Yamal's Ethno-Cultural Heritage in Cyberspace: Museums in the VKontakte Social Network

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2025-1/129-147

Abstract

Museum expositions (including virtual ones) are a bright and popular form of presentation of ethnic resources. The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug is one of the most museumified regions of the Russian Arctic and has vast experience in implementing various ethnic projects. Many local initiatives have their origin in cyberspace, which not only helps in the museum's daily activities, but also contributes to the popularisation of museum collections. Therefore, the aim of the research was to study the trends of digitalisation of culture through the museum space: in the groups of museums in the YNAO in the social network VKontakte. The focus of the study was on the content with ethnic specificity. Different formats (text, photo-illustrative, videographic and audio-sound) were used in the creation of posts. Ethnic holidays, festivals, master classes, excursions are popular information occasions for publication. In addition to the events held in the physical space of the museum, the projects created specifically for virtual visitors — digital library, cycles of videos, contests, etc. — were considered. A questionnaire consisting of 12 questions was prepared for the study. More than 100 subscribers from 14 museums took the cyber survey. Thus, in the social network VKontakte the studied museums are registered as open groups, the subscribers have access to the use of various tools of virtual interaction (writing on the wall, creating and discussing topics, etc.), on average they regularly update their pages. In addition, the respondents assigned museum groups the role of an enticing informer for the virtual audience, the main goal of which is to convert it into a real one.