MEDIA, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND DIGITALIZATION AS MEANS FOR NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY PROMOTION

Abstract

The article deals with the ways of actualizing one of the most powerful concepts of the modern world - that of ethnicity, which stands out as a constituent of the basic Native American identity concept originated at the end of XX - beginning of the XXI century. Actuality of the research is conditioned by importance of a more profound study of the concept that went through the objective stages of conceptualization and got fixed in the Indigenous Studies. Identity is manifested as a subjective feeling of belonging to a particular social group and at the same time is a source of inspiration and continuity of each individual. The existence of the very phenomenon of identity is determined by the social context and the inviolability of social ties in society. The study of the North American identity has been and remains to this day a problem with inexhaustible potential for researchers. Identity becomes a form of discourse, causing self-discovery, self-interpretation, and the opportunity to transform into the “other” in one's own country. Native American identity can be presented as a theory of social proximity and distance or as an interpretive scheme of gradual and direct discovery of oneself and the surrounding social reality through media and social network communication. Anyhow interpretation of indigenous identity must be largely determined by a set of political, philosophical, historical, cultural, religious, ethnic concepts that dominate in a given circumstance, determining the originality of indigenous identity in these circumstances. Today makes us witness a progressive development of American Indian identity in both cultural and civilizational and psychological dimensions through media, social networks and digitalization.