[p2p-research] Russian Cyberspace

[Michel Bauwens]

Thanks Graeme,



On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 7:04 AM, Graeme Taylor <graeme at bestfutures.org>wrote:

>  Russian Cyberspace - reflecting, not changing reality Floriana Fossato<http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Floriana_Fossato.jsp>,
> 6 - 03 - 2009
> Open Democracy  <http://www.opendemocracy.net/forward/47455><http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/47455/print>
>
>  *
>
> Russia's internet is increasingly being used by the state to consolidate
> its power, says Floriana Fossato.  Do Russian users want to use this tool to
> mobilise activism?  Or is this just Western wishfulness?
> *
>
> When I attend international conferences and seminars on the Russian segment
> of the Internet I am struck by the disparity between European and American
> research fields of choice and those of their Russian counterparts. My
> discussions with active practitioners or researchers on the Russian Internet
> scene confirm that they share this impression. What gives rise to this
> disparity?
>
> A number of American researchers and their colleagues in Europe and
> English-speaking countries around the world are keenly interested in the
> Russian networked public sphere. They are inspired by the belief that modern
> communications can support press freedom and establish new bonds of
> cooperation between people. They hope it could lead to the creation of
> grassroots movements and the mobilisation of broad and diverse offline
> groups into civil and politicalaction.
>
> Russian colleagues admit they are often frustrated by this reading and
> regard it, only half jokingly, as an "obsession" with politics.They regard
> this view of online engagement as at best naïve and/or narrow, preventing
> serious analyses of more subtle social and cultural developments.
>
> The desire to examine the political and participatory aspects of RuNet is
> often considered a by-productof the dominant American and/or British
> attitude.  This aims to impose on the study of all things Russian a biased
> approach, one that has little to do with Russia's real and diverse
> developments and mainly leads to judgmental and confrontational conclusions.
>
>
> Focus of Russian interest
>
> In the last few years Russian researchers and internet experts have been
> keen to focus on two issues.  Firstly, the quantitative aspects ofinternet
> penetration, understandable in the light of the recent Russian Internet boom
> that has generated significant business growth, enabling smart practitioners
> to become successful entrepreneurs.  Secondly, on the opposite side of the
> spectrum, specialised issues concerning literature and the cultural
> discourse on the Web, following the celebrated Russian cultural and
> intellectual tradition.
>
> As far as I know, there is no comprehensive assessment of content available
> in the Russian segment of the internet, including an analysis of online
> civic and political engagement. In conversations with Russian internet
> practitioners and research colleagues I sometimes have the feeling that many
> are unwilling to look at the "big picture"and to tackle political issues
> relevant to their own country's future.
>
> At the same time the Russian practitioners who are actually interested and
> personally engaged in the life of civil movements in the Russian blogosphere
> seem rather over-optimistic as to the real -as opposed to virtual- outcome
> of RuNet's potential for social-networking initiatives at grassroots level.
>
>
> In October 2008 an international conference was held at the Harriman
> Institute at Columbia University. Internet expert and respected practitioner
> Sergei Kuznetsov spoke at length about the value of RuNet initiatives and
> projects that have produced excellent engagement results online.  While
> sharing Kuznetsov's enthusiasm to a large extent, I and other participants
> pointed out that only a tiny number of initiatives with a potentially
> political angle could be considered consistent or successful in the offline
> world and that an accurate assessment would be most valuable.  Kuznetsov is
> personally engaged in a number of worthy charity and cultural initiatives,
> alongside his principal online content-producing entrepreneurial activity.
>
> Another conference participant, Olessia Koltsova, from the St Petersburg
> Higher School of Economics, presented her research on the online and offline
> activity surrounding last year's attempts to prevent the closing of the European
> University<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_University_at_St_Petersburg>in St. Petersburg. Koltsova's conclusion was that the online activism of
> students, scholars and supporters of this university, which is highly
> respected in Russia and abroad, had indeed been very significant and
> visible.  She said, however, that the total lack of political transparency
> made it impossible to assess the importance of online activism in the
> decision-making process that eventually spared the university.
