Abstract

This article examines nostalgia as a mode of representing the historical past and as an indicator of changing attitudes toward history. The relevance of the study stems not only from the persistent presence of nostalgic narratives in the media but also from the insufficient development of analytical tools capable of capturing this phenomenon comprehensively amid the digital transformation of the information environment. The article argues that nostalgia is no longer confined to the realm of personal experience but has increasingly become a public phenomenon actively employed in the construction of collective identity and the shaping of emotionally charged media agendas. The analysis draws on materials published by two Russian media outlets, Argumenty i Fakty and Gazeta.Ru, between 2005 and 2025. Unlike previous studies that have tended to offer static accounts of nostalgia, this research proposes a dynamic model of its evolution by comparing three chronological snapshots — 2005, 2015, and 2025 — and combining quantitative and qualitative methods. A content analysis of 100 publications reveals shifts in the objects of nostalgia, its functions within media texts, and the modes through which the past is represented, as well as an increasing blurring of the temporal boundaries of nostalgic experience. Across the period under study, depending on context, nostalgia may function as the central theme of a text, a secondary argumentative device, a background element, or an object of explicit rejection. It is predominantly endowed with positive, and less frequently ambivalent, emotional connotations and may serve as a means of constructing collective identity. The findings demonstrate that over the course of two decades, nostalgia evolved from a form of "quiet reflection on a lost everyday world", through the "collecting of the material culture of the 1990s", into an "emotional and marketing resource" that may be mobilized, criticized, or rejected. Particular attention is paid to three recurring objects of nostalgia — film and literature, technology and gadgets, and the Soviet past as a historical era — whose evolution reflects a gradual shift from nostalgia centred on tangible objects toward nostalgia for emotional states, experiences, and ways of feeling. The findings make it possible to trace broader transformations in historical memory and public sentiment within Russian media discourse over the past two decades.