Blogging about climate change in Russia: activism, scepticism and conspiracies

The article explores the new media’s role in climate change communication in Russia. By providing an open space for the expression of very diverse points of view, the internet creates a substitute media reality where both climate activists and climate sceptics can question the established discourse. Analysis of 374 entries published on the LiveJournal blogging platform has resulted in the identification of four discursive categories: “conspiracies of climate change,” “climate change impact,” “political games of climate change” and “online (anti-)environmentalism.” Each category demonstrates how the same topic can be framed in very different ways depending on bloggers’ worldview rather than the nature of the discussed environmental problem. The findings also show that the blogs act as “echo-chambers” for both climate deniers and climate activists reinforcing their behold beliefs. Finally, the analysis discovers some parallels with the traditional media coverage in their minimal critique of Russian state policy on climate

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

Discourse and myth in contemporary Russia: the Great Patriotic War and the Victory Day narrative

This research uses discourse analysis to investigate the importance of the Victory Day ritual and its symbolism in modern Russia. Commemorated on May 9, the Victory Day marks the end of the Second World War, which entered in the history of the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War. This version of the conflict not only emphasises the suffering and heroism of the Soviet people, but also presents the Victory over the enemy as an essential element of its narrative. Given its dimensions, this account became a central aspect of the country's post-war identity. The Russian Federation, as the official successor of the Soviet Union, adopted the Victory Day as one of its most important holidays, in particular since the rise of Vladimir Putin to power in 2000. The main postulate of this research is that the Great Patriotic War and the Victory were elevated to a mythical status in Putin's Russia. From my theoretical perspective, myths are the ultimate carriers of symbolism within a community, and therefore bear authority to regulate its social practices. Historical myths present a double-structure: a temporal one, related to the past event, and an atemporal one, whose importance is ever-present in its community as an authoritative account. In Russia, the War/Victory myth functions as a mediator between two discursive practices: that of the country's national identity and that of its political leadership. In analysing these three layers of discourse (the national identity, the ritual, and the political leadership), this research aims at understanding how the ritual has been raised to this mythical status, and how it operates in connecting the country's elite with its population. As such, four questions are considered: "how has the discourse on the Great Patriotic War/the Victory, and in particular its relevance, evolved from 2000-2015? Which are the underlying and explicit elements (practices) structuring this discourse (what is the myth)? How do these elements relates to the meanings present in the 'national' and the 'political' levels of discourse? How do they interact with concrete political circumstances?" In order to answer these questions, this research departs from the poststructuralist perspective of the Essex School of discourse analysis, as proposed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. By regarding political struggle as a competition for the hegemony of a society's discursive field, this school focuses on how meanings are articulated in this process. As such, this research systematically analyses two annual speeches delivered by the Russian head of state during the Victory Day commemoration. Moreover, it relates these official statements to Russia's political context of the fifteen years analysed. This study concludes that the mythical narrative gained prominence as its concrete external references became increasingly replaced by elements emphasising the importance of the narrative itself. This process took place on the course of the period analysed, as Russia's social and political questions became increasingly associated to the mythical narrative embodied during the 9 May ritual

Political organisation, leadership and communication in authoritarian settings: Digital activism in Belarus and Russia

Citizens of authoritarian regimes face multiple constraints when they express critical political views using digital media. The regime may monitor their activities, censor their speech or persecute them. Despite these challenges, politically-active citizens organise outside of traditional hierarchical arrangements to advocate for pro-democracy changes. I analyse how the affordances of digital media help activists to organise, to select and to protect their leaders, as well as to distribute information. I use interviews, content analysis and participant observation to study two recent cases of successful political campaigning on digital media. Unusually, both cases managed to challenge the state elites in authoritarian countries, Belarus and Russia respectively. I found that the two studied organisations relied on ad hoc, segmented and shadowed organisational configurations that deployed vast digital communication infrastructures to disseminate information. Journalists, the authorities and the public often misperceived these configurations as either over-centralised or not organised at all. This misperception, as well as the management of leadership visibility on social media, allowed activist groups to protect some of their leaders from persecution. The findings contribute to the discussion regarding the nature of political organising in the digital age by refining and problematising social movement theories for digital authoritarian contents. The study also contributes to the discussion of the strategies that authoritarian regimes use to respond to and combat online opposition. These findings challenge the idea that authoritarian regimes have neared full co-optation of the internet. Instead, the internet should be considered as a battlefield for political influence

Rhetoric of self-expressions in online celebrity gossip

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Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television

Russia, one of the most ethno-culturally diverse countries in the world, provides a rich case study on how globalization and associated international trends are disrupting and causing the radical rethinking of approaches to inter-ethnic cohesion. The book highlights the importance of television broadcasting in shaping national discourse and the place of ethno-cultural diversity within it. It argues that television’s role here has been reinforced, rather than diminished, by the rise of new media technologies. Through an analysis of a wide range of news and other television programmes, the book shows how the covert meanings of discourse on a particular issue can diverge from the overt significance attributed to it, just as the impact of that discourse may not conform with the original aims of the broadcasters. The book discusses the tension between the imperative to maintain security through centralized government and overall national cohesion that Russia shares with other European states, and the need to remain sensitive to, and to accommodate, the needs and perspectives of ethnic minorities and labour migrants. It compares the increasingly isolationist popular ethno-nationalism in Russia, which harks back to ‘old-fashioned’ values, with the similar rise of the Tea Party in the United States and the UK Independence Party in Britain. Throughout, this extremely rich, well-argued book complicates and challenges received wisdom on Russia’s recent descent into authoritarianism. It points to a regime struggling to negotiate the dilemmas it faces, given its Soviet legacy of ethnic particularism, weak civil society, large native Muslim population and overbearing, yet far from entirely effective, state control of the media