scholarly journals Review of the Book “Historical Memory in Social Media” by Sophia Tikhonova, Denis Artamonov

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-247
Author(s):  
Artur A. Dydrov

The subject of review is the book “Historical Memory in Social Media” by Sofya Tikhonova and Denis Artamonov. In the book, the authors focus on the design and specification of the production of images of the past on the Internet and the gaming industry, referring to various materials, from text “fake” messages and memes to computer games. Research is not limited to the description of empirical data. The supporting structure of the research is the author's concept of digital history and digital philosophy of history. Research optics is aimed at determining the status of the digital subject of history, which seems to be an acute anthropological and socio-philosophical problem. The book discusses the issues of modification of the politics of memory, the production of “fakes”, the connotation of historical events, the trend of miniaturization of history and the crisis of great narratives. Considerable attention is paid to the everyday everyday practices of information production, woven into the context of “history making”. The review pays attention to all the main structural parts of the book and reproduces the logical sequence of the key ideas of the text. With references to the original author's text, the reviewer also gives his own interpretations of the conceptual and terminological innovations of the book, and also focuses on some controversial aspects of the research.

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Dr. Neha Sharma

Language being a potent vehicle of transmitting cultural values, norms and beliefs remains a central factor in determining the status of any nation. India is a multilingual country which tends to encourage people to use English at national and international level. Basically English in India owes its presence to the British but its subsequent rise is not fully attributable to the British. It has now become the language of wider communication which is now spoken by large number of people all over the world. It is influenced by many factors such as class, society, developments in science and technology etc. However the major influence on English language is and has been the media.


Author(s):  
S. E. Sidorova ◽  

The article concentrates on the colonial and postcolonial history, architecture and topography of the southeastern areas of London, where on both banks of the River Thames in the 18th–20th centuries there were located the docks, which became an architectural and engineering response to the rapidly developing trade of England with territories in the Western and Eastern hemispheres of the world. Constructions for various purposes — pools for loading, unloading and repairing ships, piers, shipyards, office and warehouse premises, sites equipped with forges, carpenter’s workshops, shops, canteens, hotels — have radically changed the bank line of the Thames and appearance of the British capital, which has acquired the status of the center of a huge empire. Docks, which by the beginning of the 20th century, occupied an area of 21 hectares, were the seamy side of an imperial-colonial enterprise, a space of hard and routine work that had a specific architectural representation. It was a necessary part of the city intended for the exchange of goods, where the usual ideas about the beauty gave way to considerations of safety, functionality and economy. Not distinguished by architectural grace, chaotically built up, dirty, smoky and fetid, the area was one of the most significant symbols of England during the industrial revolution and colonial rule. The visual image of this greatness was strikingly different from the architectural samples of previous eras, forcing contemporaries to get used to the new industrial aesthetics. Having disappeared in the second half of the 20th century from the city map, they continue to retain a special place in the mental landscape of the city and the historical memory of the townspeople, which is reflected in the chain of museums located in this area that tell the history of English navigation, England’s participation in geographical discoveries, the stages of conquering the world, creating an empire and ways to acquire the wealth of the nation.


2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wing-Wah Law ◽  
Wai-Chung Ho

This article critically examines how interactions between social changes, social harmony, and historical memory shape school music education in China. As a historical review and documentary analysis, it traces the historical development of music education and examines the Chinese government's role in such interactions over time. The article argues that the Chinese government uses music and music education as an influential nation-building system to enrich the politics of memory. In particular, it adapts the nation's past for political ends, and passes on state-prescribed values to its citizens with a view to legitimising its power. The dynamics and dilemmas that challenge school education result from two divergent aims: (1) to combine the functional education of Confucianism and nationalism so as to encourage social harmony and maintain national myths; and (2) to encourage popular and other world music with traditional Chinese music by using multicultural teaching strategies in music lessons. The question remains how to balance ideas of social harmony, musical cultures and nationalism in school music education in the contexts of current Chinese education policies, teacher education and the globally oriented economics of China today.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095080
Author(s):  
Nikolay Koposov