>
> In this article I want to offer my reading of the cultural and sociological
> background that I take into consideration when I examine Russian online
> activity. I will base my argument on the insightful points of view of
> several Russian scholars and also on the results of a recent research <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/publications/the-web-that-failed.html>on
> the political influence and practice of the Russian Internet, which I
> conducted with other colleagues for the Reuters Institute for the Study of
> Journalism at Oxford University.
>
> The Alternative SocialUniverse
>
> As part of the research project I interviewed sociologist Boris Dubin.  He
> argued that the hopes of those who expect internet civil society activities
> in Russia to increase quickly and have a significant impact on the offline
> world are naive. Since the internet is essentially a horizontal
> communication network, he maintained, the creation of ideas that could
> successfully translate into offline activity and mobilisation would require
> a corresponding vertical network of existing institutions (whose functions
> are sometimes obstructed, but whose existence is nonetheless respected by
> society and by the political leadership).
>
> The discussion of the importance of institutions is not new, and remains
> one of the most important keys to understanding a situation that seems to
> develop mainly by endlessly reproducing itself. One very interesting
> contribution in this respect is that of Irina Prokhorova, the very able
> editor of the New Literary Review, who offers an explanation accurately
> reflecting the view of most Russian academic and intellectual circles in her
> paper "Heirs to the Underground, or What Keeps Russian Culture Going"
> (Kultura, October 2005).
>
> Responding to the complaint of a Western colleague that "It's impossible to
> work in Russia - so many brilliant personalities, but no institutions at
> all," Prokhorova explains that:
>
> What is peculiar about Russia is not the absence of institutions as such,
> but rather a fatal discrepancy between those institutions and the functions
> they were created to fulfil...The most important result of this social
> deformation has been the spontaneous evolution of informal, parallel
> infrastructures of social life in Russia, which usually remain in the shadow
> of public attention and are therefore difficult to access
> for outsiders. (Prokhorova,2005).
>
> *This situation, Prokhorova argues, has clearly created a "cultural
> duality," one of the consequences of which has been the strengthening of
> Russian literature as a social institution.This, in turn, supported the
> emergence and consolidation between the 1950s and the 1980s of a strong and
> varied Russian underground movement.*
>
> Prokhorova emphasises that the underground movement should not be seen as a
> unified group opposing Soviet totalitarianism (a fairly common point of view
> until recently in the US and Europe) but rather as "an alternative social
> universe with its own creative associations and circles, its own authorities
> and aesthetic criteria, its own press, an efficient distribution system for
> its political and artistic production, its own literary prizes, a social
> life with its own peculiar rituals, its own foreign
> contacts". (Prokhorova,2005).
>
> *It could be said this description corresponds quite neatly to the model
> of the Russian Internet. This feeling is reinforced by Prokhorova's
> assertion that the style of behaviour characteristic of the underground
> movement centred on a narrow circle of friends. It continued, and in many
> new professional ways developed, in the 1990s and remains valid to this day.
> Prokhorova talks about the "internet boom, which spawned a plethora of
> virtual projects."*
>
> *She singles out the economic crisis of 1998, which triggered a shift of
> political priorities, setting off mechanisms that she defines as "partial
> re-Sovietisation."  She specifically identifies the restoration process set
> in motion after the crisis, targeting the weak socio-cultural institutions
> of the late and post-Soviet periods, "in an attempt to concentrate all means
> of influencing public opinion in the hands of the state."*
>
> Prokhorova perceives the role of the internet as a response to just such
> developments. The new medium follows on from the pioneering age of self-made
> and naïve websites.  In Russia and elsewhere this age has given way to
> web-based platforms with endless networking possibilities. The natural *modus
> vivendi* of these networks in Russia is aimed, in Prokhorova's view, at
> preserving and restructuring the system of cultural initiatives that
> supported the existence of an alternative social universe in Soviet
> times. It was legitimised, albeit on a very shaky base, in the first
> post-Soviet decade.
>
> It is in this alternative social universe, she maintains, that heated
> political debates and fully-fledged literary disputes take place. As
> researchers of the Russian Internet will have noticed, debates and disputes
> are indeed intense and at times fierce, but they are far from mobilising
> enduring forms of activism, particularly activism with tangible social and
> political repercussions offline.
