In October, Teemu Oivo and Mila Oiva will present the findings of their research “Rediscovering Imagined Ancient Russia: Re-emergence of Pseudohistory in Runet” on how pseudohistory texts emerge and circulate in the Russian-language segment of internet and how it is related to discontent and rejection of modern ideologies.
Online talk will be organized in Zoom October, 12 from 12:00 to 13:30 (GMT+3). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here until October, 11 noon: registration form. If you registered for Online talks or RMLN email list before, no need to register again, we’ll send you the information.
Research summary: Discontent and rejection of modern ideologies, ways of life and conventional science has encouraged many people to search, discover and promote answers to existential questions from the past. This phenomenon reflects to popularity of various types of social groups from popular culture and role players to radically conservative political movements. For seekers of forgotten and dismissed alternative knowledge, the internet is an extremely popular and unprecedentedly extensive source. Several of these emerging theories of history are decades or even centuries old and debunked by scholars, but XXI century information infrastructure provides them new ground to prosper and amaze wider audiences.
In our research we ask the question: “How do pseudohistory texts re-emerge in Russian language internet (Runet)?” To grab this question, we have examined a big data corpus consisting of websites, blog posts, and forum discussions on founders of medieval Russia between 1991 and 2019. We have discovered a cluster of websites recycling several combinations of text fragments from the XVIII century polymath Mikhail Lomonosov and a mixture of other conventional and non-conventional sources to compose a story of a forgotten ancient Russian civilization. Further, this study elaborates meta- and microscale contexts of this (re-)emergence of pseudohistory related ideas in online environment.
Speakers’ bio: Teemu Oivo (MSSc) is a Doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Social and Cultural Encounters at the University of Eastern Finland. In his dissertation, Oivo examines how “Russianness” is produced and in itself a productive idea in various platforms of Finnish-Russian transnational media space. Oivo’s recent research project affiliations include “The Ancient Finnish Kings: a computational study of pseudohistory, medievalism and history politics in contemporary Finland and Russia” at the University of Turku, “Transnational death: practices of death and remembrance in the transnational everyday on the Finnish-Russian border” at the University of Eastern Finland, and “Best of both worlds – enhancing energy transition in Russia and Finland by making resource flows visible (FLOWISION)” at the University of Helsinki.
Mila Oiva (PhD) is a Cultural Historian, digital humanist and an expert on Russian and Polish history. Mila is currently working as a Senior Research Fellow at CUDAN Open Lab at Tallinn University. In her research she focuses on circulation of knowledge studying the phenomenon through the 19th century global news flows, contemporary Finnish and Russian internet forum discussions on the medieval history, and the Cold War era transnational information circulation.
Moderator: Olga Dovbysh (University of Helsinki)
Online talk on Russian Media is a collaborative initiative between Russian Media Lab Network, University of Helsinki, and Tampere Research Center for Russian and Chinese Media.