This essay uses the case study of the online project OurBaku to discuss the wider phenomenon of how non-national identities are being revived and promoted through new media for post-socialist audiences. This site enables past and current Bakintsy to commemorate their native city’s past, while at the same time creating an alternative digital version of Baku to counter the enormous physical, cultural and demographic shifts that have happened in the city since the end of the Soviet Union. However, while the site promises to allow Bakintsy to remember the city as they see fit, the tight curation and editing on OurBaku ensures that specific visions of a cosmopolitan Baku and Bakinets from the Soviet-era are at the center of memories forged through the site. This effect points to a large trend of how certain hierarchies and controls over historical memory of the city are replicated in the digital world.

Language of contribution: English

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