Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Prof. Dmitri P. Gavra,

Faculty of Journalism, St. Petersburg State University, for the supervision during my stay in St. Petersburg, Russia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION   6

Methodical  Approach  6

Research  Perspective  8

PART  1 - BASIC APPROACH AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK  9

1.  THE INTERNET AS A MEDIUM OF FREE EXPRESSION  10

1.1.  INTERNET HISTORY  10

1.2.  FREE SPEECH ADVOCATES  12

1.3.  PROMISE AND REALITY  14

2.  THE INTERNET AS PUBLIC SPHERE  17

2.1.  THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN DEMOCRACY  17

2.2.  CONCEPTS AND CRITICISM OF HABERMAS’ THEORY OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE  18

2.3.  CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INTERNET AS A PUBLIC SPHERE  21

2.3.1.  Transnationalism, Fragmentation, Access and Exclusion  22

2.3.2.  Blogs and the Blurring of Private and Public Sphere  22

2.3.3.  Politicization  24

2.3.4.  Plurality of Opinions, Power Relations in Online Forums  25

2.3.5.  E-Democracy, Participation, Social Movements and Grassroots Movements  26

3.  FREE SPEECH AND CENSORSHIP  28

3.1.  LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH  28

3.2.  MOTIVES FOR CENSORSHIP  30

3.3.  AN EXAMPLE FOR CENSORSHIP - CHINA  32

3.4.  TECHNOLOGIES OF CONTROL, TECHNOLOGIES OF FREEDOM  33

4.  USER-GENERATED CONTENT  35

4.1.  DEFINITION  35

4.2.  BLOGS AND POLITICS  36

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4.3. RISKS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CAMPAIGNS FOR BLOGGING 38

4.4. DROWNED IN BANALITY? COMMERCIALIZATION AND INSTRUMENTALIZATION 39

5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION PART 1 41

PART 2 - THE INTERNET IN RUSSIA 43

1. THE RUSSIAN INTERNET - HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT, USER STRUCTURE 45

1.1. INTRODUCTION 45

1.2. TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT 46

1.3. INFRASTRUCTURE AND HINDRANCES FOR DEVELOPMENT 48

1.4. USER STRUCTURE 49

2. THE SITUATION OF THE ‘TRADITIONAL’ MEDIA UNDER PRESIDENT PUTIN 50

2.1. LAWS, POWER, OWNERSHIP 50

2.2. INDIRECT CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP 53

2.3. FREEDOM OF SPEECH? POPULATION POLLS 55

2.4. DEMOCRATIC CONDITIONS? 56

2.5. HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND OUTLOOKS ON THE INTERNET ROLE 57

3. THE CULTURE OF RUNET - USERS, CONTENT, NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 59

3.1. WESTERNIZATION VERSUS RUSSIFICATION 59

3.2. THE RUSSIAN ‘LIVEJOURNAL’-COMMUNITY 61

3.3. THE ‘INTERNET-ÉLITE’ 64

4. NEWS MEDIA AND POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY 66

4.1. NEWS MEDIA ON THE RUNET 66

4.2. KOMPROMAT 69

4.3. POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY 70

5. INTERNET POLICY ON THE RUNET 73

5.1. PUTINS INTERNET POLICY 73

5.2. LAWS AND LEGAL REGULATIONS 76

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5.2.1.  General Situation  76

5.2.2.  Surveillance: The System for Operational-Investigative Activities (SORM)  77

5.2.3.  The Registration of Websites as Mass Media  79

5.3.  GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED CONTENT  80

5.4.  E-RUSSIA PROGRAM AND INFORMATION SECURITY DOCTRINE  83

5.6.  INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION  87

5.7.  “BLOG WARS OF THE LIVE JOURNAL COMMUNITY  88

6.  IS THERE A COUNTER PUBLIC SPHERE ON THE RUNET?  91

6.1.  INTRODUCTION, DEFINITIONS, CONTEXT-SETTING  91

6.2.  RUNET ACTEURS AND THE “NON-OPPOSITIONAL STATEMENT  92

6.3.  EXPRESSIONS OF RUNET COUNTERCULTURE’  94

6.3.1.  Udaff.com and Padonki  94

6.3.2.  Characteristics  97

6.4.  POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROJECTS  98

6.4.1.  Websites  98

6.4.2.  Blogs  99

6.5.  NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS  100

6.6.  SUMMARY  103

7.  SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION PART 2  105

REFERENCES  PART 1  110

REFERENCES  PART 2  115

5

INTRODUCTION

The Internet as a medium of communication brings about new possibilities and risks - it enables practically everybody who has the technical means to utter his opinion and participate in global communication. The transboundary network structure, a universal technological applicability, low access barriers, user-friendliness, the possibility of self-publishing and global reach turns the Internet into a potentially “democratic” medium, which competes with the traditional media such as the press and television. It creates a virtual public sphere, enables public discourses in forums and weblogs and breeds new digital subcultures. In the early stages of Internet development, the notion of its democratic potential sounded quite promising. But the new virtual ‘freedom of speech’ also caused conflicts and unwanted effects in democratic and nondemocratic states, that have disillusioned the pioneers of the Internet in their view of the Net as a space with unlimited possibilities. It can conflict with existing legislation, interfere with political or economic interests, it can be instrumentalized by political systems, and it has become commercialized to a great extent. A crucial question is therefore, whether the growing connectedness enables a greater exertion of freedom of speech, public discourse and citizen participation or whether this development is stifled and restricted by political and economic forces such as state control, censorship and surveillance, media ownership, concentration on the media market and commercialization of content.

Methodical Approach

The aim of this thesis is not to answer this question conclusively, let alone on a global scale, but rather to explore the problem area in general and to subsequently narrow it down to a national context. The authoress of this thesis is well aware that the research questions appearing in this context have been posed and answered in previous research a number of times, thus a reachable goal can only be to present a current, individual approach, a combination and evaluation of formerly developed theories and facts, and an application to the specific situation in Russia today.

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In the first part, the historical and theoretical context of the problem area will be outlined , such as:

- the notion and vision of the Internet as a ‘medium of liberty’ which has its mental and territorial roots in the United States

- the role of the media for the formation of a public opinion

- the characteristics of the Internet as a public sphere

- laws and regulations dealing with freedom of speech

- definitions of and motives for censorship

- technical means to control and exercise censorship

- tools and platforms on the Internet that provide a space for the exercise of free expression.

Due to the historical context of the development of the Internet, many of these chapters will describe the subject from a US-American resp. Western perspective. For the theoretical approach of the Internet as a public sphere and its impact on the public sphere, Habermas’ theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere is essential. The respective chapter will focus on secondary literature which has dealt with the relationship of new media and public sphere at an earlier stage, rather than focus on the original text.

The second part will concentrate on describing the situation of the Internet in Russia, breaking down the subject field to more specific and concrete problems. The situation will be analyzed regarding power structures and ownership in the media economy, Internet usage and dissemination, news media, political PR, surveillance and control, as well as the cultural specifics of the Russian Internet. The historical context of the Cold War makes the study of the development of Internet culture in the formerly antagonistic superpowers USA and Russia particularly interesting, with cultural distinctions becoming apparent as a side-effect of the work.

An evaluation of the general situation regarding the Internet and freedom of speech as a first step, and the situation in Russia as a second step, will conclude the work.

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Research Perspective

First of all it must be stated that a subjective perspective of a sensitive political subject such as freedom of speech cannot and should not be denied. A western socialisation and background together with a political point of view as a proponent of free speech ¹ leads to a position which naturally tends to polarize. Thus, the goal cannot be a totally neutral or ‘objective’ research position, but rather one which takes into consideration and is relativized by the possibility of a different view, without giving up one’s original point of view. This may sound banal, but the nonneutral-position was not practically questioned or challenged until the my actual stay in the country of concern. The component of self-reflexion which takes effect here might only have a minor influence on the overall outcome of the work, but has left a trace in some parts of the text in the second part.

With regard to the part about the Russian Internet, access was limited to sources in English or German language, so that the choice of sources was restricted to secondary literature, new research results of mostly western-based scholars and articles of English-speaking authors. The analysis of Victoria Brunmeier’s “The Internet in Russia” and the Russian-Cyberspace.orgproject, especially the contributions of Henrike Schmidt and Katy Teubener, were very helpful to comprehend the situation and better be able to grasp the whole topic. In addition, a number of surveys and press articles were evaluated, and the work was rounded off by the expert knowledge of my scientific advisor in St. Petersburg and an informative interview I was able to hold with an expert of the e-Russia-program.

The current political situation in Russia nourishes fears in Western Europe that the political system could turn into an authoritarian regime merely disguised by democratic elections, even more so since the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. A free press and media landscape seems to be restricted more and more, the secret service FSB has gained considerable influence in the government, and some regime critics are threatened by death. Whether this view corresponds to the real situation should not be judged here, but in the context of growing media content control the role of the Internet as ‘one of the last realms of free speech’ in Russia could gain in importance in the future.

¹ “Freedom of Speech” and “free speech” will in the following be used synonymously.

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1. THE INTERNET AS A MEDIUM OF FREE EXPRESSION

In the first section, a brief summary of Internet development, basically referring to Manuel Castells’ “Internet-Galaxy” (2001) will be given, and in the second part of the chapter, some examples of Free-Speech initiatives that illustrate history and efforts of the Internet as a medium of Free Speech will be presented. The chapter closes with a view on visions of citizen empowerment in historical media theory and current reflections on the coherency of Internet, democracy and free speech.

1.1. INTERNET HISTORY

The technological sources of Internet development go back to the ARPANET, a network developed for military and technological research purposes by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the United States in 1969. ² ARPA was a research project founded by the Defence Ministry for the original purpose to gain technological superiority over the USSR, and the computer network was - according to a popular myth - designed in a way to be able to survive a potential nuclear attack, even if this was not the initial purpose. ³ The innovation thereby was a decentralized network structure, which, unlike conventional computer networks, did not rely on a central server, but was able to function even if part of the network was destroyed. This was achieved through a technology of data transfer in small ‘packages’ and the ability of every computer in the network to function as a server. This is exactly the capacity which led to the famous quotation by Internet pioneer and cyber-libertarian John Gilmore, that “the Internet treats censorship as though it were a malfunction and routes around it”, ⁴ meaning that technological methods of censorship would be interpreted by the network as mere hindrances - a quote which should be challenged later on by technological and political developments. Between 1973 and 1978, computer scientists at the University of Stanford and the University of California further advanced the network architecture and the TCP/IP-protocol, which has served as the standard communication protocol of the Internet until today. ⁵ The open network architecture and standardized communication protocols enabled an international usage

² A detailed description of the technical development can be found in “A Brief History of the Internet” by Vinton Cerf, Jon Postel and others; The Internet Society, http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml (06.01.2007)

³ Castells (2005 : 20f), Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet#Software_and_protocol_development (06.01.2006)

⁴ as cited by Barlow (2000). Gilmore himself has commented the phrase on his homepage www.toad.com/gnu, saying that: “I was quoted in Time Magazine in about December, 1993 as saying something very close to this ("a defect" rather than "damage"). It's been reprinted hundreds or thousands of times since then, including the NY Times on January 15, 1996, Scientific American of October 2000, and CACM 39(7):13. In its original form, it meant that the Usenet software (which moves messages around in newsgroups) was resistant to censorship because if a node drops certain messages because it doesn't like their subject, the messages find their way past that node anyway by some other route. This is also a reference to the packet-routing protocols that the Internet uses to direct packets around any broken wires or fiber connections or routers. (They don't redirect around selective censorship, but they do recover if an entire node is shut down to censor it.)” (last visit 06.01.2007). cp. also Lorenz-Meyer (2003 : 309)

⁵ Notably Vinton Cerf, Steve Crocker and John Postel, et. al. Castells, ibid.

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and at the same time safeguarded long-distance communication transfers independent from any technical or political authorities, with the main goal to ‘bring the information bits to their destination’.

A very interesting circumstance is that the Internet was developed at the intersection of governmental institutions such as the Military Defence Department and an open-minded, liberal scientific culture, ⁶ which had its roots in the think tanks of American universities - a stunning contradiction at first glance. Although the original purpose and the financial sources were based in military research, the whole Internet development soon became ideologically independent and the computer scientists who took part in the development had great freedom in their developmental process and were endowed with abundant funding resources. ⁷ A second branch for Internet development grew with the upcoming Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), the BBS network FIDONET and Usenet news, based on the operating system UNIX, which were developed independently from governmental funding by programmers and IT-students who built their own networks, which together formed what would later on be called the Inter-net. The open-source movement ⁸ of programmers advocating the open development of software without any claims on copyright was initiated by UNIX-programmers such as Richard Stallman, who founded the ‘Free Software Foundation’ in 1984.

In 1990 the US-government released the Internet out of the responsibility of the Defence Department opening the way to privatization and private use of the Net. ⁹ In the same year, the British programmer Tim Berners-Lee developed the Hypertext-System world wide web, consisting of the Hypertext-Transfer Protocol (http), the Hypertext-Markup-Language (HTML) and the first web browser, ¹⁰ eventually enabling Internet usage by a lay audience on a large and international scale.

The notion and vision of the Internet as a medium which enables great liberty of speech and free expression was therefore not only technologically determined, but also ideologically based in an anglo-american tradition of liberal (or even libertarian) ¹¹ thinking - and in the scientific practice of programmers who cultivated a culture of open software development and sharing

⁶ Castells (2005), p. 27: „Das Internet wurde vor allem an der unwahrscheinlichen Schnittstelle zwischen Big Science, militärischer Forschung und einer libertären Kultur geboren. Große Universitäten und Denkfabriken mit Verbindungen zum Militär waren entscheidende Bereiche, wo diese drei Quellen des Internet zusammentrafen.“

⁷ cp. Castells (2005)

⁸ „Open source“ means basically an openly accessible source code of the program/software, which can be altered by anyone who has the knowledge to improve it. Stallman coined the term copyleft in opposition to the copyright claims which later became so economically crucial in case of Microsoft. Stallman developed the alternative operating system GNU. Linus Thorvalds built on UNIX the open source operating system LINUX in 1991.

