HEAVENLY SIGNS ON SOCIAL MEDIA. A CONFLICT OF INTERPRETATIONS

During the special military operation (SMO) period, social media abide with photographs of atmospheric phenomena and accompanying short texts which interpret the image as a divination. This practice of semiotizing natural phenomena is rooted in folklore. However, contemporary texts by social media users about heavenly signs are substantively and formally close to institutional rather than folklore narratives. These texts become the subject of a conflict of semiotic ideologies between supporters of the idea of celestial phenomena as an indexical sign of the will of a transcendental actor, followers of conspiracy theories about their technical origin, and users who deny the possibility of semiotization of natural phenomena as a manifestation of the actions of any type of actor. The intensity of the conflict of ideologies is determined by the affordances of social media. In turn, the conflict leads to the formation of self-censorship and the emergence of “zero interpretations” that protect users from possible social risks