MEMORIALIZATION OF CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH INTERNET USERS’ WEB-BASED DIARIES
Authors: Тивьяева И.В. 
Published: July 2024

В статье феномен коллективной памяти лингвокультурных сообществ рассматривается в контексте пандемии COVID-19. Предпринимается попытка изучить специфику отражения личностно значимых переживаний, формирующих основу для дальнейших воспоминаний о пандемии коронавируса, в текстах сетевых дневников русскоязычных и англоязычных пользователей сети Интернет. Эмпирическую базу исследования составил авторский корпус доступных на тематических ресурсах дневниковых записей на русском и английском языках. При анализе языкового материала применялся корпусно-ориентированный подход, в рамках которого составляется заключение о концептуально значимых содержательных элементах текста на основе статистической обработки выборки — определения ключевых слов и анализа их контекстов. Результаты анализа тематического корпуса позволили сопоставить особенности индивидуального восприятия ситуации пандемии коронавируса русскоязычными и англоязычными диаристами. Полученные данные могут свидетельствовать о значимости национально-культурного фактора в нарративизации личного опыта, связанного с COVID-19.

As a response to the spread of the coronavirus infection, pandemic induced changes to habitual lifestyles, and numerous losses, the global online community shared individual memories, personal stories, and daily reports associated with COVID-19 and its aftermath. These narratives told by different people in different parts of the world form the basis for collective memories about the time of the pandemic. The present study aims to explore the foundations of collective memory about the COVID-19 pandemic being constructed in Russian and English sociocultural communities by examining the current perception of the coronavirus crisis by Russian and English speakers as reflected in their online diaries. The paper seeks to compare the culturally conditioned visions of the new pandemic-affected reality and address the role of the sociocultural factor in communicating coronavirus induced personal experience. The data set for this research consisted of a corpus featuring Russian and English online diaries publicly available on open-access web resources. Data sources included media websites, academic projects and diary-keeping platforms. A diary entry was added to the corpus if it met the following criteria: 1) web based diary format; 2) coronavirus-driven content. The only limitation concerned pandemic stories produced by medical staff and those who contracted coronavirus. These varieties of pandemic diaries were excluded from the data set due to their content specifics that could potentially distort findings. The diaries under analysis spanned the period from January 2020 to June 2021. The research relies on the corpus-based approach that allows making conclusions about conceptually relevant elements of text content on the grounds of statistical data, specifically, the key word method. Combined with the context analysis, this method yields results indicative of the author’s stand regarding the text’s dominant conceptual points. The automatic keyword and context analysis of the two subcorpora was conducted with the assistance of the AntConc corpus manager for Windows. Компаративистика: синхронический аспект 237 Findings revealed pronounced contensive differences between Russian and English web-based pandemic diaries suggesting that Russian diarists documenting their coronavirus experience are generally more outer world oriented than their English counterparts in terms of their interest in and concerns about global developments. Differences were also observed in attitudes to key central points. As this research demonstrated, there are culturally consistent discrepancies in approaching coronavirus-related issues of common concern. The findings highlight and contribute to the discussion about how the pandemic affects various sociocultural communities and how collective memory in the post-COVID society gets formed by digitally mediated personal stories.