⁹ Castells (2005 : 21f)

¹⁰ Berners-Lee worked at the time at the CERN research institute in Geneva, Switzerland

¹¹ Castells writes „libertarian“, and explains the difference between the American and the European understanding and tradition of the term. I hesitate to use it here generally, because it can also have an ‘anarchistic-libertarian’ connotation, which applies to some of the Internet pioneers, such as Stallman, but not to all of them (e.g. not to Cerf). - cp. Castells (2005), p. 27 and 35.

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rather than privatization, copyright and ownership. ¹² The development of the Net emancipated it(self) from the central steering of governmental authorities to what Manuel Castells calls the “self-evolution” of the Internet - the development by its users - the users-producers. 13

Castells also points to the important fact, that the Internet has its ‘birthplace” in the USA not only technologically and ideologically, but also politically and institutionally under the jurisdiction of the American constitution: “Institutionally, the fact that the Internet developed first in the United States meant that it came under the constitutional protection of free speech enforced by the US courts. Because the backbone ¹⁴ of the global Internet was largely based in the United States, any restriction to servers in other countries could generally be bypassed by re-routing through a US server.” The technological innovation thereby challenged and undermined the sovereignty of nation states in its reach which had a different understanding and jurisdiction towards free speech. 15

1.2. FREE SPEECH ADVOCATES

The principle of free speech with regard to the Internet was first challenged in the U.S. by the Communications Decency Act in 1996, a draft law which aimed to impose some content control on the Internet regarding ‘indecent’ content such as pornography. The draft was intended to protect children from watching such content on the Net, but was rejected as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997. This decision was preceeded by a corresponding judgement of the US-district court in Pennsylvania. In the opinion of the court, it says that: “Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.” ¹⁶ This decision was to large parts the merit of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an association fighting for free speech in the online world since 1990 with famous cyberlibertarians such as John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore among its co-founders. The EFF is a non-profit organization in the tradition of American free speech and civil rights advocates like the ACLU ¹⁷ - only its activities are focused on Internet issues such as privacy protection and surveillance, filesharing and copyright / intellectual property, free speech and censorship and it provides legal advice and support in cases and lawsuits involving the use of the Internet.

John Perry Barlow wrote his now famous and notorious “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996, a pretty pathos- and ideology-loaded pamphlet against any governmental

¹² cp. Castells (2005 : 181)

¹³ ibid., p. 38f - re-translated from the German edition

¹⁴ backbone = technical backbone of the network, built by stable servers, routers and providers

¹⁵ Castells (2001 : 169)

¹⁶ The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, ACLU vs. Reno Decision, http://www.eff.org//Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/960612_aclu_v_reno.decision (08.01.2006)

¹⁷ The ACLU, a non-governmental organisation fighting for civil liberties, was founded in 1920.

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intrusion in the affairs of the Internet community, proclaiming the Cyberspace as a virtual, incorporeal sphere which creates its own rules and “Social Contract”. ¹⁸ It was a reaction to the “Telecommunication Reform Act” of the US-government in 1996, when the Internet community in consequence feared censorship. The EFF started the widespread “Blue Ribbon Campaign” with the following appeal to webmasters to apply the campaign banner on their own website:

Another Free Speech Campaign that should be mentioned here, was the “Global Internet Liberty Campaign” (GILC) in 1998. The campaign was initiated and supported by 43 international human rights and civil liberties organizations and has released a report, which had the purpose to “lay the groundwork for the proposition that the unique qualities of the Internet support an even more robust application of international free expression principles to online communications.” It claimed that “the Internet has already demonstrated its capacity to promote democracy by:

- Facilitating participation in government

- Expanding access to government information

- Strengthening civil society through the building of networks among individuals

- Broadening access to traditional media and promoting pluralism”. 19

The report gives an overview about legal and technical conditions for Free Speech internationally and discusses governmental measures for Internet content controls and prior censorship of online communication such as filtering, thereby expanding the problem area onto an international level.

¹⁸ The text begins with: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html (06.01.2007)

¹⁹ „Regardless of Frontiers“ - Protecting the Human Right to Freedom of Expression on the Global Internet; http://www.gilc.org/speech/report , also available at the Center for Democracy and Technology

http://www.cdt.org/gilc/report.html (09.02.2007); A list of contributors is included at the end of the report. Among them are Human Rights Watch, The Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) and many others.

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1.3. PROMISE AND REALITY

Whenever a new medium entered the stage in history, it was regularly accompanied by the promise of more democratic or egalitarian conditions and the empowerment of the recipient as a producer: ²¹ Bertolt Brecht suggested in his ‘Radio Theory’ in 1932 the vision of the radio as a medium where listeners could equally become broadcasters. ²² The radio should be transformed from a mere distribution device into a communication medium, enabling the listener to broadcast himself and turning the one-way communication into a reciprocal activity. With the invention of Television, similar visions emerged: for example in 1970 Hans Magnus Enzensberger (in reference to Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin) deployed a theory with a socialist approach as a counterdraft to the notion of an almighty, manipulating Bewusstseins-Industrie dominated by commercial and governmental interests. He claimed that the ‘new’ electronic media are egalitarian in their structure and that the opposition of producers and consumers is not inherent in the electronic media. ²³ However, his vision did not succeed in coming true, due to the sustaining power structures, economic interests and governmental regulations in the media system.

One of the most prominent visionaries of the renewal of social and political relations through the medium Internet is Howard Rheingold in his groundbreaking book “Virtual Communities” (1993). Jankowski / van Selm state that “Rheingold […] has perhaps popuralized the societal possibilities of electronic networks more than any other author. In his now classic tract on virtual communities he philosophizes on the impact these networks may have for the functioning of politics. He suggests they may allow users to challenge the conventional hierarchies of these systems and thereby reinvigorate citizen involvement in the political process. This development, he contends, may allow the dominant role played by the traditional mass media to be circumvented.” 24

In any case, the Internet is not a conventional mass medium (characterized by a dominating one-way communication flow from producer to recipient/consumer), but enables communication in several ways and network-structures, such as one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many. Johanna Dorer notes that new media technologies can influence the development of public discourse and that especially the Internet with its possibility of dialogical,

²⁰ as cited by H. M. Enzensberger (1970)

²¹ „Jeder Empfänger ein potentieller Sender“. cp. Dorer (1999), Jankowski / Van Selm (2000)

²² Bertolt Brecht: Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat; Rede über die Funktion des Rundfunks (1932).

²³ „Die neuen Medien sind ihrer Struktur nach egalitär.“ „Der Gegensatz zwischen Produzenten und Konsumenten ist den elektronischen Medien nicht inhärent.“ Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien (1970)

²⁴ Jankowski / Van Selm (2000)

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reciprocal communication corresponds to Habermas’ notion of “gleichberechtigte Rede und Gegenrede” - an equal power position of interlocutors in discourse. ²⁵ It raised the hope that “electronic networks may also reduce the gap between public discourse and provisions for involvement in decision making.” ²⁶ The promise of a democratization of communication is justified by the lowered barriers for publication on the Internet, which does not require professional journalistic skills or any approval by editorial gatekeepers, who decide whether a text will be published or not. The Internet can in fact give a voice to the people, provided that these people feature the technical means and skills to go and publish online. Users are thus able to become producers of content on a large scale, although the “producer/user” in the early stage of the Internet development must be distinguished from the second generation of the “consumer/user”, who learned to use the Internet in a more application-oriented way. 27

The supposed decisive role of technology has led to the well-known discussion in Internet research, whether the technological determination, the technological determinism, or the social and cultural impact, the “cultural constructivism” is actually more significant in influencing social and political developments connected to the Internet. ²⁸ In the early years of Internet history, researchers tended to favour the assumption of technological determinism, in a positive as well as in a negative way. Two powerful and opposed images of the future of communication technology existed. There was the utopian vision of the electronic agora made possible by new technology and implemented through decentralised networks: "…this technology, if properly understood and defended by enough citizens, does have democratizing potential in the way that alphabets and printing presses had democratizing potential." ²⁹ Proponents of a vision of cyberspace as a means to achieve a liberated mankind were contrasted by gloomy visions of omnipresent surveillance, disintegration of privacy through total data transparency, a cyberspace governed by evils like hackers and viruses or the diminishing of real social contacts, turning the user into a computer-addicted nerd. While some of these fears are substantially justified, the vision of a liberated cyberspace at the same time becomes threatened by an increase in governmental control and regulations which were not applied in the early stages of Internet usage. On the other hand, the influence of the cultural adoption of technology gained more importance in theory, i.e. the acknowledgement that people form and use technological means according to their purposes and needs, rather than their social behaviour becoming

²⁵ „Geht man davon aus, dass die Entwicklung neuer Medientechnologien Einfluß auf die Entwicklung des öffentlichen Diskurses nimmt, so ist zu fragen, ob und wie das Internet als neuartige Technologie zu einer Veränderung des öffentlichen Diskurses beiträgt. Denn wie kaum ein anderes Medium ist das Internet als Kommunikationstechnologie und Kommunikationstechnik - in Form einer gegenseitigen Rede und Antwort, in der Diktion von Habermas als „gleichberechtigte Rede und Gegenrede“ bezeichnet - mit der Vorstellung und dem Versprechen einer allgemeinen Demokratisierung der öffentlichen Kommunikation angetreten.“ Dorer (1999)

²⁶ Jankowski / van Selm (2000) p. 150, ref. to Brants et. al.

²⁷ This terminology is deployed by Manuel Castells to distinguish the technology-versed ‘user-developer’ from the average Internet user, the ‘mass audience’ of the Internet. cp. Castells (2005 : 47)

²⁸ cp. Schmidt / Teubener: “Our RuNet?” (2006a - Ref. Part 2). Cultural constructivism is characterized by a greater autonomy of the subject, the possibility of choice and self-determination (agency). Cp. also Ewert / Fazlic / Kollbeck (2003), who contrast technological determinism with ‘technological indifference’. (p. 231f)

²⁹ Rheingold (1993); Cited from the online version of his book “Virtual Communities”, Chapter Ten: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html (20.01.2007)

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transformed by technology. But this also means that the Internet does not create democratic conditions ‘automatically’ by the mere existence of a networked structure. Compared to the early stage, the Internet has become more vulnerable to surveillance and technical control. Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer calls the famous Gilmore-quote a myth which is long since outdated and overtaken by the technological development of measures for content control and censorship and by the commercialization and re-centralisation of the Internet infrastructure. 30

Claus Leggewie stated similarly already in 1998, that the Net is not an ‚auto-evolutionary’ system, which defies legal control or economic, governmental or other steering mechanisms. ³¹ Here, the problem of content control appears and the interest of - democratic and authoritariangovernments to restrict the dissemination of content they regard as ‘inappropriate’. According to the respective governmental systems, the ‘style’ of Internet policy can vary from a ‘laissez-faire’ policy to strict governmental control or even a sealing-off by firewalls and filtersystems, as is the case of Internet censorship in China. ³² Mark Poster noted that “the question that needs to be asked about the relation of the Internet to democracy is this: are there new kinds of relations occuring within it which suggest new forms of power configurations between communicating individuals?” ³³ Is there more citizen empowerment and social movements empowerment or do the ‘old’ existing power relations prevail, the economic power of conglomerates and the political power of national governments?

³⁰ Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer: Die Zensur als technischer Defekt. Der Gilmore Mythos (2003); For example, by the fact that central nodes (servers and routers) of the network structure are owned by large telecommunication companies. Cp. also Barlow (2000): “More than 80 percent of all of the routers in the world are made by Cisco Systems. Nearly half of all the servers on the Internet run Microsoft NT. A very high percentage of all packets travel through networks owned by WorldCom/MCI or AT&T. […] Any one of those companies is now in a position to unilaterally redefine the underlying elements of Internet architecture to its own commercial advantage.”

