The Way Home, or the Way to Prison? Gender Legacies and Anti-War Protest in Russia

The research summarized here provides encouraging evidence that the right to protest against war is a widely accepted global norm. Very few of the participants in the seven regions of the world that were studied explicitly disagreed with that right. Active agreement with that right ranged from close to eight in ten in East Asia and Russia and the Balkans, to around nine in ten in South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the UK/Anglo region and was highest in Western Europe and Latin America. The right to protest was justified most widely by the national laws that protect that right in most regions, although study participants in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia tended to offer the justification that protest is a universal human right. Another theme frequently expressed in agreement with the right to protest was the moral responsibility to act, particularly by men in the Middle East and persons who had taken part in antiwar protests in Russia and the Balkans. The suppression of antiwar protests was widely condemned, and most study participants stated that they would actively oppose the beating of protestors, e.g., by asking the government to protect them and by calling the suppressive acts to the attention of mass media. The lowest level of active opposition to the use of violence to suppress antiwar protests was expressed in Africa, where study participants cited helplessness as a justification for their lack of engagement. Generally, support for the right to protest and opposition to the suppression of protest were greater among women than men. Overall this research shows that antiwar protests are strongly supported worldwide, both as a legal and human right and, particularly among those who engage in protest, as a moral responsibility.

The Defending “Defenders”

According to conventional wisdom, demonstrations following the 2011 Russian Duma and the 2012 presidential elections were the result of an ineffectual, mainly middle-class protest movement against electoral fraud confined to Moscow. Mischa Gabowitsch's exhaustive Protest in Putin's Russia demonstrates conclusively that the movement encompassed a far broader range of participants, that it extended geographically well beyond Moscow and St Petersburg and that protesters’ complaints were many and varied, even if electoral fraud was the proximate reason for the demonstrations. The author makes use of the copious social media and online sources that were widely available to protesters, and of interviews that he conducted with them. Each of the thematic chapters begins with a narrative account of some aspect of the protests derived from these interviews and online sources. Above all, however, this is a sociological analysis, and each chapter is also heavy on theory. Gabowitsch argues that what he calls Russia's ‘snow revolution’ was part of the ‘global protest season which, between late 2010 and early 2014, included the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, European anti-austerity protests, as well as Turkey's Gezi Park protests and Ukraine's Euromaidan’ (p. 8). This enables him to make occasional comparisons with other protest movements. In one chapter he also compares the demonstrations to previous political and social protests in Russia. In the main, however, this is a detailed study of the 2011–13 protests from the grassroots level up.

This paper analyzes the mechanisms of creating a symbolic connection between several generations of protesters in the late USSR and in Putin’s Russia. Based on an analysis of the periodical press, data on human-rights violations during public protests, and published sources on the history of Soviet dissidents, the article traces how and for what purposes protesters in the 2000s and 2010s used the symbolic and practical legacy of Soviet dissidents, what additional meanings of protest were actualized with these linkages, and how references to specific spaces of protest actions transformed the content and form of public protests. Using Charles Tilly’s concept of “repertoires of contention,” I argue that references to the dissidents’ legacy were not limited to the discursive level of repeating slogans but included various public actions that memorialized and/or reconsidered the Soviet dissidents’ tradition of contesting the state monopoly over public space.

What is the role of digital media in contentious politics? On the one hand, digital media plays a central role in informing the public and organizing political movements. On the other hand, it has become a valuable tool for digital repression in authoritarian states. This study concentrates on the patterns of digital media use by pro-government actors in times of nationwide protests in autocracies. It analyzes how pro-government actors establish control over political discourse and information flow online compared to pro-opposition and neutral actors. I argue that, following the increased use of social media by opposition actors during social movements, the state will seek to establish its presence online, attempt to reach larger audiences, and endeavor to frame political issues in a beneficial light to reinforce political control. I use the cases of the 2020–21 protests in Belarus and the 2022 anti-war protests in Russia and employ text-as-data computational methods to analyze communication patterns on public Telegram channels. The results show that pro-government channels in Belarus and Russia followed the protest paradigm and framed protests as illegal, unauthorized activities that cause chaos and disorder. The pro-opposition Telegram channels in Belarus reached a larger audience than pro-state or neutral channels. In contrast, pro-government and neutral channels in Russia dominated the Telegramsphere. These contrasting patterns of Telegram channel activity and popularity suggest that the Russian pro-government online actors are more sophisticated in controlling and manipulating the communication space than Belarusian pro-state actors.

