The development of digital technologies has a huge impact on modern society. Global information infrastructures are becoming a key site for the construction of cultural memory and discussion revealing overlapping international, national and local identities. However, increased access to knowledge, intercultural communication, civic participation and the development of creativity face communication and informational threats. These include fake news, increased aggression in the digital space, entrapment in an ‘information bubble’ and ‘digital amnesia’. A group of researchers from the Faculty of Communication at Vilnius University will investigate how this uncomfortable heritage manifests itself on social networks.
An Innovative Science Project
The project ‘Connective Digital Memory at the Borderlands: A Mixed-Methods Study of Cultural Identity, Heritage Communication and Digital Curation on Social Networks’ is the only project in humanities and social sciences at Vilnius University that has received funding from the State Professorship Programme administered by the Research Council of Lithuanian. A total of six projects in humanities and social sciences were funded from the programme.
‘The main objectives of the State Professorship Programme administered by the Research Council of Lithuania are to attract high-level researchers from abroad. It will bring together teams of researchers to initiate and carry out research at international level, which would contribute to the development of young Lithuanian scientists. It will lead to the improvement of researchers’ competences and to the development of the host institution’s research activities or topics. All of these issues are relevant to the VU Faculty of Communication and will be implemented during the project’, says Prof. Dr Rimvydas Laužikas, Dean of the VU Faculty of Communication.
He says that for the duration of the project, the VU Faculty of Communication will bring together a team of experienced and young researchers and PhD students, which will be led by Dr Costis Dallas, an exceptionally high-level researcher from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto (iSchool). The research team will include PhD student Donata Armakauskaitė, Dr Viktoras Denisenko, PhD student Justas Gribovskis, PhD student Ingrida Kelpšienė, Assoc. Prof. Dr Kęstutis Kirtiklis, Prof. Dr Rimvydas Laužikas, Assoc. Prof. Dr Lina Murinienė and PhD student Renata Stonytė.
‘The University of Toronto is one of the best in the world. It is ranked 29th in the QS World University 2020 rankings and 3rd in the world in the field of Library and Information Management, which is part of our Communication and Information Sciences in Lithuania. The research will apply original theoretical approaches and methodological solutions. The members of the research team will have the opportunity to significantly enhance their competences, and the research results will be published in high-level international publications’, says Prof. Dr Rimvydas Laužikas.
The research group established at the VU Faculty of Communication during the project will be one of the few research groups in the world, and the first in the Baltic States dedicated to research on social digital memory and digital curation.
‘This is one of the first of its kind – empirically based research in communication and information sciences that will analyse digital memory, cultural identity construction and the manifestations of uncomfortable heritage in social networks on an international scale’, says another member of the project team, PhD student Ingrida Kelpšienė.
Uncomfortable Heritage and Social Networks
The project will seek to identify how the processes of construction of cultural heritage meanings and digital memory in the space of digital social networks (in Lithuania and beyond) enable controversial debates (at the transnational, national and translocal levels) about preferred and unwanted historical pasts, and reveal intersections of cultural identities.
‘As in other countries, the use of social networks has increased significantly in Lithuania. While we are accustomed to studying history using written sources, archival and physical materials to understand our past, our understanding of society and culture in the early 21st century will be heavily influenced by the analysis of information on the Internet and social networks’, says Dr Costis Dallas, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.
He argues that it is particularly important to understand how people currently interact with the cultural and historical information that reaches them, and how people understand and construct their identities differently on social networks. According to Dr Dallas, uncomfortable heritage communication is closely linked to complex phenomena such as xenophobia, misinformation and incitement to hatred. Understanding how uncomfortable heritage is communicated is not only important for the Baltic States and neighbouring countries, but also internationally.
‘In the project, the borderlands are considered to be European territories that have always been on one or another cultural border throughout history – the Baltic States, Poland and Greece. In this study, the border is not understood in a political or geographical sense, but in a communicative sense. This means that the same objects of reality or actions on both sides of the border are perceived (in the communicative sense, ‘read’) differently. For this reason, the occupation on the borderlands has been particularly painful, as a way of life and activity that was considered perfectly normal before the occupation was often perceived by the occupiers as inappropriate or even criminal. This meant that it was possible to become a criminal while living a normal life’, says Prof. Rimvydas Laužikas, Dean of the VU Faculty of Communication.
According to him, there are several particularly striking examples of such different perceptions in the history of Lithuania. The first is the publishing of books in Lithuanian in Latin characters, which was banned by the occupying power of the Russian Empire after the 1863 uprising. Another example is ethnic origin, as being Jewish during the Nazi occupation meant death.
‘Every occupation leaves its own tangible and intangible heritage objects, which – as signs and texts – continue to function in society even after the occupation has ended. We all still remember the intense discussions about the Green Bridge sculptures in Vilnius. The Jonas Noreika memorial plaque or the Kazys Škirpa Alley, which have sparked a lot of debate, could also be a clear example of the functioning of uncomfortable heritage’, says Prof. Laužikas.
Prof. Laužikas adds that the project will apply theoretical access and methodological solutions typical of communication and information sciences. In this respect, the interpretations of uncomfortable heritage that exist in our society are not recorded as objects of historical memory, but are accepted as facts of current reality communicating about one or another deeper phenomenon existing in society.
‘First of all, the aim will be to identify semiotic schemes of action, conceptual metaphors and in-depth narratives related to 'self-creation', controversial memory and different approaches towards uncomfortable cultural heritage and history. Then we will establish which are manifested in the interactions of users of social networks and in their relationship with the digital, online cultural heritage content’, explains PhD student Ingrida Kelpšienė.
The study will include a comparative analysis of the content of different social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Vkontakte). Dr Costis Dallas says that the effects of generational differences, translocation (diaspora, emigrant and immigrant communities), ethnolinguistic (e.g. Russian, Polish-speaking citizens) and religious identities will be studied.
‘We hope to broaden the existing field of scientific knowledge about the phenomena existing on social networking sites. This means developing an integrated theoretical conceptual model of digital social memory, uncomfortable heritage and identity construction practices (ontology of the field). This will be based on empirical data of social networking sites of Lithuanian cultural heritage’, says Kelpšienė.
‘Most often, uncomfortable heritage is analysed in studies of historical and social memory, the identity of modern society and the effects of digital technology. The study of uncomfortable heritage using social network data is still a relatively rare practice’, says Laužikas.
The project team hopes that some of the results will have the potential to become new project ideas or to be realised as applied research.