³¹ „Anders als die forsch vorgetragenen „Unabhängigkeitserklärungen“ libertärer Netz-Propagandisten und verzagte Ohnmachtsbekundungen von Politikern suggerieren, entzieht sich das Netz keineswegs der Regulierung; es ist kein auto-evolutionäres System, das sich Gesetz, Geld und guter Worte, also den üblichen Steuerungsmechanismen prinzipiell entzieht.“ Leggewie (1998), p. 21

³² „Nach dem jeweiligen Ausmaß der vorbehaltenen staatlichen Aufsicht über die Entwicklung der Netze lassen sich Stile der Technologiepolitik in demokratischen und semi-demokratischen Systemen typologisieren. Sie reichen von autoritäten Kontrollen und „Brandmauern“ (…) bis zu einer vor allem in den USA praktizierten Laissez-faire-Politik.“ Leggewie (1998), p.22

³³ Poster (1995)

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2. THE INTERNET AS PUBLIC SPHERE

2.1. THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN DEMOCRACY

The concept of the role of media as the „Fourth Estate“ (vierte Säule) of democracy goes back to the development of a free press and the parliamental system in Great Britain in the 19.Century. ³⁴ It basically means that the media (at that time the press) have the function of observing and controlling the actions of politicians and the government by critical reporting and press coverage (watchdog function), thereby informing the critical public and enabling the citizens to judge the integrity and competence of the government and the competing parties in view of, not only, but also, the next elections. This is of course an idealized version of the functioning of democracy that is influenced by a multitude of contraproductive factors, such as commercialization, instrumentalization and the competition inherent in the ‘economy of attention’ (“Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit”). ³⁵ In any case, the media play a crucial role in the building of public opinion, nowadays much more so than at the time when this notion came into being. In a representative parliamental democratic system, the communication between government and citizen gets, due to the national dimension, mostly be transmitted through the media or institutions of the government and civil society. Information duties have been delegated to professionals such as journalists and PR-managers, who have their own selection criteria. ³⁶ As the media are the dominant means to inform citizens about governmental actions, the dependency of democratic systems on the integrity, plurality and balance of media reporting is enormous, and one could ask, where public discourse nowadays actually takes place outside of media environments. At the same time, the public opinion of the population in total is never represented by the media, and the predominantly one-way communication broadcasted by the ‘traditional’ media has led to an imbalance of ‘public opinion input’ and feedback on the citizens’ part. The Internet has radically changed the medial conditions, because it enables dialogue, participation and self-publishing. Whereas the ‘traditional’ media are more suitable for ‘topdown’ communication, the Internet provides a platform for horizontal communication between citizens and numerous feedback channels, featuring also feedback possibilities for the communication between government and citizens. ³⁷ As Sassi states, “the Net public sphere can alternately operate dialogically and hence the environment can actually produce conditions for a public to be born.” 38 At the same time the self-publishing phenomena can become a potential competition to professional journalism. The problem of defining ‘the public’ and ‘the public sphere’ will now be scrutinized a bit more thoroughly.

³⁴ Requate (2003)

³⁵ The term and concept of „Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit“ goes back to Georg Franck and his homonymous book (1998).

³⁶ cp. Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher (2001 : 23)

³⁷ Leggewie calls the horizontal communication among the people „Subpolitik“. Leggewie (1998); Ewert, Fazlic, Kollbeck (2003) discuss the problem of communication between government and citizen, democratic legitimation and representation in the media in depth. p. 229ff

³⁸ Sassi (2000), p. 95

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2.2. CONCEPTS AND CRITICISM OF HABERMAS’ THEORY OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

There is virtually no analysis or exploration of the subject matter “Internet and democracy” without reference to Juergen Habermas’ work “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” (1962) ³⁹ . Although heavily critized, it is still regarded as a milestone within the field of social sciences, which has widely influenced democracy theory and media research. ⁴⁰ Some of the basic ideas of his complex theory shall be used here in a very simplified and brief form in order to clarify the relation between public sphere, media and the Internet. Secondary literature will be quoted here, as the subject of Internet, media and public sphere has been covered by several up-to-date researchers, who take into consideration the altered conditions of society and media system. 41

By “the public sphere” Habermas understood a realm in which societal consensus can be reached by the practice of rational discourse between autonomous subjects. His theory was built on an “enlightenment-minded framework”. ⁴² The bourgeois public sphere played a crucial role for the constitution of democracy and the emergence of the free press as a means of emancipation from the power structures of feudalism, exemplary in the England of the 18. century. ⁴³ The bourgeoisie was strenghtened by its growing economical power and became a considerable force in the formation of the modern democratic state. The “coffee house” or marketplace debates, the modern version of the greek “agora”, provided a place for the free expression of political opinions, which later became institutionalized as parliamentary debates. In his work, Habermas diagnoses a demise of the public sphere in the 20 ^th century, through 1.) commercialization and monopolization of the media (in connection to Adornos / Horkheimers Kulturindustrie thesis) and 2.) the professionalization and manipulation of information through public relations in the field of politics. ⁴⁴ He reads this development as a refeudalization of the public sphere through commercial and political interests, and predicts an erosion of the public sphere as the basic presupposition and fundament of democracy.

³⁹ Subtitle: “An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society”. Habermas’ book was translated into English not until 1989, and only from then it became widely known to the Anglo-American scientific community. Sassi, ref. to Peters, discusses the ambiguity of the term „Öffentlichkeit“ when translated into English, where it is possible to differentiate between ‘public’, ‘publicity’ and ‘public sphere’. (In short: ‘Publicity’: the condition of being public; ‘The public’: "a sociological aggregate of readers, viewers or citizens, that excludes no one a priori and is endowed with key political and critical powers.”) However, ‘public sphere’ is the commonly acknowledged translation of the term in the Habermasian sense. (Sassi, 2000)

⁴⁰ Habermas belongs to the “second generation” of the Frankfurt School, but if his theory also belongs to critical theory, was challenged. Cp. Roger Behrens, Kritische Theorie (2002)

⁴¹ Habermas himself has later made critical comments on the original work, for example “Further reflections on the Public Sphere”, in: Calhoun (Ed.) 1992; Preface of the new edition (1990), Suhrkamp Verlag; However, these reflections yet did not take into consideration the new medium Internet. A recent treatment for a current approach of the public sphere and the media including the Internet can be found in Habermas’ speech at the ICA conference, Dresden 2006. The speech is available as an audiofile on the site of the International Communication Association: http://www.icahdq.org/conferences/pastfutureconferences.asp (20.01.2007)

⁴² Sassi (2000): The transformation of the public sphere

⁴³ Webster (1995), Keane (2000)

⁴⁴ Webster, ibid.

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Habermas’ concept was critized to describe the bourgeois public sphere as an ideal of democratic deliberation and achievement of consensus by equal participants, which never really existed in this form in history. A single unified bourgeois public sphere is an abstract notion which necessarily excludes large parts of the society. ⁴⁵ Two arguments shall be extracted here from criticism and challenging concepts: 1) the exclusion of public spheres, social strata and groups other than the bourgeoisie, 2. ) the neglection of power structures and relations in the practice of discourse. In 1972, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, taking a Marxist approach, developed a theory of a dialectic between the bourgeois public sphere and the proletarian public sphere, claiming that the latter is being suppressed by the bourgeois public sphere, which at the same time maintains its power through ownership, economic power and a prevailing voice in the media. ⁴⁶ Negt and Kluge hereby coined the concept of an “oppositional public sphere”. 47

Nancy Fraser criticised Habermas from a feminist point of view for being “gender-blind” and neglecting the existence and importance of counter- and sub-public spheres of disadvantaged groups of society such as workers and women or minorities, such as homosexuals. ⁴⁸ Many of Habermas’ critics conclude that there exists not ‘one’ public sphere, but rather a fragmentation of the public sphere into a multitude of parallel, sub- and counter public spheres, which represent different, conflicting interests and social groups. There are more as well as less dominant ‘layers’ of major(itarian) and minor publics, and the dominating bourgeois public sphere accounted for what was understood as the mainstream public opinion, necessarily excluding standpoints, lifestyles and subcultures that do not conform with the prevailing public opinion. A holistic, all-embracing public sphere would include “…several spheres of counter publics that have been excluded from mainstream political discourse .” ⁴⁹ But a consensus about the “common good” (Gemeinwohl), the achievement of a ‘common will’ in the whole society is utopian in a reality of multiple public spheres and is rather replaced by an ongoing negotiation between different interest groups and institutions of civil society which ideally leads to some kind of compromise or agreement. ⁵⁰ John Keane states that:

„The ideal of a unified public sphere and its corresponding vision of a territorially bounded republic of citizens striving to live up to their definition of the public good are obsolete. In their place, figuratively speaking, public life is today subject to ‘refeudalization’, not in the sense in which Habermas (…) used the term, but in the different sense of the development of a complex mosaic of differently sized, overlapping and interconnected public spheres that force us radically to revise our understanding of public life and its ‘partner’ terms such as public opinion, the public good and the public/private distinction.” 51

⁴⁵ cp. Fraser (1992), Sassi (2000)

⁴⁶ Oskar Negt, Alexander Kluge: Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung (1972)

⁴⁷ Not coincidentally, this theory was developed just after the period of student protests and the emergence of the APO (Extraparliamentary Opposition) in Germany. Cp. Plake / Jansen Schumacher (2001), p. 24

⁴⁸ Fraser (1992)

⁴⁹ Papacharissi (2002), ref. here to the virtual sphere and to Fraser (1992).

⁵⁰ cp. Sassi (2000); This fundamental problem of democratic decision-making cannot be discussed here extensively. For an introduction in the problem connected with the Internet, see for example Ewert / Fazlic / Kollbeck (2003).

⁵¹ Keane (2000)

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Habermas has made an important dinstinction between the realms of politics, the economy and civil society. He “…stresses the importance of a vital and functioning Öffentlichkeit, a sphere of critical publicity distinct from the state and the economy, consisting of a broad range of organisations that represent public opinion and interest groups, […] as a conditio sine qua non for a pluralist democratic debate in an open society that is not entirely dominated by the mass media.” ⁵² He separated the ideal public discourse from the mass media, because they distort and manipulate information and are dominated by advertising and commercial interests. ⁵³ The media system belongs to the economy, whereas political institutions use professional Public Relation (PR) agencies to spread biassed information that follows certain political interests with the goal of e.g. winning the next elections. Webster, in reference to Habermas, characterizes PR as following: „[…] what public relation does, in entering public debate, is to disguise the interests it represents (cloaking them in appeals such as ‘public welfare’ and the ‘national interest’), thus making contemporary debate a ‘faked version’ (Habermas 1989: 195) of a genuine public sphere. […] public affairs become occasions for ‘displays’ of the powers that be, […] rather than spheres of contestation between different policies and outlooks.” 54

Habermas himself has criticized the restriction of the bourgeois public sphere to certain societal circles and judged the media as a means to generate a pseudo-consensus, thereby substituting a critical public, or the public sphere of ‘real’ places of public discourse altogether. To put it differently, the place of public discourse has been shifted to the media (with an emphasis on broadcasting), where it became subject to capitalist interests, the manipulation of information and ‘molding’ of opinion. In consequence, there is a difference between opinion published by the media and public opinion - ‘published opinion’ aims to influence public opinion, whereas public opinion never fully becomes represented in the media. ⁵⁵ But whereas the traditional media reduced the role of the population merely to spectators (“Zuschauerdemokratie” 56 ), the Internet opens up the possibility for the masses to express themselves and communicate dialogically. With the advent of the Internet as a medium not controlled by professional media gatekeepers, the vision of the possibility of a virtual public sphere uncontrolled by any political or economic power, emerged and “…methods of accessing and disseminating information have been fundamentally changed, with profound implications for individuals, civil society and governments.” ⁵⁷ One could say that the public sphere becomes extended by the virtual space of the Internet, and that its definition must hence be adjusted contrary to Habermas’ prediction of an extinction of the public sphere by the media. ⁵⁸ The characteristics of this ‘virtual’ part of the

⁵² Boeder (2002)

⁵³ cp. Webster (1995)

⁵⁴ Webster (1995), p. 103. This is especially interesting in connection with “Political Technology”, a form of political PR in Russia, which will be treated in Part 2.

⁵⁵ Tönnies (1922) has specified the difference between published opinion and public opinion in detail. Cp. Sassi: Public Opinion and Democracy; http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/ssassi/thesis/VIII_PUBLIC_OPINION.html (03.01.2007)

⁵⁶ cp. Leggewie (1998)

⁵⁷ Dempsey, Weitzner: GILC Report (1998)

⁵⁸ Habermas himself has of course in the meantime adjusted his view, 44 years after his work was published. Cp. Christian Stöcker: “Jürgen Habermas und die Netz-Nerds”; Spiegel Online, 23.06.2006

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public sphere must therefore be investigated to see if it is radically different from the ‘traditional’ media. Regarding the terminology, a distinction between ‘public sphere’ and ‘public space’ could be discussed, as Papacharissi does - the Internet provides a public space for political discussion and exchange of ideas and opinions, but only becomes a public sphere when these discussions and expressions actually lead to an enhancement of democracy. 59

2.3. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INTERNET AS A PUBLIC SPHERE

The research about the concept of public sphere and the Internet evolves around a variety of questions, such as:

- Whether the Internet as a public sphere is able to (figuratively) replace the ancient Greek agora, the medieval market place or the 18-century coffee-house as a place of public discussion, and thereby can strengthen existing democracies or democratic tendencies

- the role of the Internet as a transmitter between citizens and government (e-democracy)

- the role of the Internet as an alternative medium, a means for citizen empowerment and social movements empowerment

- the Internet as a platform for the formation of digital subcultures

- how does technology influence the form of discourse?

- which power structures take effect inside this virtual public sphere (for example, through economical hegemony of global media conglomerates or through power structures in social relations in discussion forums)

- what are the effects of the Internet as a public sphere on social structures in the real world?

Definitely, not all of these questions can be discussed here, but a choice of aspects commonly related to the Internet as a public sphere, subsumed under different headlines concerning the keywords transnationalism, fragmentation, digital divide, private and public, plurality, participation, citizen empowerment, e-democracy and social movements shall be investigated in the following subchapters.

