History and YouTube. Historical narrative in the age of Web 2.0

Abstract

The following paper, in its sense, is a summary of the broad qualitative and quantitative authorial research on the historically-themed materials from the social media video platform YouTube. The main research problem dealt with the matter of the meaning of the historical narrative for the contemporary polish society and the specificity of its historical consciousness. 635 videos from 6 channels since 2013 till 2019 were analyzed. Authors point out the relation between the quantitative analysis of the videos’ topics with the current trends of interests in history present in the society. Functioning of the most popular videos’ trends were emphasized and its connection with their qualitative layer of the historical narrative. Further research on the hypothesis on the ethnocentric interest in history was conducted. Slightly advantage of the political and military narrativewas observed and a little less advantage of the factographical and processual perspective in history which is the matter for the further analysis. Conducted research showed that interest in history on the YouTube platform confirms the special status of the XX century and II World War narrations in the historical consciousness of the Polish society.