Digital Footprints and Authoritarian Memory: Investigating Ideology, Governance, and Public Memory in Russia through Digital Methods

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In semi-closed and closed regimes, historical and cultural memory is vulnerable to manipulation by repressive governments. Yet, these regimes also generate digital traces—whether through official propaganda, citizen activity on social media, or opposition efforts to preserve suppressed narratives. This panel explores how digital methodologies can be utilized to analyze these "data scents" in Russia, addressing key questions of methodology, ideology, public memory, governance, and civic engagement under authoritarian rule.
The discussion will examine the evolution of digital Russian studies and introduce novel approaches, including the use of machine learning to analyze the ideological motivations and historical narratives driving Russian soldiers in the war against Ukraine. It will also explore Russian administrative data as a form of institutional memory that reveals patterns of state evolution, the application of big data analysis in memory studies, and the role of memory politics at the intersection of the state and civil society, particularly through the distribution of government grants.

Sub Unit

• Digital Humanities

Chair

• Kirill D. Titaev, Yale U

Papers

• What Memories and Imaginations Motivate Russian to Fight in the War?: Application of Machine Learning in the Study of Ideology - Ivan Grek, George Washington U

• Administrative Data as Authoritarian Memory: Uncovering Regional Disparities through Big Data Analysis - Sergei Tikhonov, George Washington U

• Funding Memory: Quantitative Analysis of State Grant Distribution - Ksenia Zinder, George Washington U

• Naming the Dead: Between Data Activism and Memory Politics in Russia after 2022 - Arnold Khachaturov, EHESS (France)

Discussant

• Gulnaz Sibgatullina, U of Amsterdam (Netherlands)