Digital authoritarianism in the making: repression and resistance on the Russian internet

The article addresses the problem of decoding creolized “small” poetic forms with the reference to Russian and English Internet literature. Thus, we focus on the phenomenon of Russian Internet poetic texts poroshki and their authorized English language versions. Comic poetic texts poroshki are popular among Russian Internet users and reflect the reality of modern life. The novelty of the work lies in the new literary paradigm of interpreting poetic texts poroshki, which originally appeared within the Russian Internet.<br> The article aims at finding the mechanisms of decoding creolized “small” poetic forms as they appear in the Russian language and their English variants. Thus, we have implemented the lexical-semantic, stylistic, cognitive-discursive, and comparative analyses as we attempted to create original literary analysis which will allow to find algorithms in interpreting poetic texts poroshki (and any other “small” poetic forms) and to explain using image transformations based on creolization of verbal and non-verbal components of the texts. The suggested strategy takes into account the linguistic and extralinguistic literary codes and their creolization with non-verbal code of poroshki and allows creating semantic unity between verbal and non-verbal components of the poems. The results of the research help to promote poetic texts poroshki in the English language social networks and thus distribute this poetic form within other linguocultures.

The paper is devoted to a complex spatiotemporal analysis of the development of the Internet in the Russian Federation. The following quantitative and infrastructural aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet are discussed: the regional distribution of the Internet audience, growth poles, disparities in the penetration level, etc. Changes in the geography of the Internet that took place over the first decade of the 21st century are revealed. Features of Russia’s geographical position and the related significant role of wireless technologies and the mobile Internet in particular are described. The network and organizational structure of the Russian Internet and its development prospects are covered. Qualitative aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet in Russia are analyzed separately (the activity and effectiveness of the population’s use of the Internet). The dynamics and regional disparities in the development of the Internet and e-commerce market in Russia are examined. Conclusions are made about the significant decentralization in the regional distribution of Internet users in Russia in the first decade of the 21st century. The rapid proliferation of mobile communication technologies and mobile Internet penetration, in which Russia is among the world leaders, plays a significant role in smoothing geographical contrasts. However, a sufficiently rapid reduction in quantitative imbalances inside the country is accompanied by retention of significant qualitative gaps in the creation of Internet information resources and the Internet market, where metropolitan areas still have a monopoly.

The paper is devoted to the complex space-time analysis of the development of the Internet in the Russian Federation. The following quantitative and infrastructural aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet are discussed: the regional distribution of the Internet audience, growth poles, disparities in the penetration level, etc. Changes in the geography of the Internet that took place over the first decade of the 21st century are revealed. Features of the Russia’s geographical position and the related significant role of wireless technologies and of the mobile Internet in particular are described. The network and organizational structure of the Russian Internet and its development prospects are covered. Qualitative aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet in Russia are analyzed separately (the activity and effectiveness of the use of the Internet by the population). The dynamics and regional disparities in the development of the Internet and e-commerce market in Russia are examined. Conclusions about significant decentralization in the regional distribution of Internet users in Russia, which occurred in the first decade of the 21st century, are made. The rapid proliferation of mobile communication technologies and mobile Internet penetration, in terms of which Russia is among the world leaders, plays a significant role in smoothing of geographical contrasts. However, a sufficiently rapid reduction in quantitative imbalances inside the country is accompanied by the preservation of significant qualitative gaps in the sphere of creation of Internet information resources and the Internet market, where there is still a monopoly of metropolitan areas.

