Ellen Rutten - Memory, Conflict and New Media : Web Wars in Post-Socialist States

Memory, Conflict and New Media

This book examines the online memory wars in post-Soviet states where political conflicts take the shape of heated debates about the recent past, and especially the Second World War and Soviet socialism.

To this day, former socialist states face the challenge of constructing national identities, producing national memories, and relating to the Soviet legacy. Their pasts are principally intertwined: changing readings of history in one country generate fierce reactions in others. In this transnational memory war, digital media form a pivotal discursive space one that provides speakers with radically new commemorative tools.

Uniting contributions by leading scholars in the field, Memory, Conflict and New Media is the first book-length publication to analyse how new media serve as a site of political and national identity building in post-socialist states. The book also examines how the construction of online identity is irreversibly affected by thinking about the past in this geopolitical domain. By highlighting post-socialist memorys digital mediations and digital memorys transcultural scope, the volume succeeds in a twofold aim: to deepen and refine both (post-socialist) memory theory and digital memory studies.

This book will be of much interest to students of media studies, post-Soviet studies, Eastern European politics, memory studies and international relations in general.

Ellen Rutten is Professor of Slavic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Amsterdam, and is author of Unattainable Bride Russia (2010).

Julie Fedor is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is author of Russia and the Cult of State Security (Routledge, 2011) and a contributing author to Remembering Katyn (Polity Press, 2012).

Vera Zvereva is a Research Fellow at the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, Edinburgh University, UK, and is author of Network Talks: Cultural Communication on the Russian Internet (University of Bergen, 2012) and Real Life on TV Screen (RSUH, 2012).

Media, war and security

Series Editors: Andrew Hoskins, University of Glasgow and Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University

This series interrogates and illuminates the mutually shaping relationship between war and media as transformative of contemporary society, politics and culture.

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Philip Seib and Dana M. Janabek

Radicalisation and the Media: Legitimising Violence in the New Media

Akil N. Awan, Andrew Hoskins and Ben OLoughlin

Hollywood and the CIA: Cinema, Defense and Subversion

Oliver Boyd-Barrett, David Herrera and Jim Baumann

Violence and War in Culture and the Media

Athina Karatzogianni

Military Media Management: Negotiating the Front Line in Mediatized War

Sarah Maltby

Icons of War and Terror: Media Images in an Age of International Risk

Edited by John Tulloch and R. Warwick Blood

Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States

Edited by Ellen Rutten, Julie Fedor and Vera Zvereva

Memory, Conflict and New Media

Web wars in post-socialist states

Edited by Ellen Rutten, Julie Fedor and Vera Zvereva

First published 2013

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 selection and editorial material Ellen Rutten, Julie Fedor and Vera Zvereva; individual chapters, the contributors

The right78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Memory, conflict and new media : Web wars in post-socialist states / edited by Ellen Rutten, Julie Fedor and Vera Zvereva.

pages cm. (Media, war and security)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Former Soviet republicsPolitics and government. 2. Former Soviet republicsSocial conditions. 3. World Wide WebPolitical aspectsFormer Soviet republics. 4. Mass mediaPolitical aspectsFormer Soviet republics. 5. Collective memoryFormer Soviet republics. 6. Political cultureFormer Soviet republics. 7. Post-communismFormer Soviet republics. 8. Social conflict Former Soviet republics. I. Rutten, Ellen, 1975 II. Fedor, Julie. III. Zvereva, V. V. (Vera Vladimirovna)

JN96.A58M46 2013

303.60947dc23

2012039647

ISBN: 978-0-415-63921-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-08363-5 (ebk)

Contents

ELLEN RUTTEN AND VERA ZVEREVA

ANNA READING

ALEXANDER ETKIND

GALINA NIKIPORETS-TAKIGAWA

VOLODYMYR KULYK

MARTIN PAULSEN

INGUNN LUNDE

ILYA KUKULIN

HELENE DOUNAEVSKY

DOREEN SPRER-WAGNER

ALIAKSEI LASTOUSKI

MARIA PASHOLOK

GERNOT HOWANITZ

CATERINA PREDA

JUSSI LASSILA

DIETER DE BRUYN

JULIE FEDOR

Figures

Tables

Charts

Editors

Ellen Rutten is Professor in Slavonic Literatures at the University of Amsterdam and Principal Investigator of the Bergen-based research project Web Wars: Digital Diasporas and the Language of Memory in Russia and Ukraine (www.web-wars.org). She is founding editor of the pioneering journal in the field, Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian & Central European New Media. Her publications include the monograph Unattainable Bride Russia (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and articles in SEER, kultura, Neprikosnovennyi zapas and Osteuropa, among other venues. Her work on digital media has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, among other venues.

Julie Fedor (Cambridge) is a Research Associate on the international collaborative HERA-funded research project Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (www.memoryatwar.org). Her book Russia and the Cult of State Security was published by Routledge in 2011. She is co-author of Remembering Katyn (Polity Press, 2012) and co-editor of Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2013). She has taught modern Russian history at the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Melbourne and St Andrews. Her current research focuses on narratives of self and other in contemporary Russian and Polish memory wars.

Vera Zvereva is a Research Fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for General History, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the Russian State University for the Humanities. An active member of the Future of Russian and Memory at War projects, Dr Zvereva has published extensively on media culture. She is author of two monographs,