>
> Should these repercussions be relevant for Russian internet users involved
> in a vibrant and varied alternative social reality? I have discussed this
> with a large number of Russian Internet users and experts.  In their view
> researchers seeking signs of political activism are repeating the pattern of
> their colleagues who, in Soviet times, regarded the underground movement as
> a single whole united in its opposition to Soviet totalitarianism. A handful
> of activists were undeniably committed to that cause and bravely ready to
> risk their own life and freedom. It should not, however, be forgotten that
> the vast majority of the Soviet underground movement was motivated by the
> very natural urge to express publicly various points of view on personal,
> artistic and cultural issues and ultimately to have fun amid the grim
> realities of Soviet life.
>
> * Buffer reality, not activisttool*
>
> *After a discussion on online engagement and participatory internet in
> Russia in October 2008 one of the participants posted on his LiveJournal
> blog the following comment:*
>
> Participants were engaged and the discussion wasinteresting. I was,
> however, rather surprised by the serious approach of some [participants]
> towards civil activism… In Russia this kind of engagement has a real effect
> only when it is supported by other activities carried out among personal
> connections in the so-called corridors of power. (Drugoi <Rustem Adagamov>
> 2008).
>
> The blogger writing this comment was Live Journal User Rustem Adagamov. His
> identity on Russia's best-known blogging platform is User Drugoi (Russian
> for The Other).  Adagamov's interesting photoblog<http://drugoi.livejournal.com/2730303.html#cutid1>has consistently been one of the leaders of the Russian blogosphere and the
> unchallenged leader of Live Journal in 2008. According to Yandex, Russia's
> main search engine, the blog had 198,644 hits on January 7, 2009 and had
> enjoyed roughly the same popularity index throughout 2008.
>
> Adagamov's assessment reached beyond the particular cases discussed at the
> symposium.  He said that "no online petition or mobilisation carried out in
> online communities and street actions" can achieve tangible results in the
> offline reality unless it is supported by informal ties with powerful
> decision-makers.
>
> Russian Internet users, currently estimated at nearly 28 million, are
> generally defensive and mistrustful of the Internet's potential for
> democratisation.  This is often masked by a layer of cynicism. The main
> reason for this distrust would appear to be the emergence of an alternative
> social universe, which has exploited modern technological developments.
>
> *If substantiated by comprehensive empirical research, this trend would
> indicate that the Internet has also assumed the role of a tool of adjustment
> to a political reality that users see outside their realistic personal and
> collective influence. This hypothesis for the moment seems to be
> substantiated by the results of public opinion research.  Levada <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCIOM>Centre
> polls, for instance, show that 72% of Russians in 2007 said they had no way
> to influence the state decision-making process. 80% believed they were not
> able to participate in the political and economic life of the country.*
>
> In this respect internet users are in tune with the majority of the
> population. Russian sociologists affirm that it is adjustment strategies,
> together with distrust of every civil society institution (with the notable
> exclusion of the presidency) that are responsible for the lack of widespread
> civil activity aimed at change on- and offline.
>
> Sociologist Boris Dubin describes post-Soviet Russia as an "adjusting
> society" (Dubin2008). He conceptualises adjustment in terms of "passive and
> mainly reactive (in a stimulus-reaction mode) behaviour of most social
> groups." Dubin notes that the definition relates to behaviour "dependent on
> the centralised power, on a social and political order imposed by this powe
> rand accepted by the population, rather than on citizens' assertion of their
> own individual and group interest or a vigorous activity aimed at changing
> the balance of social forces". (Dubin 2008).
>
> In Dubin's view, this behaviour is determined by habit and by the fear of
> losing perceived securities. It deeply influences attitudes, ultimately
> resulting in different forms of criticism of other people's activity and
> success. Widespread forms of disapproval are in turn fertile soil for
> negative and generally cynical approaches toward "the other" and strictly
> limit the emergence of attitudes of positive solidarity for anyone outside
> one's immediate circle of family and like-minded individuals. Equally
> importantly, the adaptation mode is seen by Dubin as one of the main reasons
> for the fragmentation of civil activity and the atomisation of society.
