffing, and infrastructure is essential, yet consistently lacking. As one organisation noted, funding stops when the project ends, but systems still need to be maintained.
Finally, the report highlights an emerging ethical gap regarding AI. Some staff use generative AI tools in their daily work without formal institutional policies on data security, provenance, or transparency to visitors. This disconnection between personal use and institutional governance carries reputational and ethical risks, particularly for organisations whose authority rests on historical accuracy, provenance and witness testimony.
In summary, the sector has embraced digital tools in form but not yet in substance. Without addressing staffing, sustainable funding, strategic implementation, and the gap between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 realities, digital technologies will continue to deliver only a fraction of their potential – and may, in some cases, compound existing challenges.
In an age of increasing mainstreaming of Holocaust distortion, contestation, and celebration, especially in digital spaces, this report emphasises the urgency for policymakers, funders, management and trustee boards of Holocaust memory and education organisations to take seriously the need for coordinated strategic efforts to define and operationalise long-term, sustainable digital work in Holocaust memory and education. This includes prioritising long-term, permanent dedicated teams within such organisations, appropriate infrastructure, and well-being support for staff, particularly those at the frontline of social media engagement work.
The Landecker Digital Memory Lab invites all stakeholders, but especially policymakers, funders, boards of trustees, and senior leadership of memorial sites, museums, archives, libraries, and Holocaust education organisations to engage with us to address this urgent situation.
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