China’s “Gold Shield”: Monemonic Internet Practice Management Policy

Actualization of the past is a natural manifestation of need for reflection of historical memory for society; it also pushes elites to search for new forms of “mental control” over public consciousness. The research is devoted to the problem of keeping historical memory in the context of censorship on the Internet. The goal is to identify the symbolic effects of historical memory that arises as a result of narrative representations of history and cognitive mnemonic practices of network media and online Internet communities in the context of censorship. Result of this research was conceptualization of the notion for “cognitive mnemonic Internet practices”, their typology in accordance with the types of cognitive censorship of network media and a description of their symbolic effects. Concept of the Internet as a mnemonic system is theoretically grounded, a typology of censorship strategies is given as a factor affecting the displacement of some forms of historical memory from the public sphere of society and their expression in various network mnemonic practices. The case study analysis of modern Chinese network media allowed for conceptualization of the notion of “cognitive mnemonic Internet practices” and grounding the conclusions.