The October edition of Online Talks on Russian Media sees Teemu Oivo and Mila Oiva present the findings of their research “Rediscovering Imagined Ancient Russia: Re-emergence of Pseudohistory in Runet”.
The talk focuses on how pseudohistorical texts emerge and circulate in the Russian-language segment of internet and how this is related to discontent and rejection of modern ideologies.
The presenters note that discontent and rejection of modern ideologies, ways of life and conventional science have encouraged many people to search, discover and promote answers to existential questions from the past.
This phenomenon reflects the 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 the twenty-first century information infrastructure provides them new ground to prosper and amaze wider audiences.
In their research, the presenters ask the question: “How do pseudohistory texts re-emerge in Russian language internet (Runet)?” To investigate this question, they have examined a big data corpus consisting of websites, blog posts, and forum discussions on founders of medieval Russia between 1991 and 2019.
They have discovered a cluster of websites recycling several combinations of text fragments from the 18th-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 the meta- and microscale contexts of this (re-)emergence of pseudohistory-related ideas in the online environment.
Speakers’ bios:
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 is 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 the CUDAN Open Lab at Tallinn University.
In her research, she focuses on the circulation of knowledge by studying the phenomenon through 19th century global news flows, contemporary Finnish and Russian internet forum discussions on medieval history, and the Cold War era transnational information circulation.
Practical information:
This Online Talk will be organized on Zoom on Tuesday October 12, from 12:00 to 13:30 (Helsinki time, GMT+3). The discussion will be moderated by Olga Dovbysh (University of Helsinki).
If you want to participate and get emails about the next Online Talks, please leave your contact information here until noon on Monday 11 October. If you have registered for Online talks or the Russian Media Lab Network email list before, no need to register again – we’ll send you the information!
Online Talks on Russian Media is a collaborative initiative between TaRC and the Russian Media Lab Network at the University of Helsinki.