This article belongs to the special cluster “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. The rise of historical memory, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, has made the past an increasingly important soft-power resource. At its initial stage, the rise of memory contributed to the decay of self-congratulatory national narratives and to the formation of a “cosmopolitan” memory centered on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity and informed by the notion of state repentance for the wrongdoings of the past. Laws criminalizing the denial of these crimes, which were adopted in “old” continental democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, were a characteristic expression of this democratic culture of memory. However, with the rise of national populism and the formation of the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the politics of memory has taken a significantly different turn. National populists are remarkably persistent in whitewashing their countries’ history and using it to promote nationalist mobilization. This process has manifested itself in the formation of new types of memory laws, which shift the blame for historical injustices to other countries (the 1998 Polish, the 2000 Czech, the 2010 Lithuanian, the June 2010 Hungarian, and the 2014 Latvian statutes) and, in some cases, openly protect the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity (the 2005 Turkish, the 2014 Russian, the 2015 Ukrainian, the 2006 and the 2018 Polish enactments). The article examines Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian legislation regarding the past that demonstrates the current linkage between populism and memory.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110249
Author(s):  
Jamie Wong ◽  
Crystal Lee ◽  
Vesper Keyi Long ◽  
Di Wu ◽  
Graham M. Jones

This article describes how the Chinese state borrows from the culture of celebrity fandom to implement a novel strategy of governing that we term “fandom governance.” We illustrate how state-run social media employed fandom governance early in the COVID-19 pandemic when the country was convulsed with anxiety. As the state faced a crisis of confidence, state social media responded with a propagandistic display of state efficacy, broadcasting a round-the-clock livestream of a massive emergency hospital construction project. Chinese internet users playfully embellished imagery from the livestream. They unexpectedly transformed the construction vehicles into cute personified memes, with Baby Forklift and Baby Mud Barfer (a cement mixer) among the most popular. In turn, state social media strategically channeled this playful engagement in politically productive directions by resignifying the personified vehicles as celebrity idols. Combining social media studies with cultural and linguistic anthropology, we offer a processual account of the semiotic mediations involved in turning vehicles into memes, memes into idols, and citizens into fans. We show how, by embedding cute memes within modules of fandom management such as celebrity ranking lists, state social media rendered them artificially vulnerable to a fall in status. Fans, in turn, rallied around to “protect” these cute idols with small but significant acts of digital devotion and care, organizing themselves into fan circles and exhorting each other to vote. In elevating the memes to the status of celebrity idols, state social media thereby created a disposable pantheon of virtual avatars for the state, and consolidated state power by exploiting citizens’ voluntary response to vulnerability. We analyze fandom governance as a new development in the Chinese state’s long history of governing citizens through the management of emotion.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolin Siepmann ◽  
Lisa Carola Holthoff ◽  
Pascal Kowalczuk

Purpose As luxury goods are losing their importance for demonstrating status, wealth or power to others, individuals are searching for alternative status symbols. Recently, individuals have increasingly used conspicuous consumption and displays of experiences on social media to obtain affirmation. This study aims to analyze the effects of luxury and nonluxury experiences, as well as traditional luxury goods on status- and nonstatus-related dimensions. Design/methodology/approach After presenting the theoretical foundation, the authors conduct a study with 599 participants to compare status perceptions elicited by the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, luxury experiences and nonluxury experiences. The authors investigate whether experiences that are visibly consumed on Instagram are replacing traditional luxury goods as the most important status symbols. Furthermore, the authors examine the effects of the content shown on nonstatus-related dimensions and analyze whether status perceptions differ between female and male social media communicators. Finally, the authors analyze how personal characteristics (self-esteem, self-actualization and materialism) influence the status perceptions of others on social media. Findings The results show that luxury goods are still the most important means of displaying status. However, especially for women, luxury experiences are also associated with a high level of social status. Thus, the results imply important gender differences in the perceptions of status- and nonstatus-related dimensions. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, in particular, the individual characteristics of self-actualization and materialism affect status perceptions depending on the posted content. Originality/value While the research has already considered some alternative forms of conspicuous consumption, little attention has been given to experiences as status symbols. However, with their growing importance as substitutes for luxury goods and the rise of social media, the desire to conspicuously consume experiences is increasing. The authors address this gap in the literature by focusing on the conspicuous display of luxury and nonluxury experiences on social media.


