Media Memory: Theoretical Aspect

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the theory of media memory and its role in the construction of collectively shared ideas about the past. The author proceeds in his work from McLuhan’s expansive interpretation of media. The processes of mediatization of communicative and cultural memory are being analyzed. Considering the views of Y. M. Lotman and J. Assman on cultural and communicative memory, the author comes to the conclusion that their theories explaining the functioning of collective memory in the era of oral and written communication, cease to work when describing the mechanisms of memory reproduction in the digital environment. Theories of mediatization of memory regard communicative memory are limited to J. Assman’s understanding of, that is, as a memory of the recent past covered by the time of the existence of contemporary digital media. Based on the works of J. Garde-Hansen, E. Hopkins and others, the author considered the theory of digital memory showing its difference from mediamemory. The processes of mediatization of collective memory in the digital environment lead to the emergence of media memory as a special virtual mechanism for constructing ideas about the past. Media memory possesses the characteristics of communicative, cultural and digital memory simultaneously, being a phenomenon of the digital era, where the change in the means of communication has led to the transformation of the content of memories and ways of their reproduction.