RusNet on the Offensive

358 SEER, 83, 2, 2005 addition to the literatureon the parliamentunder El'tsinthat has shown it to be less redundantand uselessthan was predicted at the end of I993. Department ofPoliticsandPublic Administration NEIL ROBINSON University ofLimerick Zassoursky,Ivan. MediaandPower inPost-Soviet Russia.M. E. Sharpe,Armonk, NY and London, 2004. xi + 269 pp. Tables.Figure.Notes. Bibliography. Index. fI.50 (paperback). THE relationshipbetween the media andpower is one that deservesthe closest scrutinyin any state, especially in one tryingto recover from the devastation of totalitarian Communism. In the Soviet period the analysis of this relationship was much easier: the media, initially the press, and eventually radio and television, were the instruments by means of which the party transmittedallegedly superiorwisdom to the massesand defended the regime from internal and external ideological foes. After I99I things became a lot more complicated, as Zassourskyshows in MediaandPower inPost-Soviet Russia. The author covers a great deal of ground:the role of television;discussionof the conceptual relevance of the fourth estate in Russia;the impact of the two Chechen wars(I994-96 and 1999-2000); the corrosiveuse of kompromat in the press; the various power struggles to control the television networks; the Internetin Russia. Zassourskyargues that television 'carriesfull responsibilityfor the collapse of the Soviet system' (p. 229), and that Gorbachev was the first Soviet politician who really understood the medium. Now, Gorbachev's skill in manipulating television is indisputable, yet I would suggest that the real significance of television and Gorbachev was that he was the first Soviet politicianwho realizednot so much the potential of the medium surelythat was obvious even to Brezhnev -but that liberalizingthe print media made no sense without liberalizing television and dispensing with the predictable Soviet models of both. Once that happened one might regard the Chernobyl disaster(i 986) as the turningpoint events moved very quickly. By the mid i 980s the Soviet Union, no matter how ably the last General Secretaryof the CPSU manipulated the media (Westernand Soviet), was fast heading towardsoblivion in any case. It was the combination of a liberalized press and television that accelerated the Soviet Union's firstcollapse. On the nature of television in general, however, Zassoursky offers some valuable insights.Thus: 'Television',he asserts,'does not appeal to reason,but to faith' (p. 70); 'As for television, the only people able to believe in the victory of reason on the airwaves are those who think the law prevails every time in court' (p. 72); and 'The influence of television leads to the personificationof the political process, to its assimilation in a way that is emotional and to a large degree irrational'(pp. 103-04). One of Zassoursky'sbest chapters is that which deals with the Internet in Russia. The author provides information and data which suggest that much of the talk of how the Internet would change the whole political process was overstatedsince, as he points out, 'The Internetcannot have a seriousimpact REVIEWS 359 on the political process without the aid of the mass media' (p. I83). This is a good point with regard to Russia where Internet use remains low but somewhat misleading when applied to the US. Nevertheless, he sees an importantrole for the Internetin Russia:'Combining the role of samizdat with a social communications industry, the Net is perhaps required by a vocal minority than by a silent majority.But in some cases (thewar in Chechnya), this is already very important, since it leaves a window of freedom in the communications system'(p. I84). The book's only serious shortcoming is the failure to discuss in any detail the main pieces of primary and secondary media legislation, which were enacted throughout the I99os: h7he Mass MediaLaw (I992); TheSecrecy Law (I993); TheReporting Law(I994); TheInformation Law(I995); TheCommunications Law (I995); 7The Law of Information Exchange (I996). Some knowledge of this legislationis criticalto understandingwhat tookplace in the Russianmedia in the I990s. The authormakesa couple of referencesto TheMassMediaLawbut this is inadequate given the book's theme, especially as interpreting TheMass MediaLaw was one of the main problems in media disputes in the i990s. Indeed, one reason why the image of a more competent Russia in the second Chechen war was possible was because information flows were...

Today, the internet has become a very fragmented research object that can be understood differently depending on contexts, research goals and methods. However, the internet [in this text, we write “internet” with a lower case “i”, following the process of decapitalisation of this term. The logic behind this process is that we understand internet as “computer network connecting a number of smaller networks” rather than as “the global network that evolved out of ARPANET, the early Pentagon network” (Herring S. Should you be capitalizing the word “internet”? Wired, 2015)] of a particular country is often treated by researchers as an umbrella term combining heterogeneous phenomena and practices. In this chapter we propose an alternative way of analysing the internet in Russia’s regions. Contrary to the concept of RuNet as common space, we explore diversity of what the internet is in different localities in Russia. The cases of five cities aim to illustrate the variety of histories and usage patterns of the internet in particular locations, such as in cities in Russia’s regions. Qualitative data consisting of interviews, observations, digital ethnography and archival documents have paved an additional (to more conventional quantitative data) way to explore the internet as a complex phenomenon rooted in previous development, local cultural and societal norms and political and economic situations. In particular, we stress the significance of the early internet, the diversity of basic and alternative platforms, the access and infrastructure divide as objects that are important to understand the development of the internet in a particular location.

The authors analyze one of the most problematic areas in sphere of legal regulation – provision of protection of the copyright in Internet in Russia and in other countries. This sphere remains unregulated because of the difficulties with legal notion of Internet, which remains unclear and also technological aspects of the copyright protection with the means of civil legislation. The conducted analysis allowed to give the notion of Internet and revealed the types of breaches of copyrights in Internet. Authors come to conclusion that the lack of competent judges also leads to the insufficient protection of the copyright in Internet. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6p163

Socialist autarky and participation in the global exchange of products and services based on IT are mutually incompatible. So Russia’s embracing the Internet is a welcome sign of speedy remove from the Soviet past, and the possibility of any reversal. Compared with the arrival of the Internet in Russia, the changes affecting television programming and the fears expressed about them are far less important than they seem. True, Russian television has experienced major developments, but IT has, as in the West, forced journalists, government agencies, universities, business, wider economic activity and, of course, the private citizen to make huge conceptual leaps from the recent past, in a way in which television has not.

