Mediatization of Communicative Memory and Crisis of Critical Thinking in Digital Age

This article addresses the implications of the mediatization of communicative memory and explores the underlying causes of the crisis of critical thinking in the digital age. It focuses on the transformations within the public sphere influenced by new media. A review of discussions surrounding “new sincerity” and “new sensitivity”, as well as the roles of nostalgia in new media, is presented. The interconnections among these phenomena and their common foundations are demonstrated. The study argues that representations of the past in new media increasingly rely not on biographical or historical experiences but on replicable and “privatized” second-order simulacra created by users. Special attention is given to the issue of nostalgia, which emerges as a symptom of the subjugation of cultural and communicative memory to the logic of mediatization, characterized by extreme fragmentation of images, their emotional-affective sharpness, and the replacement of complex structures of historical reality with situational impressions. The article posits that theoretical critiques of mediatization and its effects on the public sphere are insufficient without identifying practical alternatives — namely, the most reflexive projects in both old and new media: auteur cinema, social media blogs by public historians, historical documentary dramas produced by the BBC, independent video games, and more.

mediatization, public sphere, critical thinking, communicative memory, new sensitivity, new sincerity