Varieties of modern nondemocratic electoral political regimes is determined by institutional, structural, actor-oriented (procedural) differences between «the new autocracies». The trajectories of political transformation and regime changes in these hybrids depend largely on the specifi c political decisions and actions of key political actors in the process of democratization. This article analyzes the actions of the opposition from the angle of mobilization and cooperation as «winning» tactics in the electoral competitive nondemocratic regimes. The empirical part of the article includes: 1) forming a public protests database in the electoral cycle of 2015 (January-September) in the Central Federal District of Russia, which includes the regional authority elections, members of regional and local legislatures; 2) statistical processing of data of opposition’s participation / nonparticipation in public protests, number of protesters, opposition cooperative actions, issues of protests; 3) designing and measuring empirically observable features of protests make it possible to segment the public protest activity into 2 basic parts: civic activity and mobilization activity – and then to analyze the scope of cooperation of various opposition parties in mobilization actions. These results make it possible to answer the following questions: to what extent Russian opposition actors use public protest activity as mobilization resource and to what extent they are prepared for cooperation in a public protest fi eld?

This article reflects on part of a three-year battle over the redevelopment of an iconic Melbourne music venue, the Palace-Metro Nightclub (the Palace), involving the tactical use of Facebook Page data at trial. We were invited by the Save the Palace group, Melbourne City Council and the National Trust of Australia to provide Facebook Page data analysis as evidence of the social value of the venue at an appeals trial heard at the Victorian Civil Administration Tribunal (VCAT) in 2016. We take a reflexive ethnographic approach here to explore the data production, collection and analysis processes as these represent and constitute a “data public”.Although the developers won the appeal and were able to re-develop the site, the court accepted the validity of social media data as evidence of the building’s social value (Jinshan Investment Group Pty Ltd v Melbourne CC [2016] VCAT 626, 117; see also Victorian Planning Reports). Through the case, we elaborate on the concept of data publics by considering the “affordising” (Pollock) processes at play when extracting, analysing and visualising social media data. Affordising refers to the designed, deliberate and incidental effects of datafication and highlights the need to attend to the capacities for data collection and processing as they produce particular analytical outcomes. These processes foreground the compositional character of data publics, and the unevenness of data literacies (McCosker “Data Literacies”; Gray et al.) as a factor of the interpersonal and institutional capacity to read and mobilise data for social outcomes.We begin by reconsidering the often-assumed connection between social media data and their publics. Taking onboard theoretical accounts of publics as problem-oriented (Dewey) and dynamically constituted (Kelty), we conceptualise data publics through the key elements of a) consequentiality, b) sufficient connection over time, c) affective or emotional qualities of connection and interaction with the events. We note that while social data analytics may be a powerful tool for public protest, it equally affords use against public interests and introduces risks in relation to a lack of transparency, access or adequate data literacy.Urban Protest and Data Publics There are many examples globally of the use of social media to engage publics in battles over urban development or similar issues (e.g. Fredericks and Foth). Some have asked how social media might be better used by neighborhood organisations to mobilise protest and save historic buildings, cultural landmarks or urban sites (Johnson and Halegoua). And we can only note here the wealth of research literature on social movements, protest and social media. To emphasise Gerbaudo’s point, drawing on Mattoni, we “need to account for how exactly the use of these media reshapes the ‘repertoire of communication’ of contemporary movements and affects the experience of participants” (2). For us, this also means better understanding the role that social data plays in both aiding and reshaping urban protest or arming third sector groups with evidence useful in social institutions such as the courts.New modes of digital engagement enable forms of distributed digital citizenship, which Meikle sees as the creative political relationships that form through exercising rights and responsibilities. Associated with these practices is the transition from sanctioned, simple discursive forms of social protest in petitions, to new indicators of social engagement in more nuanced social media data and the more interactive forms of online petition platforms like change.org or GetUp (Halpin et al.). These technical forms code publics in specific ways that have implications for contemporary protest action. That is, they provide the operational systems and instructions that shape social actions and relationships for protest purposes (McCosker and Milne).All protest and social movements are underwritten by explicit or implicit concepts of participatory publics as these are shaped, enhanced, or threatened by communication technologies. But participatory protest publics are uneven, and as Kelty asks: “What about all the people who are neither protesters nor Twitter users? In the broadest possible sense this ‘General Public’ cannot be said to exist as an actual entity, but only as a kind of virtual entity” (27). Kelty is pointing to the porous boundary between a general public and an organised public, or formal enterprise, as a reminder that we cannot take for granted representations of a public, or the public as a given, in relation to Like or follower data for instance.If carefully gauged, the concept of data publics can be useful. To start with, the notions of publics and publicness are notoriously slippery. Baym and boyd explore the differences between these two terms, and the way social media reconfigures what “public” is. Does a Comment or a Like on a Facebook Page connect an individual sufficiently to an issues-public? As far back