The paper deals with gastronomic culture in the Russian Internet. Despite the innovative properties of Internet communication as such, its content is often found reproducing traditional semantic categories. These invariables are demonstrated here using the example of gastronomic culture in Russian Internet. In our study we rely on the following methods: content analysis, discourse analysis, structural semiotic analysis, and comparative analysis. The objects of the study are: Internet memes about food, ads by various size retail chains, consumer online feedback, all of them revealing stable patterns and universal categories of thought. In the course of the study we reveal archetypal images and traditional thought concepts that are implemented in marketing communication and Internet memes about food. Comparison of the study results leads us to a range of conclusions. Russian marketing communication that steers consumer behavior, proceeds as the ‘parent–child’ interaction and relies largely on traditional stereotypes of behavior including gender roles. This model gains support from consumers as low tolerance to indeterminacy is rather characteristic to Russian culture in general, which is compensated for by the model “Caregiving Parent”. Today’s digital folklore is more focused in its evaluations on the vector of change. Here the value of freedom prevails over continuity and stability; important are also such semantic values as exploration of the new, creativity, hedonism, and individuality. These categories represent the values of the creative culture.

New Internet governance policies in Russia aim at making the Russian Internet independent of the global Internet network. This paper discusses how this aim could be achieved. By combining the Internet governance and legal approaches, this paper offers an original argument that the Russian government is planning to intensify control of the Russian Internet not by trying to control original Internet resources, but rather by setting control over their copies. This paper introduces and discusses a new theory – the theory of copied Internet. This theory explains what points in the Internet infrastructure Russia is planning to copy. Furthermore, this paper addresses the role of foreign Internet companies as builders of this copy. These paper stresses that the coexistence of two Internet infrastructures, the original one and the national copy, may endanger online free expression. The main threat consists in duplicating the Russian Internet’s content layer, which opens a way to manipulate digital speech.

The crisis poses a specific practice of representation of consciousness. The current situation in the Russian media is characterized by a lack of freedom of speech where the traditional media is controlled by the state. It has made the Internet the only platform where there is a possibility to implement the various forms of expression of the crisis of consciousness. Russian authorities use the crisis in order to demonstrate the correctness of their strategy of social and economic policies. This appears to be a very specific way of constructing social and cultural reality being developed. The Russian Internet provides space for the regularly produced animated film Mr. Freeman, which is focused on Russian crisis of consciousness. The video shorts were analyzed as “description of discursive events”(Foucault). Discourse analysis provides an opportunity to highlight the discursive elements of two types; these are the symbolic and the semantic, which form the two levels of the crisis consciousness.The symbolic level the series includes images of Napoleon, the Little Prince, a meat grinder, the thinker, Caesar, and finally, a spider. On the semantic level this includes a free man, multiple fluid identities, the negation of cultural stereotypes typical of popular culture, the denial of the basic principles of the consumer society, anarchism as a reaction to the totalitarian state penetration into all spheres of social life and anti-hierarchy. The predominance of these images shows the current crisis of consciousness of Russian Internet users, which is expressed and oriented towards symbolic forms of protest. The crisis generates the specific practices of representation of the consciousness (it can be characterised as crisis consciousness), on the one hand, which are hardly revealed by the classic methods of sociology, and, on the other hand, are expressed in particular ways through the unconventional media and the forms of arts. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p186

This chapter focuses on expressions of online misogyny and homophobia on the Russian internet and emergent forms of resistance against these expressions of hate online. I briefly discuss the Russian internet freedom and censorship context with a focus on gender and sexuality and provide an overview of the situation around the normalization of misogyny and homophobia on the Russian internet, as well as activist responses to these. In an environment where free speech is selectively restricted and where the application of legal sanctions and protections is often arbitrary, personalized expressions of affect and emotion in digital networks can act as forms of feminist resistance against the normalization of misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric online. The case of Deti-404 founder Elena Klimova and her public online project, “Beautiful People and What They Say to Me”, which combines the profile pictures of social media users with abusive messages they had sent her, is a striking example of such dissent. Both visual and highly affective, Klimova’s project emerges as a powerful form of personalized resistance to hateful speech online, as it seeks to contest the traditional definitions of what is “normal” and raises awareness of the power of words and discourse in digital networks.