⁵⁹ Papacharissi (2002), p. 11

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2.3.1. Transnationalism, Fragmentation, Access and Exclusion 60

According to Plake / Jansen / Schumacher, the public sphere can be defined in reference to events (of public interest), to communication (which takes place publicly) and to (public) places. ⁶¹ The first and most obvious capacity of the Net, its transnational reach, leads to the fact that the public sphere becomes independent from place and thus from geographic entities such as nation. It creates an own virtual space and opens the possibility for the becoming of a multiplicity of publics in which the public sphere confined to a nation state, if it ever existed in this form, falls into numerous fragments, corresponding to a multitude of interest groups. Reams of newsgroups and discussion forums exist for an infinite number of subjects. Since the content comes unfiltered and unselected by any gatekeepers, the user has to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there is a lot of ‘chaff’ on the Internet. The Net seems to enforce the fragmentation of the public sphere and on the other hand, its transnational character makes a ‘global public sphere’ possible, at least in theory. ⁶² Keane differentiates between micro- , meso-and macro-public spheres, according to their dimension and the number of people involved. His indicator still is the nation state, but on the macro-level, theoretically millions of people could be enmeshed in disputes at the supranational level. ⁶³ Sassi asks “…whether the notion of a global public or global public sphere is itself an anomaly, because it would have to include all of humanity.” ⁶⁴ In regards to the digital divide it first of all excludes all people that have no access to the Internet, which is still the large majority of the global population. ⁶⁵ Restricted online access can turn the Internet users into an elitarian fraction of the population, and some Internet researchers ask whether this resembles the concept of an elitarian bourgeois public sphere. ⁶⁶ Although the Net population is definitely composed much more diversely, one fact applied to many countries where Internet penetration is yet marginally developed: that „those who would benefit the most from the democratizing potential of new technology do not have access to it.“ 67

2.3.2. Blogs and the Blurring of Private and Public Sphere

Another development which takes place on the Internet is the distinction between the private and the public sphere becoming increasingly blurred, for example through the widespread

⁶⁰ Transnationalism „broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states.“ Webster (Ed.): Culture and Politics in the Information Age (2001), preliminary remark.

⁶¹ cp. Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher (2001), p. 18f

⁶² cp. Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher (2001 : 146)

⁶³ Keane (2000); Keane refers here to pre-Internet media, global politics, and the concentration and internationalization on the media market, that led to the building of large, international media corporations.

⁶⁴ Sassi (2000), p. 95

⁶⁵ The average worldwide Internet penetration was 16,8% (as of December 2006), in the USA the Internet penetration was 70%; Internet World Stats, www.internetworldstats.com (4.1.2007)

⁶⁶ cp. Papacharissi (2002)

⁶⁷ ibid., as of 2002.

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description of private matters in public, personal weblogs. ⁶⁸ A large part of Net communication initiated by private persons is now happening in blogs, another large part in forums. Newsgroups, the most popular form of discussion threads from the early years of the Internet, still exist, but their number is on the decline in favor of blogs which also have embedded discussion features. The infiltration of the public by the private already took effect in the traditional media, especially TV, with the presentation of private matters, such as exposing individuals’ sex-life in talkshows, but never before was it possible to this extent to publish the most intimate details to a potential global audience of millions of people (and the exponentially rising number of blogs give evidence of their enormous popularity). ⁶⁹ By making issues public that formerly belonged to privacy, the boundaries between private and public issues have become transformed and as a consequence, privacy extends into the public sphere.

The German researcher Jan Schmidt has worked out a comprehensive survey about German blogs, ⁷⁰ on the basis of which he could extract shifts and changes in the public sphere through the copious appearance of weblogs. He differentiates between the public sphere of mass media, specialized parts of the public sphere (though not counter- or sub-, as they do not necessarily have a politically motivated background) and the ‘personal public sphere’, which he relates to the majority of blogs with private content. ⁷¹ The personal public sphere, which could also be named the ‘private public sphere’ indicates a shift in the understanding of ‘the public’. Many people who open a blog do not intend to reach a global audience, but only a (larger or smaller) circle of friends and online acquaintances. These blogs are public, although they are (more or less) meant to be private, in view of their content. ⁷² The global accessibility of the blogs does not play a decisive role as the large majority of them is only known to a tiny fraction of Internet users, and remain “invisible” as long as they are not popular. Only few blogs gain a big popularity due to selection mechanisms like ranking, linking, recommendations by listings on so-called ‘blogrolls’ - the “word-of-mouth” of the Internet. ⁷³ These mechanisms of ‘network wisdom’ of new social networks add to and replace the gatekeeper mechanisms of the traditional mass media. The public sphere of the mass media, the ‘blogosphere’ and other web communities which can be summarized under the term “web 2.0”, observe and influence each other. There is an interchanging agenda-setting - topics from the mass media are taken up and

⁶⁸ ‘Blogs’ is short for ‘weblogs’. The term “weblog” was coined by the American blogging pioneer Jorn Barger on his first blog “Robot Wisdom” in 1997. Möller (2005 : 115)

⁶⁹ The number of blogs worldwide doubles every 5 months; El Ahl u.a.:“Rebellen im Netz”, Der Spiegel Nr. 47 / 2006. “The growth rate of blogs is impressive. Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, tracked more than 8 million online diaries as of March 21, [2005] up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour.” CNET news.com: “The Future of Blogging”; April 5, 2005; http://news.com.com/The+future+of+blogging/2030-1069_3-5654288.html (20.01.2007)

⁷⁰ Jan Schmidt: Weblogs. Eine kommunikationssoziologische Studie. UVK (2006)

⁷¹ I am referring here to documents available on Jan Schmidts homepage www.bamberg-gewinnt.de, namely the summary and sheets of a presentation he has held about the changes of public spheres on the Internet: www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress/wp-content/pdf/futuredays_vortrag1.pdf (11.01.2007)

⁷² According to Schmidts evaluation, about 76% of German blogs have private content and about 35% political content.

⁷³ These selection mechanisms can be interpreted as tools that are effective in the “economy of attention” (Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit).

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commented in blogs, journalists observe and publish in blogs themselves and take up topics into the mass media. Schmidt concludes that the ‘personal public spheres’ transform the traditional notion of the borderlines of the private sphere and that “public” no longer necessarily means “relevant to the public”, because information is publicized too which might only be of interest to a few people. 74

2.3.3. Politicization

The traditionally stable entities of private sphere and public sphere became permeable even before the advent of the Internet, but the Internet makes it a lot easier for groups and individuals to publish their concerns to an infinite, even though splintered audience. ⁷⁵ Blogs and other web media do not tangent the sphere of politics as long as their subjects remain purely private, but their content can become highly political if delicate topics or scandals are made public (for instance the homosexuality of a prominent person in a society where homosexuality is regarded as abnormal). The publication can lead to either a increase or decrease of discrimination, but can be an important means for minorities to uncover discriminating practices and to make abuses or political scandals public as a first step of resistance. Nancy Fraser is of the opinion that “there are no naturally given, a priori boundaries between the public and the private domains.” ⁷⁶ She refers to the right of minorities to express their views in counterpublic spheres, which can be a necessity for the recognition of difference, of ‘otherness’. Sassi, in reference to Fraser, phrases it like this: “Democratic publicity requires positive guarantees of opportunities for minorities to convince others that what was not public in the past should be so now.” ⁷⁷ Papacharissi states that “this vision of the true virtual sphere consists of several spheres of counterpublics that have been excluded from mainstream political discourse […].” ⁷⁸ According to Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher, a counter public is constituted when there is doubt that the official media fulfil their information mandate sufficiently and conscientiously - the omissions, blind spots or deficiencies in media coverage leave out topics which then are taken up by alternative media. 79

⁷⁴ About the coherence of public sphere and relevance, cp. Plake / Jansen / Schumacher (2001 : 18)

⁷⁵ cp. Plake / Jansen / Schumacher (2001 : 72)

⁷⁶ Quotation is not from Fraser, but from Sinikka Sassi (2000), p. 93

⁷⁷ Sassi (2000), ibid.

⁷⁸ Papacharissi (2002), ref. to Fraser; cp. Ch. 2.2

⁷⁹ Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher (2001 : 23ff). They define Gegenöffentlichkeit out of a German context as follows: “’Gegenöffentlichkeit bezeichnet Aktivitäten zur Verbreitung von Informationen und Meinungen, die - von einem medienkritischen Ansatz ausgehend, die Aufmerksamkeit der Bevölkerung auf weitgehend unbeachtete, nichtsdestoweniger für die Allgemeinheit als bedeutsam angesehene Themen zu richten versuchen.“

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2.3.4. Plurality of Opinions, Power Relations in Online Forums

The Internet provides a platform for the expression of a plurality of opinions, which can basically be seen as a quality fostering democratic conditions and enabling the flourishing of democratic systems, but at the same time it can threaten liberal principles by the dissemination of extremist ideas and fundamentalist ideologies, that equally make use of the right to freedom of speech while promoting contradicting ideals: “While sites that openly advocate discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity [or religion or gender] exercise the right to free speech, they certainly do not promote democratic ideals of equality.” ⁸⁰ This is one of the basic problems of free speech expression on the Internet, that forces democratic governments to protect their societies by restrictions of the freedom of speech - for example the prohibition of neo national-socialist extremist websites in Germany - but the Internet lifts the problem onto an international level. Furthermore, the possibility to communicate internationally does not necessarily mean, that it automatically fosters mutual intercultural understanding. On the contrary, national and cultural communities of Internet users develop, which communicate in their own language and built their own cultural sphere on the Net, especially if they communicate in their own script, which is the case, for example, in Japan, China, Russia or in Arabic countries. 81

Another aspect is working against the assumption that discourse in online communication is practiced in an equal manner and with basic-democratic ideals: Previous research has revealed that newsgroups and forums were often dominated by a few participants, that “online discussions, much like real life ones, seemed to be dominated by elites and were unable to influence public policy formation”. ⁸² This means that power structures which are present in many real-life face-to-face-discussions, also take effect in online discussions - there are a few dominant speakers, more or less participating people and probably a silent majority of “lurkers”, who only read blogs and forums without taking part in the discussion. ⁸³ Steven Schneider carried out an empirical study of newsgroups discussions in 1997 and, based on Habermas’ concept of discourse free of domination (herrschaftsfreier Diskurs), identified four dimensions of an ideal public sphere: equality, diversity, reciprocity and quality. Schneider used these dimensions as criteria to measure the quality of discourse in newsgroup discussions. Although the ideal of equal discourse is difficult to achieve, he came to the general conclusion “that newsgroups have much potential for contributing to the idealized version of the public sphere.” 84

⁸⁰ Papacharissi (2002)

⁸¹ 41% of all blogs are published in Japanese, 28% in English and 14% in Chinese. El Ahl u.a.: “Rebellen im Netz”, Der Spiegel Nr. 47 / 2006

⁸² Papacharissi (2002), ref. to Jankowski / van Selm (2000).

⁸³ The Lurker phenomenon was analysed by Robert Mayer-Uellner: Das Schweigen der Lurker. Politische Partizipation und soziale Kontrolle in Online-Diskussionsforen (2003).

⁸⁴ Jankowski / van Selm (2000 : 152ff)

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2.3.5. E-Democracy, Participation, Social Movements and Grassroots Movements

Regarding the relation between government and citizen, different flows of communication can be distinguished: communication between governmental authorities and citizens (top-down and bottom-up) and communication among citizens (horizontal communication), which represents the larger part of these two communication flows on the Internet. Claus Leggewie calls the communication among citizens “Subpolitik”, referring to a public sphere which lies ‘under’ the mediated communication of official politics, but nevertheless influences it . ⁸⁵ According to Tsagarousianou, „new technologies clearly have the potential to sustain such spaces as they enable both deliberation (citizen to citizen communication) and ‚hearing’ (citizen to authorities communication).” 86

The efforts to enable a greater citizen participation in democratic systems through Internet communication can be subsumed under the term “e-democracy”, which deals with a large range of topics, such as e-government, e-voting, polling, information freedom, online access to official documents, feedback possibilities, electronic plebiscites etc.; ⁸⁷ The participation of citizens in parliamental and presidential democratic systems is often limited to voting, which leads to an increasing discontentment and disenchantment with politics in Western democracies. The crucial point for the enhancement of a ‘grassroots’ democracy is the possibility to participate in decision making beyond mere voting, but this would presuppose first of all a change in the structures of the political system, because in a parliamentary democracy possibilities for participation in decision making are limited. The Internet was attributed with the hope to be able to provide conditions for a wider citizen participation, but new technological inventions alone do not change the system, they provide only the means for it. As Papacharissi states: „Despite the fact that the Internet provides additional space for political discussion, it is still plagued by the inadequacies of our political system.” ⁸⁸ Opinions can be expressed freely, but:

„The power of the words and their ability to effect change, however, is limited in the current political spectrum. In a political system where the role of the public is limited, the effect of these online opinions on policy making is questionable. To take this point further, political expression online may leave people with a false sense of empowerment, which misrepresents the true impact of their opinions.” 89

To reformulate and sharpen this argument, one could say that in the worst case online activism is merely a substitute for ‘genuine’ civic engagement, which only has effect if it leads to real action in the offline world. Besides these innovations that came about with the promise of

⁸⁵ Leggewie (1998)

⁸⁶ As cited by Jankowski / van Selm (2000 : 151)

⁸⁷ There is a growing body of literature about the development, problems and influence of e-democracy and the effect of the Internet on democratic structures, for example Siedschlag, Rogg u.a.: Digitale Demokratie - Willensbildung und Partizipation per Internet (2002); Martin Emmer: Politische Mobilisierung durch das Internet? (2005)

⁸⁸ Papacharissi (2002). She refers here to the governmental system of the USA.

⁸⁹ Papacharissi, ibid.

