Interest in Historical Figures on the World Wide Web as a Marker of Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Ukraine

Abstract

The purpose of the article – to determine the specifics and intensity of interest in M. Hrushevskyi from 2004 to 2022 based on statistical data from the Google search engine. The scientific novelty of the study consists in clarifying the peculiarities of M. Hrushevskyi’s reception in cyberspace, manifested in the frequency of searching for information about him using the popular Google search engine, as well as Wikipedia, the largest online encyclopedia. Conclusions. At the end of our research, we conclude that M. Hrushevskyi appears to be a well-known and important figure to Ukrainian users, but on the contrary, does not generate much interest amongst Internet users from other countries. As we can see from the acquired results, search queries concerning M. Hrushevskyi are mainly dominated by scientific and didactic topics. Therefore, a certain working hypothesis can be derived in that the discourse dealing with M. Hrushevskyi is not noticeably politicized, as might be expected given his dizzying career during the revolutionary years. Instead, the discourse relates more to education, cultural heritage research, memory and history. The obtained data will be useful primarily to sociologists working on establishing the attitude change dynamics of Ukrainians towards our most famous historical figures.

Keywords

• m. hrushevskyi, “born digital” sources, google search engine, hodrick prescott filter, perception