The following paper, in its sense, is a summary of the broad qualitative and quantitative authorial research on the historically-themed materials from the social media video platform YouTube. The main research problem dealt with the matter of the meaning of the historical narrative for the contemporary polish society and the specificity of its historical consciousness. 635 videos from 6 channels since 2013 till 2019 were analyzed. Authors point out the relation between the quantitative analysis of the videos’ topics with the current trends of interests in history present in the society. Functioning of the most popular videos’ trends were emphasized and its connection with their qualitative layer of the historical narrative. Further research on the hypothesis on the ethnocentric interest in history was conducted. Slightly advantage of the political and military narrative was observed and a little less advantage of the factographical and processual perspective in history which is the matter for the further analysis. Conducted research showed that interest in history on the YouTube platform confirms the special status of the XX century and II World War narrations in the historical consciousness of the Polish society.
This article is in a sense a dialogue devoted to the presence of conspiracy theories on social media and mass culture. The authors present the current state of research on the development of digital culture and its social consequences. Next, a case study of the existence of the conspiracy theory of so-called Wielka Lechia is presented. In the analysis the authors combine theoretical and technical considerations of Web 2.0 with research inquiry, which is the analysis of the structure of the Great Lechia theory in social media. The problem of the popularity of the concept of Paweł Szydłowski's and Janusz Bieszk's has been referred to a wider context related to the modern functioning of historical knowledge on the Web. The factual orientation of historical education and the influence of social media on the functioning of the social dimension of history and historians have been indicated as the reason for the current state of the problem. Finally, the authors refer to the digital version of pseudoscience to its earlier analog counterparts and make a structural comparison of both. The effect of this confrontation is to point the phenomenon of remediation of conspiracy theories and the growing deprofessionalization of discourse, which ultimately leads to the end of the era of intellectual authorities.