New Historicism and Historical Representations in the Digital Environment

Section: Modern Journalism: Subjects and Issues

The article describes new representation forms of historical knowledge in modern digital media scene. The author introduces the concept of «history virtualization», which suggests supplying additional meanings to actual historical materials, and studies various virtualization scenarios such as an ironic reinterpretation of a historical event, its mythologization and symbolization, interactive and game representations of history and the loss of connection between a symbol and historical reality. The visual representation form, the addition of ironic meaning and the presence of many equivalent viewpoints in cyberspace result in such a phenomenon as an internet meme. A historical meme is a «laughter» response of the mass audience to public events, but it involves history simplification and stereotypification. The phenomenon of history mythologization is characterized by history interpretation and update from the ideological perspective. In this case, interpretation may replace reality. Breaking the connection between reality and representation is also typical of interactive forms of the presentation of historical material. In interactive games, the user can only make a virtual decision. A lot of opportunities for virtual interaction with historical, political or social materials replace the user‘s real participation in the ongoing social process.

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