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Discussing Wartime Collaboration in a Transnational Digital Space: The Framing of the UPA and the Latvian Legion in Wikipedia

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Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

Mārtiņš Kaprāns and Mykola Makhortykh examine how memory wars and memory truces occur in a transnational space of digital media. Examining how the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Latvian Legion are represented on Wikipedia, the chapter discusses interactions between digital technology and the contentious memory of collaboration. To this end, it investigates the different framing strategies used to represent wartime memories in Wikipedia, the ways these strategies are developed by local editors’ communities, and the reception of Wikipedia’s representations of the past by national and transnational audiences. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the different forms of consensus used in Wikipedia for dealing with contentious past as well as the promises and dangers of using digital media for transnational history writing.

Kaprāns research was supported by the European Union through the European Social Fund (Mobilitas grant no. 409MJD).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the recent scholarly discussion on this paradigm see works by Geyer and Fitzpatrick (2009) and Snyder (2010).

  2. 2.

    See, for instance, a study on the representation of the Srebrenica massacre by Richard Rogers and Emina Sendijarevic (2012).

  3. 3.

    See Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Wikipedia 2015b); Latvian Legion (Wikipedia 2015c); Latviešu leģions (Wikipedia 2015d); (Wikipedia 2015e); (Wikipedia 2015f); (Wikipedia 2015g).

  4. 4.

    For more information on infoboxes see the respective page in Wikipedia (2015h).

  5. 5.

    For more information on leads see the respective Wikipedia page (2015i).

  6. 6.

    For more information on tables of contents see the respective Wikipedia page (2015j).

  7. 7.

    For more information on categories see the respective Wikipedia page (2015k).

  8. 8.

    One particular example is a polemic discussion between Faustian and Jo0doe that took almost two years and ended with Jo0doe being banned from editing English and Russian Wikipedias.

  9. 9.

    Reliable source. One of Wikipedia policies, which prescribes the use of reliable sources for the articles. For more information see the respective page (Wikipedia 2015l).

  10. 10.

    All quotes taken from Russian and Ukrainian Wikipedias were originally published in these two languages. The translation to English was made by the authors.

  11. 11.

    More information about the RAA policy is available on the respective Wikipedia page (2015m).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Latvia, Riga, LV-1050, Latvia

    Mārtiņš Kaprāns

  2. University of Amsterdam, 1012 VB, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Mykola Makhortykh

Authors
  1. Mārtiņš Kaprāns
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  2. Mykola Makhortykh
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Correspondence to Mārtiņš Kaprāns .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ukrainian Studies, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

    Gelinada Grinchenko

  2. Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Eleonora Narvselius

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Kaprāns, M., Makhortykh, M. (2018). Discussing Wartime Collaboration in a Transnational Digital Space: The Framing of the UPA and the Latvian Legion in Wikipedia. In: Grinchenko, G., Narvselius, E. (eds) Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66496-5_7

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