Modern scientific communication traditionally uses visual narratives, such as comics, for education, presentation of scientific achievements to a mass audience, and as an object of research. The article offers a three-level characterization of the interaction of comic culture and science in a diachronic aspect. Attention is focused not only on the chronological stages of these intersections, the expression of the specifics of the interaction is offered against the background of scientific and public discussions that accompany the comics–science dialogue to this day. Within the framework of the first stage (the appearance and distribution of popular science and educational comics), the characteristics of comics content necessary for the different genesis are highlighted: documentary storytelling, educational practices of learning through drawing, active cooperation with well-known companies and institutions, informativeness and empathic involvement of the young reader in a heroico-romantic narrative of scientific discoveries and mastering nature. With the intensification of interdisciplinary approaches (the second stage), comics are increasingly involved in presenting scientific results within the most diverse fields. Comics-based research is becoming an interdisciplinary method and a widespread practical area with the corresponding formation of scientific tools (applied comics, data comics), forms of interdisciplinary interaction (graphic medicine, ethnography, narrative geography, urban comics, comics journalism, etc.), and scientific publications (“The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship”, “Sequentials”). The national format of comics-based research is presented on the example of Ukrainian comics projects (historical, feminist comics). In the genesis of development, Comics Studies have gone from a field of research to disciplinary definitions. In the creation of the metadiscourse of the scientific direction (the third stage), the authors focused on scientific discussions, the formation of academic directions and approaches, and markers of disciplinary self-identification. Emphasis is placed on the unique phenomenon of the simultaneous concordance of various stages of the dialogue between comics and science, on the prolonged replication of successful inventions into modern experience, and the active testing of known narratives at new levels of a scientific presentation.
The characteristics of documentary comics in modern multidisciplinary scientific space is presented, the methods of nonlinear historiography (narrative, oral history, commemoration) and post-documentalism are presented. The scientific discourse focuses on the types of interpretation of reality in comics, the hybridity of genre and style features, the types and forms of empathic involvement of the reader, the compositional specifics of graphic journalism. Scientists’ particular attention is focused on the forms of representation of the “lost history and the history of the lost” (N. Chute), on the means of expanding the space of human memory and historical narrative. The modern direction of scientific research, where documentary comics act as a kind of memory archiver in the form of a visual narrative (N. Mickwitz), as an effective means of understanding and experiencing the historical trauma, brings comics’ studies into the space of global commemorative and historical perspective research. In its own working definition of the genre, narrative, temporal deferment, and veracity of subjective evaluation are actualized. Using the formation example of the Ukrainian comic-space, the principles of accelerated and almost simultaneous deployment of the heroic and documentary narratives are characterized, the features of documentalism in the comic “Will”, the graphic novel “Hole” by S. Zakharov are analyzed. Documentary storytelling in the format of comic journalism is investigated on the basis of the collection “Shadows of forgotten ancestors. Graphic stories”, multiplatform (dos-a-dos format book, comic book, audio performance on YuoTube) hybrid presentation of thematic narrative is illustrated within the “Underground Sky” publication.
The relevance of analyzing the Ukrainian “text of war”, where individual voices are part of a coherent narrative, is related to the rate of changes in this content and the need for scientific understanding. The purpose of the paper is to describe the most illustrative examples of platforms and online resources that have collected witness interviews since the beginning of the war. The method of rapid response collecting and interdisciplinary methods were used to achieve the goal. The creation of platforms for collecting war stories, their structure, goals and working methods have become the subject of our research interest. Openness, accessibility, end-to-end tagging, simplified cataloguing, ease of navigation around a website or platform, and the ability to upload one’s own story have driven the popularity and demand for such resources. Structured and archival capabilities have helped war witnesses preserve not only their experiences but also the memory of those who did not survive. As a result of this research, we offer a description and structural analysis of the online Museum of Civilian Voices and certain platforms with oral testimonies and interviews of eyewitnesses (#MyWar, War. Stories from Ukraine, Ukrainian Witness). The mediatisation of all spheres of life is determined by the modern information space, in which the voices of witnesses become an important part of the process of forming national memory. The involvement of media in collecting and disseminating war testimonies and memories has become an everyday reality, in which individual stories are transformed into a common memory space. We have highlighted the following factors in the mediatisation of modern oral history: сommunicability (stemming from the public sphere as an integral part of oral history research), interdisciplinarity (using oral history methods to create different narratives) and global practices of powerful platforms for the collection and dissemination of stories and witness interviews (exemplified by StoryCorps). The speed of access, the efficiency and the possibilities of content dissemination have defined the nature of new media, and the internet has become the main tool for documenting war history, an archive of personal stories and testimonies. Social media has spread storytelling as a fundamental genre of the modern information field.
The article presents the context of modern scientific debates on the boundaries of interdisciplinarity. The subject of the study is the common procedure of the use of oral history practices in the mass media space. The oral history itself is changing rapidly under the pressure of digital platforms such as StoryCorps (USA), Listening Project (UK), The Story Project (Australia), and The Tale of a Town (Canada). Another key thing is the fact that the changes affected not only the technological process of archiving and dissemination of information but also the basic foundations of oral history, which is its methodology. The in-depth interview is replaced by the “rapid response collecting” method and historical storytelling. The purpose of the article is to outline the discussion field of the modern scientific discourse of the problem, to present the most significant interdisciplinary interaction using the example of world and Ukrainian media, namely: coverage of contradictory and ambiguous interpretations of historical facts; narrative; prolonged communication; multimedia and multiplatform. The research methods are traditional empirical methods of observation and description, as well as paradigmatic analysis of the functional features of oral history practices in journalism. Results of the research. Basic characterological directions proposed in the study allowed us to present the main points of discussion in various aspects: the use of oral historical materials, especially “hidden history” through the eyes of eyewitnesses, become an additional source of journalistic clarifications, investigations and expansion of the information agenda; addressing marginal themes of history, giving a voice to terrorist groups and participants in genocides poses extremely complex and ethically controversial questions to the audience; multimedia and multiplatform give new life to oral history information, while performance, theatre and participation are added to the usual practices of new media. The most expressive manifestation of changes in this interdisciplinary discourse is the practice of digital storytelling; its media use is illustrated by the BBC’s Capture Wales digital storytelling project. As part of the scientific discussion that has continued for the last few years, the issues of democratization of history, mass inclusion in digital archives, the creation of powerful social projects, and attempts to distance oral history as a separate discipline have been actualized. Moreover, it is recognized that, like any creative practice, interdisciplinarity remains a wide field for experimentation and creativity.
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