2018 ◽  
Vol 197 ◽  
pp. 16003
Author(s):  
Aris Haris Rismayana ◽  
Castaka Agus Sugianto ◽  
Ida Bagus Budiyanto

When the rainy season arrives, flooding is a common phenomenon. Almost every street, housing, village, river, even in the city center, wherever floods can occur. One effort to prevent the flooding is to create a floodgate on reservoirs or dams that are used to control the water distribution. The water level at this dam must be checked frequently to anticipate if the water level is at a dangerous level. The inspection of water levels will be very difficult if it must be conducted by humans who must be available in the field at any time. This research aims to create a prototype system that can replace the human role in monitoring the dam water level condition at any time by developing an integrated system between hardware and software using IoT (Internet of Things) technology approach and social media (twitter and telegram). The developed system consists of the height sensor (distance), microcontroller and wifi module, which is placed on the water gate. This system serves to measure the water level at any time and send data in real time to the server. The results of system testing performed shows that when the system is in normal circumstances, the system sends data to the server every minute, and updates the status of water level in twitter every 5 minutes. In case the water level has exceeded a predetermined limit, the system sends data to the server every 5 seconds and passes the warning message to all registered telegram contacts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Monika Übner ◽  
Kandela Õun ◽  
Merle Mägi

In 2013/2014, a study on students’ health behaviour was conducted in Estonia. In 2016, a school-aged children’s lifestyle study was carried out in Pärnu City and Pärnu County. The survey explored the students’ relations with their family and friends, family affluence, physical activity, use of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. 2,512 respondents participated in the study, 48% of them were boys and 52% girls. The respondents mainly had a family with two biological parents and their family financial status was mostly “good”. About half of the respondents played computer games 0.5–3 hours a day, but those who were physically active spent less hours behind the computer and had higher family financial status. Respondents who were not physically very active met friends less frequently. In communication with friends, they used more social media. The questionnaire included several questions about risk behaviours. If the respondent had one bad habit, this was likely to lead to other bad habits, too.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
Alexis Peri

AbstractThis article examines the everyday practices of historical reflection, recollection, and reconstruction as revealed in diaries of the Leningrad Blockade. In particular, it focuses on how Leningraders who chose to keep diaries of their experiences worked to make sense of the siege by situating it historically and comparing it to two other historical moments, the blockade of Petrograd during the Civil War and the siege of Sevastopol' during the Crimean War. Their evaluations of these historical analogies were based on a combination of personal and collective memories as well as on their understandings of state-sanctioned accounts of these events. Ultimately, these historical refl ections alerted the diarists to what they came to see as the unique and incomparable aspects of Blockade.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-240
Author(s):  
Salome Dundua ◽  
Tamar Karaia ◽  
Zviad Abashidze

Abstract The article is dedicated to analyse the politics of so called “historical memory” during the state-building and nation-building process in post-socialist Georgia After the Rose Revolution 2003, the new government that aimed at building the “new Georgia,” implementing radical changes in many key spheres, including institutions, readdressing the totalitarian past, faced number of problematic manifestations in political and cultural life in this post-Soviet country. The “politics of memory” became one of the key factors of reconstructing of “new, democratic, western Georgia”. This process can be evaluated as leading toward state nationalism. Analyzing the politics of memory, symbolism is the most notable attitude and that is why former President Mikheil Saakashvili used commemorative ceremonies continuously. The authors argue in favour of approach, that the so called “memory politics” is the integral part of one’s legitimacy building, but at the same time, it can be used as tool for reconsidering of Polity’s future and mobilization of population under the “citizenship” umbrella towards the strong loyalty to the actual and future state-building.


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