Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The article analyzes how identity narratives are constructed and presented within the postsecular public sphere of media. It is based on a representative case of the Bumba Mediaholding YouTube channel. The author is guided by the hypothesis that the postsecular identity narratives will contain interweaving symbolic codes of religiosity, ethnicity and civic self-awareness. The methodological approach of the study is a combination of the concepts of postsecular narrative of identity by K. Eder and digital storytelling by N. Couldry. As this study focused on religion, identity, and media, we also used digital ethnography to collect data — case-study, qualitative content analysis of video and audio texts of digital storytelling, narrative interview. The case selected for the study represents digital storytelling that appeals to the religious, ethnic, and civil values of the Kalmyk people as a Buddhist ethno-national community within the Russian Federation. The Bumba Mediaholding’s particularity is its embeddedness in the network of other Buddhist and ethnic media of the popular digital niches of VK.com and YouTube in Russian. Our content analysis of the releases posted on the YouTube platform and in the VK.com public, revealed a digital storytelling circle containing interweaving of ethno-national, Buddhist and civil narratives. The Bumba Mediaholding digital narratives are presented in the multimedia format of short documentaries and thematic narrative cycles on such topics as “the Kalmyk language and national culture”, “the basics of Buddhist doctrine and practice in the everyday life of the modern Kalmyks”, “astrological forecasts as a form of mastering Buddhist doctrine”. Thematic storytelling cycles were created with the participation of a community of practice, whose digital stories form a circle of digital narratives uniting different online communities. Each of the participants in the thematic story cycles is included in the network of other Buddhist and ethnic media in the popular digital niches of VK.com and YouTube in Russian. Analyzing the intersections of digital stories made it possible to trace and examine the circle of digital narratives uniting different online communities.
Source: Ural Historical Journal
Author: Elena A. Ostrovskaya
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7115696995