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improving citizen partizipation, there is another subject field regarding democracy and citizen empowerment: the social movements and grassroots-movements, which fight for the enhancement of democratic conditions from ‘below’ and sometimes from outside the official political system. For them, the Internet is a means to organize political action, protest campaigns and ‘online demonstrations’. There are “purely virtual” forms of protest, so-called net-strikes, e-campaigns and online-demonstrations - Armin Medosch describes protest actions on the Net that gained some popularity in the past, such as the “Electronic Civil Disobedience”actions of the Electronic Disturbance Theatre (EDT) in the 1990’s, the “Electrohippies” in Great Britain or an online-demonstration against the deportation of refugees carried out by Lufthansa (airplanes) in Germany in 2001. 90

Manuel Castells states that through the possibility of transnational online communication new social networks are formed, which would otherwise have been impossible. International Anti-Globalization groups and campaigns, ecological organizations, the work of international NGO’s fighting for Human Rights - for all of them the Internet has become an indispensible means to work, to communicate, to campaign and organize protest actions. The Anti-Globalizationmovement has used the Internet since the end of the 1990’s to organize demonstrations, for example against the WTO summit in Seattle 1999. ⁹¹ The Independent Media Center (IMC) -short Indymedia - developed from these political networks. Indymedia has grown into a global network of leftist grassroots activists on the Internet with platforms and centres in several countries and languages. ⁹² Castells takes the view that the Internet with its network structure is especially suited to empower and enforce social movements, as the network structure corresponds to the way these movements work and come into being. ⁹³ He goes even further and states that the social movements have a key role in the protection and preservation of the Internet as a medium of liberty. ⁹⁴ The Net enables and breeds new social structures that can have repercussions on the “offline” social structures of civil society. Of course not all online networks have political intentions - most of them deal with a wide range of interests and non politic-related topics.

Yet the question remains, in how far these developments affect and influence official government policy. In how far do social movements and counter public spheres on the Net have the power to change societal conditions? Is there a global public sphere emerging or even a critical public? This question shall be posed here only theoretically and preparatory, as a frame for further aspects of free expression treated below. However, a few tendencies can be summed up:

⁹⁰ Medosch (2003);

Lufthansa Online-Demonstration am 20.06.2001: http://www.geocities.com/demo4alles/dt/index.html (08.01.2007)

⁹¹ Medosch (2003 : 279f)

⁹² ibid., p. 282f; www.indymedia.org

⁹³ Castells (2005), p. 149ff

⁹⁴ ibid., p. 197

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- The relationship between state, „traditional“ media and the public sphere has been transformed through the emergence of the Internet, which as a medium can constitute a kind of competitive and alternative public sphere less regulated by economic and political agents.

- The nation state (resp. its government) loses part of its legal sovereignty, political authority and control due to the transnational character of the Net. 95

- The public sphere falls into even more fragments than before, and can be extended globally.

- The borderline between private and public sphere shifts and becomes blurred.

- New social networks develop, with their own social regulations and communication habits.

- The Net provides platforms for the free expression of a multitude of opinions and enables their worldwide access.

- The Net can thereby provide a space for the publication of topics which have been neglected by the traditional media (sorted out by their selection mechanisms), and thus a counter public sphere can be constituted. 96

In particular, the Internet can play a crucial role in authoritarian states which in the past had the power to control their media system to an extent that made unapproved statements impossible. These states have a strong interest to control the Internet content that flows in and out of their territory. Weblogs play an essential role for the international publication of different views on political incidents in conflict-ridden regions and hot spots. In the following chapter, the legal fundamentals of freedom of speech will be outlined shortly, and motives of and methods for censorship will be explored.

3. FREE SPEECH AND CENSORSHIP

3.1. LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The term ‘Freedom of Speech’ comprises the related terms ‘freedom of expression’, ‘freedom of opinion’ and ‘freedom of press’, which can have different meanings, but are often used in the same context. Freedom of press of course relates to the media, whereas freedom of opinion and expression is considered a basic human right. ⁹⁷ Cyber-Libertarian Mike Godwin notes that „The term free speech […] is used more ore less interchangeably with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression to refer to all the expressive rights guaranteed

⁹⁵ cp. Leggewie (1998)

⁹⁶ ref. to Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher (see above).

⁹⁷ cp. Seim (2003 : 336)

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by the […] First Amendment, as interpreted by U.S. courts.” ⁹⁸ The legal complex of freedom of information also comprises the right not only to express oneself, but to obtain information freely from any available sources. Democratic states have mostly anchored the right to freedom of speech and information in their constitutions, with different democratic traditions existing that contain similar regulations but different interpretations thereof. In Germany, for example, the three ‘communication freedoms’ - freedom of opinion, freedom of press and freedom of information belong to the basic rights (Grundrechte). ⁹⁹ The First Amendment is important in this context, as it provides the legal norm in the ‘motherland’ of the Internet, but the focus here will lie on international laws and agreements, because the Net exceeds national jurisdictions (though the Internet traffic on the territory of any country is regulated by the respective national jurisdiction). The Global Internet Policy Initiative cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its webpage as follows: “Freedom of expression is a human right protected under international law. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Similar [expressions] appear in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), in Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and in Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights. 148 countries have ratified the CCPR.” 100

With regard to the Internet, the formulation “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” is of particular importance. It means that countries which restrict Internet access, censor Internet content or filter incoming or outgoing Internet traffic according to ideological or political criteria, infringe the universal human right of freedom of speech.

There are a number of international NGO’s and Human Rights Organizations involved in the defence of the freedom of speech. Löwstedt / Hasler have identified eight of the largest and most important Free Speech organizations, among them Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders), International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) and Index on Censorship, only to mention a few. ¹⁰¹ Within these organizations, there are sections specializing in the defence of free speech on the Internet, as well as autonomous organizations concerned with digital freedom - as already mentioned above, the EFF, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and many others.

⁹⁸ Godwin (2003 : 2)

⁹⁹ Lorenz-Meyer (2003 : 310)

¹⁰⁰ Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI): http://www.internetpolicy.net/content (15.01.2007); The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm (15.01..2007); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm (15.01..2007); European Convention on Human Rights: http://www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html (15.01..2007) and http://www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/D5CC24A7-DC13-4318-B457-5C9014916D7A/0/EnglishAnglais.pdf

¹⁰¹ Löwstedt / Hasler (2003)

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3.2. MOTIVES FOR CENSORSHIP

As indicated further above, the Internet is not an uncontrollable network anymore and there are in fact technical means available to exercise censorship if the intention is there. In order to be able to range Russia in the context of political systems and censorship further below, the problem of Internet censorship in relation to democratic and authoritarian countries will be shortly introduced. First of all, the possible motives for censorship will be outlined in general, followed by a description of some examples of Internet censorship and technological methods used to carry out Internet content control.

Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer states that censorship is primarily not a technological, but a social and political problem. Censorship, often understood in a negative meaning as the suppression of unwanted opinions, can also be a legitimate means of democratic states to regulate content that could potentially damage or threaten their society. Lorenz-Meyer understands censorship first of all as every governmental restriction of freedom of opinion, no matter whether it is democratically legitimized or not, or if it comes as preliminary censorship or subsequent prosecution. ¹⁰² Censorship has existed at all times relating to different media, be it books, press or electronic media, and basically means that content which offends the moral norms and values of a society is censored. There are different kinds as well as different intentions of censorship, based on the cultural context, the social environment and the political system. The social norms and values have changed over time and with them the notion of what content has to be regarded as offending, indecent or not. ¹⁰³ Whereas in an ecclesiastical society the church was the authority to censor ‘indecent’ media content, it is nowadays the state which is in the ruling position. Censorship is always an indication of a political or cultural conflict. It marks an area of conflict between particular cultural milieus and the official power […], states Lorenz-Meyer, and further remarks that the Internet with its global reach lifts these conflicts onto the international stage. ¹⁰⁴ The problem of transnational Internet content now concerns the whole variety of cultures and political systems and collides with different value systems and national laws. Regarding the present, the most obvious distinction to make is between democratic and authoritarian states - which of course can be classified into different forms of democratic and authoritarian systems, but that would maybe lead too far in this context. The decisive point here is the legitimation of the political system, i. e. if it is democratically legitimated or not. ¹⁰⁵ As a consequence, and in contradiction to the more neutral perception of censorship cited above, a differentation between a „legitimate“ motivation to censor websites (such as racism,

¹⁰² Lorenz-Meyer (2003 : 310) „Der Begriff der Zensur, intuitiv meist stark wertend verstanden als Unterdrückung missliebiger Meinungen, steht also in einem relativ komplexen rechtlichen Umfeld. Wenn im folgenden von Zensur die Rede ist, so sollte das in einem weitgehend wertneutralen Sinn verstanden werden. Gemeint ist jede staatliche Beschränkung der Freiheit, seine Meinung zum Ausdruck zu bringen, sei sie demokratisch legitimiert oder nicht, egal auch, ob sie als vorherige Kontrolle oder nachträgliche Verfolgung daher kommt.“

¹⁰³ cp. Seim (2003) and Bernhardt (2003 : 319)

¹⁰⁴ Lorenz-Meyer (2003 : 311): „Zensur ist immer Anzeichen für einen politischen oder kulturellen Konflikt. Sie markiert ein Spannungsfeld zwischen bestimmten kulturellen Milieus und offizieller Macht: (…).“

¹⁰⁵ This relates to pre-censorship resp. post-publishing censorship. cp. Bernhardt (2003 : 329)

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pornography, depictions of violence, incitement to terrorism or drug usage) and political motivation (unwanted content which criticizes the ‘official line’ of a government) can be made. A legitimate motivation of censorship in democratic states is covered by the constitution and by a legitimately voted government - “censorship” here has the function of protecting the rights of minorities, of protection of minors and of inhibiting extremist tendencies that can be potentially dangerous to society. In most West European countries there is a consensus that access to pornography, depictions of violence and political extremist propaganda must be restricted. ¹⁰⁶ In the U.S, there is a different understanding of free speech - depictions of violence and political extremism are generally handled more liberally, whereas pornography undergoes more restrictions than in Europe. In a democratic understanding, pre-censorship (before publishing) is prohibited, whereas subsequent censorship (after publishing) is still possible, if the content is extremely offending. Politically motivated censorship can occur both in authoritarian and democratic states, but can be disguised in the latter as ‘legitimate’ censorship and exerted according to existing laws that were actually intended for different purposes. It can also take the shape of self-censorship of the media, as in the United States after the terror attack on September 11, 2001. 107

In authoritarian systems, everything which contradicts the official political or religious ideology is prohibited, ¹⁰⁸ and censorship is a necessary measure to ensure the maintenance of the ruling power. A distinction can be made between a religious motivation of censorship (mainly in fundamentalist islamic countries) and political motivation (such as in communist and postcommunist countries). In totalitarian states, censorship can take the shape of a systematic and total control of all public communication, ¹⁰⁹ in which surveillance can lead to a climate of fear and as a consequence of social mechanisms of suppression, self-censorship in the media and among the population can be exerted on a large scale. In addition to the forms of censorship mentioned above - pre-censorship and post-publishing censorship - the phenomenon of self-censorship plays an important role as it contributes to sustain the continuity of repressive political systems.

Regarding the global situation of press freedom, only just over one third of all countries can be regarded as ‘free’, according to an annual survey provided by the NGO ‘Freedom House’ about the press freedom situation worldwide - it lists a total of 194 countries, whereof 38% are regarded as free, 28% as partly free and 34% as not free. ¹¹⁰ Reporters Without Borders (RSF) publish an annual World Press Freedom Index with a ranking of 168 countries according to the degree of press freedom - on a gradual scale from best to worst, but without a definite

¹⁰⁶ Seim (2003 : 335)

¹⁰⁷ 1) For example, unwanted content can sometimes be prohibited on the basis of copyright laws. 2) cp. e.g. Herman / Chomsky: “Manufacturing Consent” and other works by Noam Chomsky.

¹⁰⁸ cp. Bernhardt (2003 : 319f)

¹⁰⁹ cp. Buchloh (2003)

¹¹⁰ Freedomhouse.org: Freedom of the Press 2006 Report, Table of Global Press Freedom Rankings www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/Chart89File147.pdf (16.01.2007)

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classification into “free / not free”. The ranking shows that common perceptions about the “free” Western world and “unfree” Eastern and ‘Third World’ countries do not prove to be true (anymore), as several former Third-World countries have moved up the scale, whereas some Western countries are falling back. 111

3.3. AN EXAMPLE FOR CENSORSHIP - CHINA

Reporters Without Borders also publishes regular reports on the worldwide situation regarding Internet censorship. ¹¹² It currently lists Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Myanmar (Burma), North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam among the countries that censor Internet traffic. ¹¹³ These countries use different methods of censorshipwhile Cuba for example simply prohibits Internet access to almost the entire population (only 2% of the population can go online), ¹¹⁴ China, the “world leader” in Internet censorship, deploys an elaborate mixture of different censorship methods, such as filtering, surveillance, blocking on the level of the Internet backbone and Internet Service Providers (“the great Chinese Firewall”), and a multitudinous cyber-police that constantly scours online forums and blogs for content of political dissent. ¹¹⁵ According to RSF, there are almost 17 million bloggers now in China, so that apparently the cyber-police has plenty of work - there are currently 52 cyber-dissidents imprisoned and as a consequence, “self-censorship is obviously in full force”. ¹¹⁶ This effective over-all censoring only became possible with the complicity and technological support of Western companies - notably Cisco, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. ¹¹⁷ These companies cooperate with the Chinese government to correspond to its strict censorship regulations, for fear of losing their business opportunities in the huge, fastly growing Chinese Internet market. Cisco provided the country with the technical Internet backbone and technology capable of filtering and surveillance. ¹¹⁸ Yahoo gained notorious popularity in 2005 when it was involved in the case of cyber-dissident Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, supposedly with the use of information provided by Yahoo. ¹¹⁹ Google recently hit the headlines, because the

¹¹¹ Reporters Without Borders - World Press Freedom Index 2006; www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639 (18.01.2007)

¹¹² Reporters Without Borders - Annual Internet Report 2006: www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/internet_report.pdf (16.01.2007)

¹¹³ Reporters Without Borders - List of the 13 Internet enemies 2006; 7 ^th November 2006,

www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19603; The list is updated regularly, according to observations of Internet user harrassment; Libya, the Maldives and Nepal were only recently removed from the list.

¹¹⁴ ibid.

