title: Sentimental visual content of the new normality: How digital cats domesticate crises
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Tikhonova, Sophia V.
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2023-11-02T10:28:46Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2023-11-02T10:28:46Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2023-06
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Tikhonova S. V. Sentimental visual content of the new normality: How digital cats domesticate crises. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Sociology, 2023, vol. 16, issue 2, pp. 149–167. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu12.2023.203 (In Russian)
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu12.2023.203
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/44350
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: The article deals with the cultural origins of the sentimental content “about cats” and its actual
  functions, which are activated in the conditions of crisis phenomena. The author considers Internet
  memes with cats as a tool of social reaction to social crises, the evolution of which is inscribed
  in the general context of the “reformation” of the Internet associated with the peculiarities of social media. The COVID-19 pandemic overlapped with a cascade of social crises. Ideas
  about the new normality are spreading as a theoretical reflection of a permanent social situation
  in which post-crisis stabilization does not coincide with a return to pre-crisis states. The operationalization
  of such representations is becoming increasingly important. New crisis conditions
  are changing the adaptive strategies of users. Drift from the paradigm of mobilizing resources
  needed to overcome crises, which is rapidly being exhausted in the conditions of their cascade,
  to the paradigm of changing attitudes to crises and to one’s own capabilities (more precisely, their
  absence) starts. The author connects the cultural origins of sentimental content with the confrontation
  of the “old” Internet with its anonymity, counterculture, vanguard and minimalism
  of feedback and the “new” Internet, characterized by the construction of multi-channel communication
  systems and the desire for total visualization of information messages. The article
  analyzes the visual cat content on the example of Internet memes (including intersecting meme
  cycles and serial memes) dedicated to crisis social reflection. The author identifies the role of the
  cat content as a crossroads where the key attitudes of the old and new Internet meet, namely, the
  culture of trolling and the culture of cancellation. She considers the sentimentality of content as
  a form of lowering the register of distributed social reflection. The latter suggests new ways of
  positioning a social view belonging to a subject synthesizing the features of a digital cat and a
  mass user of social networks. The author identifies two key functions of the cat content — the
  maintenance of uncomplicated social interactions that provide a positive shared social experience
  and reflexive detailing of the response to the agenda in conditions of unprecedented mass
  media presence enhancement. The author comes to the conclusion that memes with cats center
  the lifestyle of a mass user in a home environment. The inclusion of a crisis agenda in it is equivalent
  to a new way of scaling social macro-problems, which an individual user is fundamentally
  unable to cope with. The crisis is represented in memes as the chaoticization of the household by
  harmless creatures, the consequences of which can be dealt with in the usual ways. As a result,
  digital cats help the user to domesticate and “tame” the social crisis.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.description.sponsorship
metadata.value: The study was carried out at the expense of the Russian Science Foundation grant, project no. 22-
  18-00153 “The Image of the USSR in Historical Memory: a study of media strategies for reproducing Ideas
  about the Past in Russia and foreign countries”, https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00153/.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: ru
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Vestnik of St Petersburg University. Sociology;Volume 16; Issue 2
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: internet meme
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: cat content
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: digital cat
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: trolling culture
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: cancellation culture
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: crisis
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: COVID-19
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: web 1.0
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: web 2.0
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Sentimental visual content of the new normality: How digital cats domesticate crises
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 03.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/44350/1/03.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 1,49 MB