Monumental Sites of Memory in Wartime: Practices of Media Representation

Abstract

The war has spurred a wide-ranging and intense rethinking of the symbolic meaning of memorial heritage and collective memory. An important role in this process belongs to the mass media, which define focuses of attention by selecting events and actors and take part in constructing the meaning of events related to the reinterpretation of memorial heritage. The article considers the media representation of practices of interaction with monumental sites of memory since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the author’s view, analysis of the informational resonance surrounding the practices of preservation and destruction of monuments will help us, on the one hand, to pin down the characteristic features of the new version of collective memory being formed during the war, and, on the other, to identify the means and substance of the symbolic rethinking of memorial heritage. The study’s object of analysis is online media coverage of events related to the preservation and destruction of monumental sculpture in the largest cities of Ukraine, with a particular focus on the city of Kharkiv, whose frontline situation gives special symbolic significance to any practices of interaction with urban monumental sculpture. Analysis of news reports involves outlining their thematic spectrum and architectonics and considering rhetorical techniques and metaphors used by the authors of publications and authors of direct speech. The article also gives special attention to visual imagery in photographs illustrating online publications. In her conclusions, the author argues that it is as a result of the media coverage of practices of interaction with monuments (both preservation and damage) that the semantic meaning of monuments is recoded and memorial heritage is associated specifically with national identity. At the same time, these practices themselves acquire features of citizens’ heroic struggle for the freedom of their country.