as the 1930s, John Dewey was seeking a pragmatic approach to similar questions regarding human association and the pluralistic space of “the public”. For Dewey, “the machine age has so enormously expanded, multiplied, intensified and complicated the scope of the indirect consequences [of human association] that the resultant public cannot identify itself” (157). To what extent, then, can we use data to constitute a public in relation to social protest in the age of data analytics?There are numerous well formulated approaches to studying publics in relation to social media and social networks. Social network analysis (SNA) determines publics, or communities, through links, ties and clustering, by measuring and mapping those connections and to an extent assuming that they constitute some form of sociality. Networked publics (Ito, 6) are understood as an outcome of social media platforms and practices in the use of new digital media authoring and distribution tools or platforms and the particular actions, relationships or modes of communication they afford, to use James Gibson’s sense of that term. “Publics can be reactors, (re)makers and (re)distributors, engaging in shared culture and knowledge through discourse and social exchange as well as through acts of media reception” (Ito 6). Hashtags, for example, facilitate connectivity and visibility and aid in the formation and “coordination of ad hoc issue publics” (Bruns and Burgess 3). Gray et al., following Ruppert, argue that “data publics are constituted by dynamic, heterogeneous arrangements of actors mobilised around data infrastructures, sometimes figuring as part of them, sometimes emerging as their effect”. The individuals of data publics are neither subjugated by the logics and metrics of digital platforms and data structures, nor simply sovereign agents empowered by the expressive potential of aggregated data (Gray et al.).Data publics are more than just aggregates of individual data points or connections. They are inherently unstable, dynamic (despite static analysis and visualisations), or vibrant, and ephemeral. We emphasise three key elements of active data publics. First, to be more than an aggregate of individual items, a data public needs to be consequential (in Dewey’s sense of issues or problem-oriented). Second, sufficient connection is visible over time. Third, affective or emotional activity is apparent in relation to events that lend coherence to the public and its prevailing sentiment. To these, we add critical attention to the affordising processes – or the deliberate and incidental effects of datafication and analysis, in the capacities for data collection and processing in order to produce particular analytical outcomes, and the data literacies these require. We return to the latter after elaborating on the Save the Palace case.Visualising Publics: Highlighting Engagement and IntensityThe Palace theatre was built in 1912 and served as a venue for theatre, cinema, live performance, musical acts and as a nightclub. In 2014 the Heritage Council decided not to include the Palace on Victoria’s heritage register and hence opened the door for developers, but Melbourne City Council and the National Trust of Australia opposed the redevelopment on the grounds of the building’s social significance as a music venue. Similarly, the Save the Palace group saw the proposed redevelopment as affecting the capacity of Melbourne CBD to host medium size live performances, and therefore impacting deeply on the social fabric of the local music scene. The Save the Palace group, chaired by Rebecca Leslie and Michael Raymond, maintained a 36,000+ strong Facebook Page and mobilised local members through regular public street protests, and participated in court proceedings in 2015 and February 2016 with Melbourne City Council and National Trust Australia. Joining the protesters in the lead up to the 2016 appeals trial, we aimed to use social media engagement data to measure, analyse and present evidence of the extent and intensity of a sustained protest public. The evidence we submitted had to satisfy VCAT’s need to establish the social value of the building and the significance of its redevelopment, and to explain: a) how social media works; b) the meaning of the number of Facebook Likes on the Save The Palace Page and the timing of those Likes, highlighting how the reach and Likes pick up at significant events; and c) whether or not a representative sample of Comments are supportive of the group and the Palace Theatre (McCosker “Statement”). As noted in the case (Jinshan, 117), where courts have traditionally relied on one simple measure for contemporary social value – the petition – our aim was to make use of the richer measures available through social media data, to better represent sustained engagement with the issues over time.Visualising a protest public in this way raises two significant problems for a workable concept of data p

This article explores the little-known public philanthropic activities of certain elite women during late Qing China. By examining contemporary newspapers, it traces the new development of women’s philanthropic engagement and further analyzes two cases, one on disaster relief and the other on women’s education, to illustrate the issues, controversies and achievements that went along with women’s philanthropy. It demonstrates how philanthropy, a traditionally-sanctioned field for women’s activism, legitimatized women to move out of domestic seclusion and reposition themselves in the public sphere in a crucial transitional era when for “good women” to appear in public was something hotly debated, and how through philanthropic opportunities some were able to engage with political affairs. The broad social impact of their initiatives suggests the continued importance of traditional elite women during China’s transition to the modern era; it challenges some of our previous notions, which often unthinkingly accepted the verdict of “New Women” that those who did not embrace their path to modernity were parasitic, unproductive, and backward. By looking carefully at philanthropy, the article reveals fascinating issues and rich details of women’s public activities that previous historical narratives have often overlooked. It helps to understand how reconfigured traditions became essential components of modernity in the development of modern Chinese gender roles. It also adds a gender perspective to the burgeoning historiography on Chinese philanthropy.

