Cognitive Communication of Memory and Ideology in Student Attitudes: Is Quantitative Narrative Analysis Possible?

The study is devoted to the urgent scientific problem of finding the possibilities of using Big Data in processing results of qualitative analysis. The article attempts to combine the advantages of qualitative narrative analysis with the quantitative form of a sociological survey. This study presents the results of an experiment on the implementation of narrative analysis in the form of a quantitative method for studying ideology. The goal is to assess the possibilities of using the quantitative form of narrative analysis based on the results of its testing on the basis of an empirical study of cognitive and ideological attitudes of students of the south of Russia in 2019 with the number of respondents in 2,500 people. The method of quantitative narrative analysis is given a theoretical and methodological substantiation. The theoretical basis was the ideological concepts of Michael Freeden; the ideas of Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, the founders of the narrative approach to history; George Lakoffs theory of cognitive metaphor. To conduct an empirical study, the concept of narrative as a cognitive metaphor was operationalized. The research methodology, which consists in using questions requiring narrative answers in the questionnaire and the method for their quantitative processing and interpretation of the results, is described. Methods for verifying the findings are proposed. The empirical experience of using the method of quantitative narrative analysis in political cognitive science has led to the conclusion that it can be applied to the study of ideological communication. The undoubted advantage is the new opportunities for working with Big Data on the problems of hidden forms of group consciousness and ideological attitudes. A limitation of the application of the method is the subjectivity of the estimates at the stage of interpreting the results and the complexity of the quantitative processing of the answers. An empirical study made it possible to substantiate the concept of cognitive communication of memory and ideology. The result of a narrative analysis of the process of ideological communication was the identification of nuclear and peripheral ideologies in a specific cultural and historical context. Based on the thesis that narrative is a reflection of social experience, it was concluded that respondents had such ideas as a response to changes in the modern political process, manifested in the anticipation of a socioeconomic crisis, environmental catastrophe and fears of an increase in Russia's involvement in military conflicts. The assumption is made that the prospects for further research on the topic of quantification of narrative research data are directly related to the search for a solution to the urgent global scientific problem of the lack of qualitative databases unlike the availability of numerous quantitative data banks.

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