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Daria Urakova's Workspace

Page history last edited by Daria 11 years, 5 months ago

Europe Workspace

 

 

Overview

 

     The case study that I have chosen is about Russian activists who turned to social media to express their distress about both of Russia’s recent elections, the parliamentary and the presidential. The elections, which occurred within four months of each other, came under much scrutiny from independent election observers as well as both domestic and international media outlets. The Parliamentary elections, which took place on December 4th, were the centre of much controversy after Putin’s United Russian party was ushered back into the Kremlin with head-turning results. In response to the Parliamentary elections, protests broke out in belief of fraudulent elections, which were mobilized by groups on Twitter, Facebook and Vkontakte (Russian Facebook). Within three days of the election more than 25000 people had promised to appear for a Dec 10 Rally in Moscow’s Revolutionary Square. The name of the largest Facebook group is “Rally For Honest Elections”, and it is no longer available on the web. Since the state has an iron grip on the three major television networks in Russia, as well as a lot of the print media, the social media sites served as a the perfect forum for voices of dissent to be heard. State channels chose to ignore the protests; instead giving coverage to rallies in support of the government (BBC News 2011). This is the first election in which social media has helped outline voter fraud by allowing users to post videos of the allegations online to be seen by the 43 million Russian internet users. This has been the biggest anti-government movement in Russia since the break up of the USSR and it is being exhibited by a phenomenon that was not in existence at the time of Soviet separation- the social media. Some activist groups, such as Democratic Choice, have begun to prepare for the presidential elections by training people to be observers during voting (Northam 2012). In the presidential election (March 2012) the Prime Minister, Vladmir Putin, was elected to an unprecedented and unconstitutional third term as president. He has already served two six-year terms before adhering to the two term presidential limit. The election received much condemnation because it is widely accepted that ballot stuffing and other illegal voting practices took place at the hand of Putin and his Kremlin cronies. In one of the articles, Aleksander Morozov, a political blogger stated an interesting assessment. He is quoted as saying “social networks have played an enormous role in demonstrating just how the elections took place […] if we didn't have social networks, we wouldn't have heard about the sheer quantity of violations […] thanks to social networks, election observers for the first time were able to speak widely about the violations and disgraces that they saw at polling stations." (Balmforth 2011). In this particular case of suspicion of election fraud, the citizens of Russia have finally spoke out rising not only local, but international attention of their concern. The rallies amongst 69 participating towns and cities of Russia were met with mass arrests and violent opposition from the state controlled police forces. Some protests and social network forums were organized in spite the imprisonment of some strong activists. These elections have demonstrated that the voters hold the right to vote but in the end are no match for the powerful government. The protest began as a movement to draw attention to fraudulent elections; however, most of the aversion was aimed at Vladimir Putin.

 

 

 

Form of technology used/The users 

 

     The main form of information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in both of these cases was online social media. The most popular engines were Twitter, Facebook, and Vkontakte, a Russian social network that offers more or less the same services as regular Facebook.  Online use of social networks has grown enormously in Russia over the past year; it went from 33 percent to 43 percent of users (Griggs 2011). This has been fuelled mostly by the political disorder Russian citizens have experienced in the recent elections.  This particular ICT was very effective in helping people organise in unprecedented numbers to oppose election results. Online protests are often criticised as merely being “click activism”, meaning that the protest never translates from the Internet into a tradition street protest. However, dozens of videos were posted online demonstrating fraudulent behaviour, which have played a big role in taking the protest onto the streets (Bamforth 2011). In Northam’s article, an activist is mentioned for taking initiative in organizing and online contribution for the rallies, in which an average donation consisted of $30 (2012). This money was intended to pay for hot meals during the protests as well as a well-equipped stage and sound system. These social networks have been used by hundreds of thousands of people across Russia to organize multiple rallies across the massive country; 69 known towns and cities have participated in discussing and forming plans for the protests (BBC 2011).

