Heroes of national narratives in the Runet historical memory (based on big data from the VKontakte social network)

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study of narratives about national heroes in the historical communities of the most popular Russian social network VK. The study is based on 332,781 unique text messages extracted by automated methods using the VK open API. For data processing, the nodes of the PolyAnalyst analytical platform are used: the search query, sentiment analysis, text clustering, summaries, visualization nodes, and a number of nodes for text preprocessing. The data was interpreted on the base of the theoretical and methodological provisions of modern narratoLogy, according to which any communication process can be represented as a form of narration. The authors argue that historical personalities are regularly included in modern national contexts as a component of a single sign space that determines national identity and self-consciousness. Among the most popular are Vladimir Lenin (17,092 references), Josef Stalin (13,830 references), Nicholas II (4,917 references). The main narratives associated with Lenin relate to his faith in the struggle to improve people's Life and the foundation of Soviet Union, later marked by the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Lenin's name remains significant at the everyday Level. Opinions about Stalin are traditionally controversial. The Largest cluster of texts about StaLin reveals the narrative of the Great Patriotic War and the man who Led his country to the Great Victory. The family narrative dominates in the texts about Nicholas II. For some modern Runet users, the Last Russian emperor is a symbol of “Russia that we have lost" Statistically significant are also narratives about NichoLas II as a saint, a martyr, a bad ruLer, and about renunciation. The appLied analysis of unstructured big data of sociaL media aLLows soLving fundamentaLLy new tasks of identifying new features of the mass historicaL consciousness, which expands our understanding of the historical memory space and specific characteristics of the nationaL identity of modern Russia.