The Other and the Other's Culture: Revealing Models of Otherness on the Basis Of Russians' Search Queries in the Internet

Abstract

This article is devoted to the models of the Imaginative Other in the Russian segment of the Internet, obtained with the help of statistical and mathematical methods of analysis of Big Data. As a basis for the analysis, the author of the article uses the queries of Internet users, concerning the Other. All queries are grouped around the three main markers of otherness, which according to the concept proposed by the Russian historian S. N. Yakushenkov, represent the basic structures around which the image of the Alien is formed: vestimentary and alimentary codes and sexuality. The author of the article tries to supplement this concept with the fourth structure - ethno-political aspect.

According to him, these basic patterns of otherness are accumulated in the digital space of the Internet as a reflection of the Russians on this or that otherness of foreign people's culture. The collection of empirical material in large databases, their further processing and analysis can give a certain picture of the mechanisms of formation of universal images of the ethnic Alien, as it is represented by users of the Internet. Thus, researchers can get a much more objective tool when analyzing Internet requests in a particular region of the country and the world.

However, it should be taken into account that such studies should be based not only on the principles of synchronism, but also on the diachronism, as only the dynamics of requests over a longer period of time makes it possible to identify the most reliable models of otherness that are forming in a particular region or country as a whole.