Communicative factor in ethnogenesis

Abstract

The article examines the role of the mass media in the formation of ethnic identity of the individual. Media discourse becomes especially actual in the modern multi-ethnic society. In the context of the ethnogenesis, the mass media don’t rely on real historical knowledge, but primitivize it, passing through media filters. Instead of an objective picture of the past, the individual receives pre-dosed information or deals with its withholding or multiple duplication. The paradox is in the fact that communication gradually closes the person on himself: in modern media space, the individual remains alone with his/her own experience, trying to correlate personal experience with the visual one. The importance of new media in overcoming the crisis of ethnic identity is analyzed. In the conditions of polyethnicity and inculturation, social networks are becoming a platform for creating new mechanisms for the reproduction of ethnicity and the translation of subjective projects of ethnic identity. Thus, ethnic identity acquires new meanings and values, in some cases extending to “ethnic fanaticism”.