Исследовательская проблема состоит в необходимости выявления и анализа когнитивных компонентов и эмоциональной специфики трансформации интернет-дискурса, складывающегося вокруг негативных резонансных событий и политических решений разного генезиса. В рамках данной статьи в фокусе внимания находятся два события 2019 г. различной природы: катастрофа самолета «Сухой Суперджет» в Шереметьеве и так называемый закон об оскорблении власти. Теоретико-методологические основания исследования выстроены посредством синтеза современного коммуникативного подхода к осмыслению специфики интернет-пространства, политико-психологических теорий и ивент-анализа. Сочетание указанных методов позволило выявить эмоциональные, когнитивные и динамические особенности репрезентации двух изучаемых событий в пространстве социальных медиа рунета.
 Во-первых, выявлено, что эмоциональный компонент восприятия обоих событий довлел над когнитивным и динамическим. При этом наиболее широкое массовое распространение получили две негативные эмоции: раздражение (в первом случае) и страх (в случае с катастрофой «Суперджета»). Во-вторых, установлено, что когнитивный и динамический ракурсы репрезентации этих резонансных событий в рунете развивались в схожем направлении фрагментации и индукции. Первая тенденция проявлялась в росте локальных сетевых дискуссий и «виртуальных» конфликтов по поводу причин и последствий происходящего. Тенденция индукции выражалась посредством перехода от обсуждения нюансов произошедшего к генерализованным негативным установкам. В-третьих, подтвердилась гипотеза, что информационный фон, складывающийся в рунете вокруг резонансных событий и непопулярных политических решений, имеет выраженный негативный и депрессивный характер. В-четвертых, повышенная эмоциональность восприятия, фрагментация и индукция, запаздывающая рационализация «шоковых» тем при одновременном падении интереса к ним и стремление к негативизации непосредственно связаны со спецификой коммуникативной среды рунета.

In the article, the authors identify and describe the role of the media in broadcasting content about new religious movements (on the example of the Scientol- ogy movement) on the Russian Internet. The Kribrum social media analysis system is used as a technical tool. The authors put into the project a model that included 80 concepts for the Center of Scientology and 1,242 concepts for Russian social institu- tions. The authors consider the periods 01/01/2018-12/31/2019 (stable social situation) and 01/01/2020-23/02/2022 (coronavirus crisis). The authors identify popular authors who wrote about Scientology in each of the periods. Media are grouped according to their legal status: official state media; private Russian media and bloggers; media and NGOs that are recognized as foreign agents; international media and their affiliates in Russia; other media (entertainment media, bloggers and users). The main channels for broadcasting content about Scientology were private media and bloggers. It was they who explained and broadcast material about Scientology on the Russian Internet. Their publications justified the activities of Scientology in Russia, declared the need for a liberal policy, demonized the state-confessional policy, the political system, the polit- ical system of Russia, and dehumanized academic child psychology. State Russian media in the news gave only the facts of the event, but the news was not interpreted, discussed or distributed.

The paper deals with representation of neo-shamanism in today's media. The topicality of the study is justified by transformation of neo-shamanic practices in the context of digital culture, which is manifested, among other things, in resorting to opportunities offered by the new media in marketing one's services. The study material were web sites in the Russian Internet and web pages in Russian social networks related to shamanism. The goal of the study is to reveal how neo-shamanism is shaped and structured in the Internet. For our analysis of the content of the web pages we relied on structural and semiotic methods, statistical methods were drawn upon for the study of Internet communities' audience. There are several types of neo-shaman web sites: pages of shaman centres and religious ogranisations; personal web pagers of neoshamans; web sites about magic and para-psychology. The standard format of Internet marketing and usability requirements gives rise to unification of neo-shamanism representations through structuring them by sample entries whose content is eclectic but easily identifiable by users. Analysis of the statistics of neo-shaman pages in the Russian Internet and in the social network "Vkontakte" has shown that users of 25 - 45 y/o have more interest in shamanism and neo-shamans' services, regardless of sex difference. The content of neo-shaman web pages comprises texts, images and sound. Text messages deal with instructing users in shamanism, promoting neo-shamans' services and offering motivators in the form of citations. The latter occupy a prominent place in news feeds. The visual content includes images on the subject of shamanism, psychedelic paintings and visionary art. The style of the visual content we define as a synthesis of ethnographic, environmental and psychedelic elements. The sound content of the web sites contains music reflecting ethnic shamanic traditions (Siberia, Northen Europe, the Americas), neofolk and ritual ambient. The resulting conclusion of the study is that surfing neo-shaman web sites and pages in social networks is in itself a "lightweight", postmodern version of shamanic trance with its virtual symbols: motivating spells, psychedelic images and meditative ritual music.