>
> Dubin sees a direct correlation between these reactive and fragmentary
> tendencies and the protective reflexes that support the continued existence
> of an alternative social universe. The correlation, essential for the study
> of Internet engagement and mobilisation, is based on the conviction that any
> social form of social initiative can be manipulated by the state. Levada
> Centre data in the last few years record feelings of vulnerability and
> individual weakness vis-à-vis the law and the very institutions in charge of
> enforcing it, including the courts, prosecutors and the police. This feeling
> been growing among Russians and is now common to more than two-thirds of the
> population.
>
> In a recent article another Russian sociologist, Daniel Dondurei, lamented
> that " the huge number of contrasting interpretations of events of the last
> two decades seems to have confused many people. According to recent polls
> some three-quarters of Russians think of themselves as happy, roughly the
> same amount approve the official stance on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but
> at the same time do not trust any official, except the president and the
> prime minister. Despite the fact that private property is widespread and
> legal, most people continue to rely mostly on the state. At the same time,
> 78% of businessmen, when involved in commercial disputes, say they prefer to
> avoid court decisions because they do not trust the impartiality of the
> judges. Such eclecticism is not an accident. The Russian political, economic
> and media elite has been working intensively and assiduously to manipulate
> social perceptions. This has resulted in public disenchantment with
> modernisations."(Dondurei 2008).
>
> Dondurei appears to sustain Dubin's argument concerning adjustment and its
> dangers when he asks "how are we going to fight legal nihilism whenthe
> public has completely adjusted to it?   Six out of ten citizens
> acknowledge that they have a more or less tolerant attitude towards
> corruption. Some of them believe that it is actually corruption that allows
> the complex system of Russian life to function" (Dondurei 2008).
>
> *Call for joint research*
>
> This article does not aim to be judgmental about different scholarly
> approaches to internet research.  Far from it.  It is meant to be a call for
> more joint research on the different aspects of internet use, in particular
> on the internet as a tool of adjustment aimed at preserving an alternative
> social universe.   Strategies adopted by different actors -communities of
> various orientation, as well as manipulative groups often linked to the
> state - to achieve their goals should also be examined.
>
> The Reuters Institute's pilot project concluded that in the Russian
> context, at present at least, new developments in communication are not
> breaking down well-established patterns of power. The state remains the main
> mobilising agent. Following a few years of spontaneous - and inexpensive -
> ‘anarchy', RuNet currently operates as a device to spread and share
> information, but largely among closed clusters of like-minded users who are
> seldom able or willing to cooperate. However, it is also a platform which
> the state uses increasingly successfully to consolidate its power. The
> activists are rendered at best only partly effective by their limited public
> and political skills, difficulty in fostering productive discussion among
> themselves, and inability to overcome the widespread lack of trust among
> users.
>
> Our pilot research by and large confirmed Dubin's view that RuNet (at least
> at the moment) is restricted to the status of ‘a device to test one's own
> circle' and can be used to reproduce mechanisms of propaganda and
> manipulation well tested offline.
>
> There is a great need for multi-disciplinary studies that would link the
> use of the Russian internet for literary expression to strategies explaining
> how information technologies are shaped by the social context in which they
> are deployed.  Literary expression would include such interesting
> developments as the widespread language of *padonki and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padonki>
> *its possible use for manipulation and verbal bullying.
>
> A United Nations report<http://www.unrisd.org/infotech/conferen/russian/toc.htm>examined the emergence of new telecommunication technologies in the late
> years of the Soviet Union and the early post-Soviet era.  In it researcher
> Rafal Rahozinski said "what is the most interesting about the internet's
> emergence in Russia is not the way in which technology transformed society,
> but rather the way in which society colonised the technology." The report
> was published in 1999 and it would be extremely valuable to see whether
> Rahozinski's conclusion can still be considered relevant.
>
> Copyright The Russian Cyberspace Journal, where this article first
> appeared, Vol 1, N1, 2009 http://www.russian-cyberspace.com/
>
>
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