In Chapters 6 and 7 we turn from invited modes of action in health systems — committee work, outreach projects, and the creation of new links to representative democracy — to two uninvited, even actively discouraged, modes of public action. This chapter explores public protest and campaigns within health systems, and the next considers the ways in which private tactics of service use can be understood as public action. Public protests in health systems are an example of ‘contentious politics’, which Tilly and Tarrow (2006, p. 4) define with the following characteristics: the making of claims by one actor; collective action (‘coordinating efforts on behalf of shared interests or programs’); and politics (interactions ‘with agents of governments, either dealing with them directly or engaging in activities bearing on governmental rights, regulations and interests’). The contentious, oppositional orientation of public protests about the decisions of healthcare organisations explains, I argue, why they are rarely considered within academic or policy discussions of citizen participation in health.

Single picketing, in which an individual stands in public holding a sign, emerged as a new form of protest in Russia in recent years under the context of increased political repression, and is the last form of protest that does not require prior authorization from authorities. In this article, I develop an understanding of single pickets by examining the evolving dynamics between the state and protestors. I argue that the current practice of single pickets developed as the result of increasingly harsh legal restrictions on public gatherings, and while the Russian state seeks to manage public political action through legal means, protesters continuously find ways to work around or exploit loopholes in the law, in turn shaping new forms of legality in daily life. My analysis is based on tracing the evolution of the laws governing single pickets and online ethnography I conducted during 2020–2021.

Today, autocracies widely use information communication technologies as tools for digital repression and information control online. I build on the framework of digital repression and use principles of Russia’s disinformation dissemination and social network approaches to investigate the strategies that state and pro-government actors employ in digital communication spaces. Using a unique dataset, I investigate the activity of state and pro-government agents, in comparison to opposition and neutral actors, on the messaging app Telegram during the 2020–21 protests in Belarus and the 2022 anti-war protests in Russia. The results demonstrate that pro-government actors increase interconnectivity between their growing number of channels and become more consistent in how quickly they forward messages, suggesting a coordinated action. Such activities aim to increase the visibility – through forwarding and message multiplication – and acceptability – through the validity effect created by repeated exposure – of the information favorable to the regime and deny attention to opposition actors. The opposition actors in Belarus also demonstrate similar signs of coordination.

Broadcasting Messages via Telegram: Pro- Government Social Media Control During the 2020 Protests in Belarus and 2022 Anti-War Protests in Russia

Karma Chavez's forthcoming book, Queer Migration Politics, suggests that neither the inclusionary politics of the mainstream US LGBT rights movement nor the utopian turn in some queer theory sufficiently capture the possibilities for queer politics in this moment. Drawing on the rhetoric of activists working at the various intersections and convergences of queer and immigration rights and justice, Chávez advocates that coalition is a productive alternative to both inclusionary and utopian approaches, even as coalitional approaches sometimes draw upon them both. In this talk, Chavez sketches the main arguments in the book and discusses some of the key case studies from activist rhetoric in the contemporary United States. A podcast of the lecture can also be found on the Decolonizing Sexualitie Network website at http://www.decolonizingsexualities.org/karma-chavez-lecture/.

Poland is currently facing a political regime change that erodes the country’s democratic structures and undermines its judicial system. Resembling the Polish dissident movements that accompanied the transition from a socialist-led to a democratic state in the late 1980s, protest movements are recently emerging that aim to counter the illiberal tendencies of Poland’s contemporary government. Civil society groups seem to accompany different types of regime change, either supporting the establishment of a democracy or fighting its disruption, making them a valuable indicator for the direction of political change. This chapter examines the relation between public protest and regime change based on a comparative case study of Poland. The findings indicate that the form of public protest gives insight into the type of political agitation. Civil society guiding a regime transition towards democracy acts from outside a country’s political structures and targets the inside. A regime change that distances a country from a democratic set-up is marked by public protests that operate from within the state’s structures, using the persistent democratic framework. Comparing the post-communist and today’s stage of political upheaval in Poland thus reveals general patterns on the interaction between the public and the political sphere during a regime transformation process.

Disarming Public Protests in Russia: Transforming Public Goods into Private Goods