¹¹⁵ RSF, ibid.; RSF, Handbook for Bloggers (2005); RSF, Annual Internet Report 2006;

According to Katrin Evers, spokesperson of RSF Germany, there are about 30.000 “cyber-policemen” on duty. Cp. Grit Hofmann: “Es ist wirklich ein Trauerspiel” - Interview with Katrin Evers on Deutsche Welle, 25.01.2006;

¹¹⁶ RSF, List of 13 Internet enemies. “Der Spiegel” names a number of approx. 4 million. cp. El Ahl u.a.: „Rebellen im Netz“, Der Spiegel Nr. 47 / 2006; China has about 111 million Internet users, at a total population of over 1.3 billion. (Der Spiegel / Wikipedia)

¹¹⁷ Frank Patalong: US-Kongress knöpft sich Google & Co vor. Spiegel Online, 02.02.2006

¹¹⁸ The Open Net Initiative: Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005: A Country Study. www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/ (16.01.2007)

¹¹⁹ Frank Patalong: Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern; Spiegel Online, 08.09.2005

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company manipulates the search engines’ results of its Chinese version - for example a search for pictures of ‘Tiananmen Square’ will only result in official governmental sites and touristic sites of the square, but will not show any pictures of the massacre of 1989. ¹²⁰ Apparently, Google actively takes part in the building of blacklists according to the guidelines of the Chinese government, thus violating its own company motto “Don’t be evil”. 121

There is a growing number of studies which have examined the censoring methods of the Chinese regime in detail, for example by Human Rights Watch, the Open Internet Initiative or scientists such as Zittrain / Edelman of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. ¹²² I will therefore not go deeper into the subject here, but rather refer to two theories of “Technologies of Control” and “Technologies of Freedom” in the following. The next step after this will investigate the phenomenon of User-generated Content - or “web 2.0” a bit more closely, especially the role of blogs as alternative media for the expression of political dissent in countries governed by a repressive regime.

3.4. TECHNOLOGIES OF CONTROL, TECHNOLOGIES OF FREEDOM AND THE MEANING OF CODE

The phrase „Code is Law“ was popularized by Lawrence Lessig, the perhaps “most prominent legal thinker on the intersection of the law and the Internet” ¹²³ , in his book “Code and other Laws of Cyberspace” (1999). To put it briefly, Lessig developed a theory based on the conviction that the Internet will not and cannot be regulated primarily by legislation, but that the technological “code” (as a summarizing umbrella term for all kinds of technological determinants of the Internet architecture that can determine commercial and political power relations) plays a decisive role in the way the powers of control and the powers of freedom will be distributed on the Internet in the future: “We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental. Or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear. […] As Mark Stefik puts it, […] code “determines which people can access which digital objects. How such programming regulates human interactions depends on the choices made.” Or, more precisely, a code of cyberspace, defining the freedoms and controls of cyberspace, will be built.” ¹²⁴ In other words, the ‘code’ is determinative (which could at first sight be interpreted as a theory of technological determinism), but the code is man-made, with

¹²⁰ Danny Sullivan: A Picture Says 1000 Words About Google's Censorship In China; SearchEngineWatch Blog, posted on Jan. 30, 2006; http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060130-080248 (17.01.2007)

¹²¹ Danny Sullivan: How Google censors itself for China & Paid Exclusion as Being Evil; ref. to Declan McCullagh, CNET news.com; posted on Jan. 27, 2006; http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060127-150726 (17.01.2007)

¹²² Human Rights Watch: „Race to the Bottom“; Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship (2006); www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/ (17.01.2007); The Open Net Initiative: see source cited above; Jonathan Zittrain / Benjamin Edelman: Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China (2002), Berkman Center for Internet & Society, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/ (17.01.2007)

¹²³ O’Reilly / Koman, www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/01/30/lessig.html

¹²⁴ Quotation is taken from the revised and updated second edition of the book, „Code Version 2.0“ (2006), p. 6

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definite purposes. Several problem fields can be mentioned in this context, such as software copyright vs. open source, intellectual property and copyright vs. free filesharing or privacy protection vs. data collection and surveillance technologies.

The dichotomy of freedom and control has been taken up by Manuel Castells, who reformulates it to a conflict of “Technologies of Control” versus “Technologies of Freedom” or “code against code”. ¹²⁵ Castells states that Technologies of Control can exercise their controlling function under the presupposition that there is an asymmetrical knowledge of codes: the controller knows the code, but the controlled user doesn’t. ¹²⁶ The code (in this context - the actual source code of the software) is protected by copyright and the average Internet users are “prisoners of an architecture they don’t know”. ¹²⁷ The meaning of ownership of software copyrights and on the contrary - open source - becomes quite clear in this context - software copyrights give their owners the power to exercise control, whereas open source - the disclosure of the source code - empowers programmers to see through the code and develop alternatives or counteragents against the Technology of Control.

Technologies of Control are usually applied by powers who pursue ecomonical or political interests, for example, the music industry uses digital rights management to protect their copyrights, whereas cracking software or illegal filesharing circumvents these measures “by code”. ¹²⁸ Governments have an interest in the prosecution of computer criminality, terrorism, child pornography and illegal filesharing, therefore surveillance, filtering and other technologies of control have to be deployed to put the corresponding laws into force. ¹²⁹ Identification and authentication technologies serve for the management of user accounts for commercial purposes, but can also be used to spy on and track users, thereby violating the users’ right to privacy and data protection. Encryption and anonymizers can be used to outsmart such measures, and for every Technology of Control, a counter-agent was and will be developed, which often leads to an outright race against time between industry and governments and libertarian resp. subversive programmers and users. 130

Regarding the context of free speech and censorship, there are as well quite a number of technologies to exercise censorship, such as blocking, filtering, surveillance, and their counterparts on part of the free speech advocates, such as mirroring of websites, hosting in other countries, “data havens”, anonymizing and so forth. As blogs play an important role in the expression of free speech, it is necessary for bloggers who live under repressive governments to blog anonymously and to make sure their blogs remain accessible - this requires special

¹²⁵ Castells (2005 : 196); re-translated from the German edition.

¹²⁶ ibid., p. 184

¹²⁷ Castells (2005 : 185); re-translated from the German edition.

¹²⁸ On the subject of music industry vs. filesharing (P2P), Digital Rights Management (DRM), copy protection and music piracy, see Janko Röttgers’ book “Mix, Burn & R.I.P. - Das Ende der Musikindustrie” (2003)

¹²⁹ For example, the “Directive on the Retention of Communications Traffic Data” of the European Union (2005)

¹³⁰ There was a political debate about encryption already in the 90’s, and several governments wanted to prohibit encryption as to assure their claims on the governmental information control. Cp. the GILC Report “Cryptography and Liberty 1998”: www.gilc.org/crypto/crypto-survey.html (18.01.2007)

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“circumvention technologies”, which will be dealt with in the next chapter about the so-called user-generated content.

4. USER-GENERATED CONTENT

4.1. DEFINITION

Blogs, video-platforms like ‘YouTube’, photo-platforms like ‘Flickr’ or the online-encyclopedia “Wikipedia” all belong to the category of online services for User-generated Content - in opposition to content produced by media professionals. In recent years, a larger number of websites sprang up which offer tools to upload self-produced “amateur content”, like text, photos, videos or podcasts and use “social software” to enable their users to create their own virtual communities. For a definition, Wikipedia itself will be quoted:

“User-generated content (UGC) is a term that has come into the mainstream during 2005 in web publishing and new media content production circles. It refers to online content that is produced by users as opposed to traditional media producers such as broadcasters and production companies. It reflects the democratisation of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable. These include digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis. Prominent examples of websites based on user-generated content include Flickr, Friends Reunited, sourceforge, FourDocs, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life and Wikipedia. The advent of user-generated content marks a shift among media organisations from creating on-line content to creating the facilities and framework for non-media professionals (i.e. 'ordinary people') to publish their own content in prominent places. The concept of users generating material is similar to, and may stem from, free software which encourages projects to be licensed in such a way as to allow users to contribute and improve it, as well as learn from it.” 131

UGC is often used in the context of “web 2.0”, a somewhat vague buzzword usually related to the same online services mentioned above. 132

Last year, the video-platform “YouTube” attracted attention in the media through some popular cases of fake videos. ¹³³ It might be interesting to mention here, that the German chancellor Angela Merkel was the first high-ranking politician who used video-blogging as a means to

¹³¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content (cited as in the version of 19.01.2007)

¹³² “Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services - such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and since 2004 some technicians and marketers have adopted the phrase. Its exact meaning remains open to debate, and some experts, notably Tim Berners Lee, have questioned whether the term has meaning.” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 (cited in the version of 19.01.2007)

¹³³ Christian Stöcker: „Die Lüge stirbt zuletzt“; Spiegel Online, 10.11.2006

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communicate recent political topics to the German population. ¹³⁴ Her video-blog, available on YouTube, was morphed to endless satirical versions by YouTube users that made more or less dull jokes on Merkel’s appearance in the video. This phenomenon shows that the appearance of politicians on the Net can lead to a loss of their authority, spoil their serious image, and reduce the distance between citizen and politician in a different way than initially intended.

4.2. BLOGS AND POLITICS

In the context of free speech, the attention will be pointed to UGC and - again - to blogs, especially of political content. There is already a number of news services, where lay journalists can publish their own news articles - for example WikiNews and Readers Edition, and even online ‘TV Channels’ for self-produced video podcasts, for example “Current TV”. ¹³⁵ It is interesting to question if platforms like these could become serious competitors of professional journalism in the future. Many newspapers themselves have meanwhile integrated blogs into their web portals. A good example of a blog site which had an actual impact on politics is the Sunlight Foundation, which enables citizens to exercise a watchdog function towards the US government with the goal to achieve more transparency in US politics, “creating tools so that average citizens can become watchdogs on their own.” ¹³⁶ The Sunlight Foundation has won the “Best of the Blogs”-Award of the German broadcaster “Deutsche Welle” in 2006.

“Global Voices” is an international blogging platform, designed to facilitate freedom of expression around the world. ¹³⁷ An excerpt from its mission statement says that “At a time when the international English-language media ignores many things that are important to large numbers of the world’s citizens, Global Voices aims to redress some of the inequities in media attention by leveraging the power of citizens’ media.” So one function of blogs can be the coverage of political topics that are neglected by the professional media - in a sense of the creation of a counter public. Some journalists use their blogs to express views that they cannot publish elsewhere in the official media. In authoritarian states and under a repressive government, the relevance of blogs is more crucial: here, blogs can become a means of resistance against discrimination and political suppression and an important medium to communicate incidents of suppression to the outside world, whereas the official government and media communication only aims at the maintenance of a positive image. In the RSF’s “Handbook for Bloggers”, a blogger from Bahrain claims that the countries bloggers have “broken the government’s news monopoly”. ¹³⁸ In Iran, where censorship restricts authors and

¹³⁴ 10th Annual Report on the Best of the Web. Politics Online, 08.01.2007; http://www.politicsonline.com/content/main/specialreports/2007/best_web_2006/ (18.01.2007)

¹³⁵ http://en.wikinews.org ; http://www.readers-edition.de (in German); www.current.tv

¹³⁶ “US Blog that holds Government responsible wins Weblog Award”; Deutsche Welle, 11.11.2006; http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2236184,00.html (19.01.2007); www.sunlightfoundation.com

¹³⁷ http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/top/about-global-voices/ (19.01.2007)

¹³⁸ Chan’ad Bahraini (pseudonym), Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, Reporters Sans Frontièrs, 2005, p. 40.

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journalist and every print medium has to be permitted by the authorities, blogs are a means for journalists and amateur writers to elude these restrictions. ¹³⁹ Iranian regime critic Nasreen Alavi has published a book where she describes the underground blogger community in her countryapproximately 70.000 blogs exist in the native language Farsi. ¹⁴⁰ The Iranian blogosphere, according to her book, represents quite a different picture of the Irani society than the fundamentalist image created by the media in the West. ¹⁴¹ In Egypt, where the number of online-dissidents is comparatively small, women protested in blogs against massive sexual harrassment that happened in open public. Only recently, dissident Narem Kareem Amer was arrested because he committed - in the opinion of the authorities - anti-Islamic propaganda, political agitation and betrayal in his blog. ¹⁴² A good example of a blog which was used as a news channel is “Radio Free Nepal”, which was set up by an anonymous blogger in 2005 to circumvent the total communication blockade imposed by King Gyanendra in Nepal in 2005. The aim of the blog is to “tell the outside world what’s happening” in the country and the blog provided a comprehensive coverage of political incidents in Nepal in 2005. The author and other contributors to the blog remain anonymous because they are threatened to be prosecuted by the Nepalese authorities. 143

Another blogging phenomenon which is not necessarily related to political resistance is “Warblogging”, which became popular among US-soldiers in the Iraq war of 2003. In their blogs, the soldiers narrated their war experiences, and sometimes also discontentment and opinions critical of the US government. ¹⁴⁴ However, a warblog is not necessarily critical of the warsometimes it is only used to depict gruesome experiences. An Iraqi blogger who published under the pseudonym “Salam Pax” became so popular through his live coverage of the war, that eventually he earned a position at the renowned British international newspaper The Guardian. ¹⁴⁵ This is probably not the only case where a blogger became a professional journalist - the general distinction between amateur writers and professional journalists becomes increasingly blurred by blogs with journalistic ambitions (run by journalists as well as by ‘ordinary people’).