 

Groups of citizens involved

 

     Elections are viewed as an important matter by the people of the country. Therefore, dishonest behaviour on the part of authoritative figures is inevitably going to result in national outrage. The protest rallies were organized by strong activists with support from regular citizens across the entire nation. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev got involved in the matter himself. He stated that with each day the number of Russians doubting the honesty of the election results was increasing. He believed that the results of the vote should be voided and a new re-election held (Balmforth 2011). When it comes to the actual use of ICT’s it has a presumed tendency to attract younger, tech-savvy citizens to be the primary users of the social media sites.

 

 

What is the particular political context of your area? Why do you feel this form of technology was utilized?

 

     The particular political context of Russia is one that has been very complicated throughout its history as a nation. Since the fall of communism, the transition to a democratic society has been a rough journey. The presidency has been held by a small group of powerful individuals, most recently being handed back and forth between Vladmir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The citizens have become more aware of this organized assault on democratic values and have started to become discontent. There is great mistrust of elected officials by the Russian people, with a common belief that they are all corrupt and self-interested.

Social media was used in these cases because of the oppressive nature of the state. In Russia, the Government has a firm control over a lot of the forms of media, ranging from television, to print media and radio. Although there are independent television channels, they do not reach the amount of people that the controlled social media does. Social media is ingrained in a lot of the youth today and it is highly effective at reaching massive amounts of people in an instant. In recent years, many journalists have been the victim of intimidation and violence at the hand of the government (Guardian 2012). These violent acts have made the free press less effective at getting across their reporting and thus have also propelled social media into a more important source of public information. With this outbreak of social network usage in Russia due to the recent political events, it is believed that traditional and new forms of media are likely to impact the results of future elections.

 

 

 

 

References:

 

Balmforth, Tom. (2011/12/08) Russian Protesters Mobilize Via Social Networks, As Key Opposition Leaders Jailed. Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. Retrieved from

http://www.rferl.org/content/russian_protesters_mobilize_online_as_leaders_jailed/24414881.html

 

Griggs ,Brandon. (2011/12/07) Social networking booming in Egypt, Russia, survey finds. CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/20/tech/mobile/pew-survey-digital-communication/index.html

 

Northam, Jackie. (2012/01/13) Russian Activists Turn To Social Media. NPR. Retrieved from

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/13/145175753/russian-activists-turn-to-social-media

 

The Associated Press. (2011/12/05) Russian protests erupt after election. CBC News. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/12/05/russia-votes-1205.html

 

(2011/12/07) Russia protests: Gorbachev calls for election re-run. BBC News. Retrieved from

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16066061?print=true

 

(2012/03/11) Journalistic death toll in Putin's Russia. The Guardian. Retrieved from

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/mar/11/journalist-safety-vladimir-putin

 

(2012/02/23) The media's role in Russia's elections: What you need to know. BBC News. Retrieved from   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17115699

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background Geographic and political data Application and Outcome

belief of fraud/rigged elections

demand for fair elections

Russia

Social media tools:

facebook

twitter

vkontakte (known as russian facebook)

Time data

December 2011-ongoing

Country level indicators 

Political regime

 

Framing and Strategy

Mobilization strategy- using online social networks to organize mass protests

Actor Data

citizens of Russia

 

Outcomes

-International attention to political abuses of power

- social change, brought out a culture of anti-government sentiment that previously wasn't public

 

 

Comments (1)

Becky Hillyer said

at 11:57 am on Nov 5, 2012

Hi Daria,

Apologies for the delay in providing feedback about your case study. Overall, you have done a fairly good job delivering your report. However, I think that you could do a better job identifying specifically who is involved in the online protests against the election fraud. For instance, are there any Russian organizations that have taken the lead on these movements? Or, are the movements led by a particular demographic of Russian citizens? Those are some questions that you may want to clarify in the future.

Also, I feel that you could do a better job with your information matrix... it is a bit spare, at the moment!

Please do procede with this case study - I look forward to learning about your progress in the future stages of the project.

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