Understanding the Real Impact of Russian Blogs

Author(s): Eugene Gorny
Editor(s): Stephen Aris, Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic, Heiko Pleines, Hans-Henning Schröder
Series: Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)
Issue: 69
Pages: 8-11
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen
Publication Year: 2009

Previous Western efforts to understand the impact of the Russian blogosphere on the Russian political system have taken a limited approach and come to the conclusion that the blogosphere has little political impact. In undemocratic countries like Russia, political discourse becomes diffuse since virtually any topic may acquire political connotations and political activity tends to take oblique, indirect and symbolic forms, which may seem non-political or quasi-political to outsiders. In fact, the Russian blogosphere reproduces the fundamental structural features of Russian society, such as social atomization, negative attitudes to official institutions (and, more generally, to any Other) and a strong dependence on personal networks as a source of information, opinions and support. Informality, symbolic action and laughter as the key features of the Russian blogosphere make it closer to popular laughter culture than to the public sphere.

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