¹³⁹ Arash Sigarchi, ibid., p. 49f

¹⁴⁰ „Rebellen im Netz“, Der Spiegel v. 20.11.2006

¹⁴¹ Nasreen Alavi: „We are Iran“ (2005)

¹⁴² Der Spiegel, ibid.; Campaign for the release of Kareem: www.freekareem.org (19.01.2007)

¹⁴³ RSF, Handbook for Bloggers, p. 52f. http://freenepal.blogspot.com/ (last updated in September 2005)

¹⁴⁴ Thompson (2003)

¹⁴⁵ Möller (2005 : 132). Salam Pax’ blog „Dear Raed“ is hosted by Blogger.com and had in peak times up to 3 million page views per day (ibid.)

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4.3. RISKS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CAMPAIGNS FOR BLOGGING

In totalitarian countries, bloggers who are critical of the current regime are vitally threatened by prosecution and - as shown by the examples depicted above - arrest and long lasting imprisonment. In order to be able to blog safely and not to put themselves in jeopardy, they have to rely on precautionary measures and so-called circumvention technologies. RSF’s Handbook for Bloggers gives detailed advice on how to choose and apply such technologies. According to the book,

“There are numerous projects to develop technologies that would enable citizens and civil society networks to secure themselves against, or work around, Internet censorship and surveillance. […] In general, circumvention technologies work by routing a user’s request from a country that implemented filtering through an intermediary machine that is not blocked by the filtering regime. […] Some of these technologies are developed by private companies, others by ad-hoc groups of hackers and activists. They range from small, simple scripts and programs to highly-developed peer-to-peer network protocols.” 146

The author gives detailed advice on which methods are suitable for what purposes and the specific needs of the user, but also points to the risk of potential penalties that users could face if they are caught using circumvention technologies - according to the regime and legislation of the country of concern. Amnesty International has launched a campaign against “Internet repression” in which they call for signing a pledge against any censorship measures, “to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet”. 147

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a legal guide for bloggers and advises bloggers who want to stay anonymous to use pseudonyms, anonymizing technologies etc. to protect themselves from unwanted backlashes of the content they publish. ¹⁴⁸ EFF has also started a campaign for Bloggers’ Rights, which comprises the right to free speech, the right to publish political content, the right to stay anonymous and the recognition of bloggers as journalists (which would entitle them to certain rights only journalist are eligible for, at least in democracies such as the U.S.). Some of the campaign banners are shown below:

¹⁴⁶ Nart Villeneuve: „Technical Ways To Get Round Censorship“; RSF, Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (2005)

¹⁴⁷ Amnesty International: Irrepressible Campaign, http://irrepressible.info/ (20.02.2007)

¹⁴⁸ Electronic Frontier Foundation: Legal Guide for Bloggers; http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg (only valid for the United States); “How to Blog Safely”: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/blog-anonymously.php (20.01.2007)

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4.4. DROWNED IN BANALITY? COMMERCIALIZATION AND INSTRUMENTALIZATION

After all these considerations about the political relevance that blogging can have, I want to shortly mention some other aspects of blogging, namely that the majority of blogs deals with apolitical, private subjects which might lead the average reader to ask: “Who’s interested in all these millions and millions of personal expressions of people whom I don’t know?” Or, in Garry Thompsons’ words: “What is all this crap?”. ¹⁴⁹ The right to freedom of speech after all does not necessarily mean that all speech uttered is of relevance to people beyond a small audience or “target group”. The exponentially rising number of millions of blogs leads to a “haystack-effect”an overwhelming mass of information in which the reader has to - with the help of blog directories and blog search engines such as Technorati - solve the difficult task of separating the wheat from the chaff, of finding the needle in the haystack, i.e. information that might be relevant to him. There is a growing number of tools aiming at enabling the user to get a grip on the mass of blogs, and, in addition to that, one might ask oneself whoever finds the time to sort, read and comment several blogs regularly. 150

Other aspects that spoil the ideal notion of blogging is the increasing commercialization and instrumentalization of blogs. Not only do many bloggers earn some additional revenues by placing advertising banners on their blogs, companies have also discovered blogs as a trendy

¹⁴⁹ Thompson (2003); Or, as a blogger’s quote on Technorati.com says: „55 million blogs - some of them have to be good”; http://www.technorati.com/ (20.01.2007)

¹⁵⁰ cp. Christian Stöcker: Die Zeit der Kopfjäger; Der Spiegel, 01.08.2007

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phenonemon and have started using them as a kind of marketing tool to get in touch with their customers. ¹⁵¹ Blogs also get increasingly harrassed by blog-spamming - so-called ‘splogging’spam-robots flood blogs with masses of automatically generated comments and even create fake blogs, that have to be recognized by the reader. 152

Outlooks on the future potential of blogging might be hard to pin down - they range from predictions of blogs serving as a means to initiate grassroots revolutions that could eventually overturn repressive governments, to a prognosis of further banalization, commercialization and instrumentalization of the blogosphere as a mass phenomenon that leads to a loss of authenticity and could eventually slip into insignificance - with a minority of bloggers (commercially) successful and a decline of the total number of blogs after it has reached a peak. ¹⁵³ However, these predictions do not necessarily exclude each other, and the importance of blogs for politically suppressed people in countries like China and Iran shall not be underestimated for the time being - blogging as an easy-to-handle, user-friendly publishing tool has led to the undermining of information monopolies of totalitarian governments and a “leakage” in their consistent information policy presented to the outside world.

¹⁵¹ cp. Stöcker, ibid.

¹⁵² cp. for example Elinor Mills: „Spam in Blogs: ‘Splog’ nimmt Überhand“; ZDNet v. 27.10.2005; http://www.zdnet.de/itmanager/tech/0,39023442,39137709,00.htm (20.01.2007)

¹⁵³ cp. for example „The future of blogging“ - CNET News.com, 05.04.2005; http://news.com.com/The+future+of+blogging/2030-1069_3-5654288.html (20.01.2007)

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5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION PART 1

The Internet was initially, if not always deliberately, created as a communication medium that enables borderless communication regardless of frontiers, political opinions or legislation. Its origins in the United States placed the beginnings of the network into a liberal context, as well as the scientific culture and the constitutional protection of freedom of speech is concerned. The early years of the Internet have evoked the vision of a medium of totally free expression, unhindered and regulated by national interests. The Internet was designed to have the potential of a democratizing medium that can give a voice to the unheard, silent majority whose opinions cannot pass the gatekeepers of the conventional media.

The technological, social and political development of the Internet since then has shown that it is not uncontrollable by political powers, not resisting legal regulation or immune against technological measures of content control and censorship that are used to enforce legislation or political and economical interests. Visions of citizen empowerment have accompanied the emergence of a new medium in media theory throughout the 20 ^th century. The same applied to the Internet when it became popular in the 1990s. In order to be able to assess the potential of the Internet as a ‘democratizing’ medium, or, more precisely, as a medium with a strengthening effect on existing democracies as well as a democratizing effect on authoritarian systems, one must consider pivotal concepts of the public sphere and its relevance for the foundations of a democratic society. Supposing that the Internet creates a new virtual public sphere or extends the existing public sphere, the characteristics of this new public sphere resp. its effects and repercussions on the ‘realworld’ public sphere must be investigated. It can be stated that the Internet has empowered local and international social movements such as grassroots movements, because as a communication tool it perfectly suits the needs of a social network and is an effective means to mobilize protest campaigns. A negative aspect is that power structures of the ‘offline world are also effective on the Internet, e.g. power relations among discussion participants, or economic power structures.

The entitlement to Freedom of Speech is a crucial presupposition for any democratic system, for the practice of public discourse and the forming of a public opinion not to be dominated by any suppressive political or religious ideology. The possibility to exert Internet censorship by application of a variety of technological methods and surveillance measures must therefore be considered as well as the intentions of governments to censor Internet content. User-generated content, for example in blogs, can play a crucial role for the expression of dissident opinions in authoritarian and totalitarian states, and ‘Technologies of Freedom’ make it possible to circumvent technological censorship measures. The effect of ‘political blogging’ has yet to be evaluated, as blogging has only in recent years become a mass phenonemon. It can be stated though, that without the Internet as a communication infrastructure and without user-friendly tools such as blogging services, the expression of opinions about all kinds of topics online and their accessibility on a global scale would never have become possible. Internet communication

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can undermine the information monopoly of totalitarian governments, their claim on information control and thus their sovereignty. A total sealing-off of a unison national public sphere in the media as in times of the Eastern Bloc is no longer possible. That oppositional bloggers are able to pose a serious threat to authoritarian regimes is reflected in the numbers of “cyberdissidents” who have been imprisoned for publishing dissent opinions in their blogs.

Regarding the Internet history, a development from a seemingly unlimited freedom of expression in the pioneer years towards more legal content control and control based on economical interests, due to the increasing commercialization of the Net, can be stated. On the other hand, the increasing worldwide Internet penetration gives access to a growing percentage of the world population, and new user-friendly technologies have made self-publishing on the Net much more easier and manageable for users without technical expertise. A concluding assessment regarding the current situation or a prediction if “the forces of freedom” or “the forces of control” will prevail, seems to be impossible, at least it is not possible within the scope of this thesis, as an extensive variety of complex factors have to be taken into account. A growing amount of comprehensive Internet research on different subject areas connected to “Free Speech and the Internet” has, over a period of more than 15 years, pointed to one as well as to the other direction, predicting either a greater exertion of control or a greater possibility of freedom of expression.

Therefore, the second part of the thesis will narrow down the problem to a national context, namely the Internet in Russia. The substructures of the problem field as layed out in the first part will prepare the grounds for a comprehensible understanding of the subject matter if applied to the Russian context. In the current political situation, Russia is difficult to categorize as a democratic country or an authoritarian regime. Many media and political experts see the current Russian government of President Putin as a democratic-authoritarian hybrid which comprises elements of both political systems. Some even see clear evidence that Russia is moving towards an authoritarian regime, suffering a backlash into totalitarian times. What kind of role the Internet can play in the Russian media landscape, its function for political communication, news production and its cultural specifics will be explored in the next part.

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PART 2 - THE INTERNET IN RUSSIA

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Preliminary Remark

There are often different versions of transcriptions of Russian names - depending on whether it is a German or an English transcription - but even within them, there can be several versions. For the references, I have adopted the names as they were given in the sources, to assure that they are findable. However, for the English text I have adopted an English transcription (usually the most common I found) and tried to use it consistently. Therefore, the transcription of the names in the text can differ from the transcriptions according to the German sources in the footnotes.

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1. THE RUSSIAN INTERNET - HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT, USER STRUCTURE

1.1. INTRODUCTION

The top-level domain “.ru” was registered on March 17, 1994, the day that can be considered as the “date of birth” of the Russian Internet (RuNet) . ¹⁵⁴ Today, “RuNet” is the common abbreviation for the Russian Internet. However, the history of the Russian Internet began much earlier. The technological fundament was partly created in and imported from the United States, but the Russian Internet soon developed a section culturally different from the Western Internet. Of course the RuNet is not limited to the Russian territory, but its user community is determined by language. ¹⁵⁵ The RuNet in its form existing since 1994 could, to simplify matters, be defined as the sum of all websites that are registered under the “.ru”-domain, created by Russians for Russians in Russian language. Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski note that there are different ways in which the RuNet can be defined regarding technology, language or user structure. ¹⁵⁶ In matters of content, it comprises all websites and communication flows in Russian language, which also includes weblogs in Russian language under foreign domains. Technically, URL’s under the .ru-domain belong to the RuNet, but there are of course also .org and .com-domains. RuNet users can be all users living in the Russian Federation and, additionally, all Russian speaking users living abroad, as there is a great Russian Diaspora which goes online. However, “a strict definition of ‘The Russian Internet’ may not be obtained and is even not necessarily needed”. 157

The most distinctive features are culturally generated. The websites registered under the .rudomain are for the greatest part in Cyrillic script and in Russian, which creates an unsurmountable language barrier for Internet users without knowledge of Russian. Inside the Russian online community, specific national and cultural characteristics have been established and developed, which will be described in detail in Chapter 3. One of the significant user habits is for example, that the most popular search engine on RuNet is not Google but the Russian portals Yandex and Rambler, ¹⁵⁸ meaning that Google failed to extend its market leadership into the Russian Internet sphere. The regulation of the RuNet underlies the government of the Russian Federation and Russian self-regulation organizations.

¹⁵⁴ Eugene Gorny (2000): Chronology of the Russian Internet 1990 - 1999

¹⁵⁵ Here it is interesting to note, that there is a distinction between the Russian words “russkij” and “rossiskij” - the first means “Russian” in terms of language and culture, the second “Russian” in terms of territory. (Henrike Schmidt: Anmerkungen zur Übersetzung von Gornys “Chronology of the Russian Internet“).

¹⁵⁶ cp. Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2006)

¹⁵⁷ ibid.

