To Ask or not to Ask? Representations of the Past in the Sport Version of “Chto? Gde? Kogda?” Quiz Game

The thesis examined representations of the past in questions that have been played at the sport version of Chto? Gde? Kogda? quiz game. Being an adaptation of the popular TV show originated in the mid-1970s, the offline-game attracts thousands of Russian-speaking players across the globe. Combination of diverse methods such as consulting the shooting team’s materials, media publications, interviews with the sport version’s authors and quantitative analysis of the game’s content allows to present the very first research on the topic. First, this paper describes how the sport version has adapted the show’s rules to play without TV cameras and later become a commercialized activity which players from many countries are involved into. Second, approaches used by the game’s authors in composing questions about the past is studied focusing at verification of facts, self-censorship, cooperation with organizers and feedback by the audience. Finally, the dataset comprised of 3,276 questions is analyzed with assistance of R computational language to shed light onto dynamics in representing the past topically and geographically within the studied environment.