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This article addresses the implications of the mediatization of communicative memory and explores the underlying causes of the crisis of critical thinking in the digital age. It focuses on the transformations within the public sphere influenced by new media. A review of discussions surrounding “new sincerity” and “new sensitivity”, as well as the roles of nostalgia in new media, is presented. The interconnections among these phenomena and their common foundations are demonstrated. The study argues that representations of the past in new media increasingly rely not on biographical or historical experiences but on replicable and “privatized” second-order simulacra created by users. Special attention is given to the issue of nostalgia, which emerges as a symptom of the subjugation of cultural and communicative memory to the logic of mediatization, characterized by extreme fragmentation of images, their emotional-affective sharpness, and the replacement of complex structures of historical reality with situational impressions. The article posits that theoretical critiques of mediatization and its effects on the public sphere are insufficient without identifying practical alternatives — namely, the most reflexive projects in both old and new media: auteur cinema, social media blogs by public historians, historical documentary dramas produced by the BBC, independent video games, and more.

The article is devoted to the representations of the Great Patriotic War in Soviet and postSoviet cinematography. The study presents the comparative analysis of the heroic narrative dating back to wartime propaganda and most clearly manifested in post-war film epics, as well as the tragic narrative, which is inextricably linked with the ‘lieutenant’ prose of the Thaw-era. The changes in the images of the Soviet cinema in the Russian war films of the 2000s are considered. It is proved that these changes, found in modern series and remakes, are critically evaluated by both academic circles and youth audience. On the basis of discussions held in ten focus groups the main critical attitudes are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the problem of remediation which consists in the predominance of visual images only outwardly copying popular Soviet films, without independent reflection on the specificity and the meaning of military experience. It is noted that the concept of remediation makes it possible to shift the focus from dissatisfaction with individual parts of films about the Great Patriotic War to the general problem of changing the media regime in modern society and to start analyzing the mechanisms of its functioning.