¹⁵⁸ Bowles (2006 : 25); cp. also Zhitnyuk (2004)

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1.2. TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Due to political and economic reasons, there was a technological gap of 10 - 20 years regarding the development of information technologies between the United States and the Soviet Union until the 1980’s. ¹⁵⁹ The Transatlantic Allies had opposed an Import-Embargo for technology on all countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact in 1949 (the so-called Cocom-Initiative), which may account as one of the causes for Russia’s lag. ¹⁶⁰ At the same time when the fundaments for the ARPA-Net were layed in the US in the 1960’s and 70’s, the Soviet Union pursued a rather conservative policy regarding the development of personal computers. Although the basis of the Internet was developed in the U.S. and technology knowledge was transferred to Russia after the dissolution of the USSR, a part of the RuNet’s predecessor was created in the Soviet Union. In the 1980’s, scientists at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy founded together with other scientists the cooperative ‘Demos’, which developed the computer-network “Relcom” (Reliable Communication), based on the UUCP-protocol ¹⁶¹ and the Russian version of the operating system UNIX. ¹⁶² The network was at that time mainly used by scientists for scientific purposes, who communicated via e-mail and the Usenet and Fidonet Bulletin Board Systems. In 1990, the top-level-domain “.su” was registered and in the same year the first international datatransfer took place. ¹⁶³ During the August Putsch in 1991, Relcom enabled the only electronic communication by circumventing the ban of all other media and telecommunication, providing the outside world with information about the current political events in Russia. ¹⁶⁴ According to Eugene Gorny “one can speak of a territorially based Russian Internet since 1991 when communication flows within the country for the first time surpassed those between Russia and other countries.” ¹⁶⁵ In 1992 Relcom was officially registered in the pan-European computer- and provider-network Eunet and also in the beginning of the 90’s, Relcom made the transition to the TCP/IP-protocol, enabling the use of the Hypertext-Transfer-Protocol (http) and “world-wide-web”-user interfaces which, together with the invention of Windows 95, paved the way for a broader circle of users. 166

Two important initiatives to foster the development of the Russian Internet were supported by Americans: GlasNet (the ‘Glasnost-Network’), financed by the American ‘Association for Progressive Communications’ (APO), and the Open Society Foundation of George Soros. The APO was an alternative computer network for Non-Governmental Organisations and gave

¹⁵⁹ Bruchhaus (2001 : 21)

¹⁶⁰ cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2005), p.1

¹⁶¹ Unix to Unix CoPy - UNIX-based network protocol, used mainly for e-mail exchange via telephone connections

¹⁶² It was called “UNAS”, an ironical wordplay meaning “ours”, wheras UNIX can be read in Russian as “theirs”. (Brunmeier 2005, p.36, ref. to Maslov / Zhurnal.ru)

¹⁶³ Brunmeier (2005 : 37); Gorny: Chronology of the Russian Internet

¹⁶⁴ Trautmann (2002 : 352), ref. to Zasurskij

¹⁶⁵ Quotation from Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2006 : 126), ref. to Gorny (2000)

¹⁶⁶ The “Word Wide Web” was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, and became widely used by the general public in Western countries since 1995 (see Part 1, Ch. 1).

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priority to provide non-profit activist groups with Internet connections. ¹⁶⁷ The Soros-Foundation supported and financed the development of a majority of Internet connections and -centres for research institutions and universities between 1992 and 2001. ¹⁶⁸ The geography of the Russian Internet at that time was therefore sometimes referred to as the “Soros-Geography”, with some cities fully connected, surrounded by a ‘network desert’. ¹⁶⁹ Glasnet and Relcom later became two of the leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Russia. ¹⁷⁰ The influence of American organisations, information technology and knowledge was critized by Russian scientists and intellectuals, who interpreted it as a strategy to secure advantageous economic and geopolitical positions. ¹⁷¹ There was a “profound suspicion of, and frequently hostility to, the Atlanticist hegemony that seemed to be symbolized by the online dominance of English. The World Wide Web was “…the ultimate act of intellectual colonialism,” complained the head of GlasNet, Anatolij Voronov in 1996.” 172

The dominance of the English language on the worldwide Internet remained, but at the same time, the Russian Internet pioneers began to develop a network of their own, creating a part of the Internet which was more than a “mere outpost of American technology”. ¹⁷³ The cyrillic encoding at that time was chaotic, with a multitude of platforms and standards, creating sometimes unwanted effects, jokes and notorious new words. ¹⁷⁴ The Microsoft standard for cyrillic encoding came with Windows 95, which made the construction of websites in cyrillic easier without the formerly necessary translation. ¹⁷⁵ This may sound contradictionary, because Microsoft is the American software giant, however, its user-oriented software helped to make he RuNet accessible on a large scale.

In 1996, the ‘Rambler’ search engine was launched, followed by its rating system “Rambler’s Top 100”. In 1997, the search engine Yandex followed, making it “possible to carry out a search in the Russian network with complete allowance made for the morphology of the Russian language.” ¹⁷⁶ Today, Yandex and Rambler are the most commonly used RuNet portals for searching, mailing and many other features. Rambler’s Top 100 became the most popular tool for the rating of RuNet sites. ¹⁷⁷ In 1998, the RuNet had approximately 1.2 million users, ¹⁷⁸ in 2004 the number had risen to 13.2 millions. 179

¹⁶⁷ Brunmeier (2005 : 39ff)

¹⁶⁸ Bruchhaus (2001 : 30f); Schmidt / Teubener (2005), p. 1

¹⁶⁹ Bruchhaus (2001 : 28); Brunmeier, l.c.; Schneider / Allan: Interview with Olia Lialina, Telepolis v. 21.02.2000; http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5818/1.html

¹⁷⁰ Bruchhaus (2001 : 23)

¹⁷¹ Schmidt / Teubener (2005), p. 2

¹⁷² Bowles (2006 : 30); Voronov as cited by Bowles.

¹⁷³ Bowles, ibid., p. 21

¹⁷⁴ Schneider / Allan: Interview with Olia Lialina, Telepolis (2000)

¹⁷⁵ Bowles (2006), l.c.

¹⁷⁶ Gorny (2000): Chronology of the Russian Internet 1990 - 1999

¹⁷⁷ Rambler: http://top100.rambler.ru/top100/ (21.10.2006)

¹⁷⁸ Gorny, ibid., ref. to a research of the International Data Corporation (IDC)

¹⁷⁹ Zhitnyuk (2004), ref. to a ROMIR survey

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1.3. INFRASTRUCTURE AND HINDRANCES FOR DEVELOPMENT

Until the late 90`s, the development of the Russian Internet proceeded quite undisturbed by any state regulation or support - partly because there were more urgent problems to be solved after the dissolution of the Sowjet Union, partly because the government did not assign any importance to this new medium and partly because of technological ignorance and insufficient legislation. ¹⁸⁰ In terms of infrastructure, the greatest hindrances for development were and are the geographical dimensions of the country and the lack of basic technical preconditions: there is still not a complete country-wide landline telephone network which reaches remote areas and the laying of cables capable to transfer Internet traffic over the whole area of the Russian Federation seems to be an unsolvable task. ¹⁸¹ An Internet conference report of 2002 states that, “these are enormous problems in Russia - a nation that comprises over one-eighth of the earth’s landmass, suffers from sporadic blackouts, and whose current sparsely laid analog phone lines cannot handle a fraction of the necessary dial-up traffic that a typical online community would demand.“ 182

There are two lines of digital divide in Russia - one between the young and the old generation and one between rural and urban population. ¹⁸³ Inequalities in the possibility to Internet access show that until recently it was the privilege of urban, well-educated, well-off people. But not only technical, also social and cultural factors are involved. Particularly elder people and people in rural areas often lack interest because they cannot appreciate the advantages this new medium could bring them, they only have insufficient or distorted knowledge about it or they simply have more existential needs on their list of priorities. Thus, it is not only necessary to build a functioning technical infrastructure and provide the technological equipment, but also to awake interest and educate people in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). ¹⁸⁴ Another problem is the lack of financial means of many Russians not being able to buy a personal computer, as the cost would amount to twice or more of the average monthly income. ¹⁸⁵ The PC-‘density’ in Russia’s private households is relatively low, compared to other industrialized nations, although the living standard is rising, enabling a growing number of Russians to get connected. But Russia still suffers a lag on its way to the information society and large parts of the population earn their living by means of agricultural or industrial labour, indicating that Russia is yet positioned in the stage of an industrial economy, not a postindustrial service economy. 186

¹⁸⁰ cp. Brunmeier (2005 : 74); cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2006b)

¹⁸¹ Bruchhaus (2001 : 26); IREX Media Sustainability Index 2005, p. 188

¹⁸² Mellnick (2002): Russia in the Internet Age: Balancing Freedom and Regulation; Conference Report

¹⁸³ cp. Schmidt (2003b); Brunmeier (2005 : 77)

¹⁸⁴ cp. Bowles (2006)

¹⁸⁵ At an average monthly salary of 400 Dollars (according to Bofit, www.bof.fi/bofit/fin/4ruec/index.stm) and price for a personal computer of approx. 500 Dollars. According to the Public Opinion Foundationn (FOM) Poll “The Internet in Russia” Nr. 16 / 2006, the majority of Russians have an income between 50-200 Dollars; cp. also Brunmeier (2005 : 75)

¹⁸⁶ The term „post-industrial society“ was coined by Daniel Bell; cp. Webster (1995), p. 30ff

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In 2002, the government started the program “Electronic Russia” (e-Russia), which will run until 2010 and supports the development of the Internet infrastructure financially, but also promotes the development of social partnerships in the field of knowledge exchange and education. Among the programs goals are the improvement of public Internet access and access in schools and universities, computer education for citizens and teachers, law enforcement and information security, the provision of a user environment for communication between citizens and government authorities, and support and development of online information ressources like digital libraries and archives. 187

1.4. USER STRUCTURE

In the early years, the Internet users mainly consisted of scientists and intellectuals, characterized by a higher level of education than the average population, a strong interest for the exchange of political and cultural themes and creative ideas, and often equipped with above-average IT-knowledge. Many of these Internet-pioneers later became very important persons in Internet business, PR and policy. One significant attribute of the Russian Internet community is that a considerable amount, about one third of the users lives abroad. ¹⁸⁸ They use the RuNet to stay in contact with their national community and to discuss current political and cultural topics or personal problems in their national language. The use of the blogging service “LiveJournal” is very popular among them. Since the beginning of the new millenium, user numbers rose exponentially, and the Internet became a more common means of communication and a mass medium in Russia. ¹⁸⁹ In the past, as in most ‘internet-developingcountries’ in the early stage, the majority of users was male, young and well-educated. This has changed in recent years, with women catching up to about 45% of the users. Still, there is a dominance of young, well-off, educated users, and most of the users lives in the country’s metropoles such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, but this also begins to change, with the percentage of users in the other regions rising. The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Russia publishes an Internet user survey four times a year, which documents the change in the user structure of the Russian Federation. ¹⁹⁰ The Internet poll of summer 2006 gives the following key data:

¹⁸⁷ Electronaya Rossiya, www.russia-gateway.ru; cp. presentation Yuri Hohlov (2005)

¹⁸⁸ In 2003, the number was 35% (Schmidt, 2003b). Now the number has decreased in relation to the RuNet users in the Russian Federation. The Foreign Ministry estimates that about 30 million Russians live abroad (St. Petersburg Times, 27.10.2006, p.2); According to Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2006), “It is difficult to obtain consistent data about the Internet usage of the Russian-speaking population in the different foreign countries”. According to “Spylog” (www.spylog.ru), in 2005 58% of RuNet site visitors were residents of Russia, whereas the Russians living in Diaspora are allocated in the United States, Israel, Germany and states that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union.

¹⁸⁹ cp. Bowles (2006)

¹⁹⁰ Public Opinion Foundation (FOM): Poll “The Internet in Russia”, 16 ^th release, Summer 2006

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- 23 % of the Russian population use the Internet ¹⁹¹ (= 26 million people)

- about one third of them (9 million) uses it daily

- in Moscow 52% of the population use the Internet, in the other regions of Russia respectively between 17% and 25%

- 57% go online at home, 40% at their workplace

- 55% of the users are male, 45% female

- 52% are between 18-24 years old, 36% between 25-34 and 3% are over 55

- 50% of users have a higher education and only 2% a primary education

- 48% have an monthly income of 200$ or more, 8% have 50$ or less

- approx. 2% of the non-users plan to use the Internet in the next year (compared to 4% in the election year 2004), most of them live in Moscow.

According to an expert in the field of Internet development, the prospects for the future development look more optimistic: In 2003 the number of users was 12%, now it is over 20%, which is quite a big growth. Therefore it seems realistic that a percentage of 60% Internet users among the population can be reached during the next 5-7 years, which means the situation would be simular to many European countries today. ¹⁹² The question of the ‘critical mass’ of users is crucial for the importance and influence of the Internet on public opinion.

2. THE SITUATION OF THE ‘TRADITIONAL’ MEDIA UNDER PRESIDENT PUTIN

2.1. LAWS, POWER, OWNERSHIP

In order to estimate the importance of the Internet for the Russian media landscape, it is necessary first to have a look at the situation of the ‘traditional’ media such as the press, television and broadcasting first. Because I had only sources in English or German at my disposal, the description of the situation tends to be more biased than if I would have been able to use native Russian sources, which could provide a secondary point of view. The whole situation concerning ownership is a very complex one, and can be sketched here only briefly.

In the Soviet Union, the media were almost totally controlled by the ruling Communist Party which created a uniform information space (einheitlicher Informationsraum), a public sphere as an integrated whole without dissonances. ¹⁹³ In consequence of Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost and Perestroika, this unity opened up, allowing more freedom, and the transformation of the strictly state-controlled socialistic media system began already before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The law „about the press and other means of mass information”, which

¹⁹¹ „Internet user“ is in the poll defined as somebody who has been on the Net during the last 6 months.

¹⁹² Interview with Dr. Alexander Bikkulov, E-Development Partnership in the North-West of Russia (PRIOR NW), 20.10.2006

¹⁹³ Cp.. Bruchhaus (2001 : 37)

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prohibited censorship and allowed the free foundation of newspapers, TV- and broadcasting channels, was passed in 1990. The central censorship authority ‚Glavlit’ was dissolved in 1991, and in 1992 the “law on the mass media” came into force, which regulates all further details about the obtainment of information. ¹⁹⁴ The Russian constitution from 1993 guarantees the freedom of speech, press and information in article 29, which is only limited by the law on state secret. ¹⁹⁵ The press law was followed by a wave of press start-ups, a phase of media privatization and a boom of independent media. Big media empires emerged through an ongoing concentration process in favour of the so-called oligarchs, entrepreneurs and media tycoons with close relationships to the Kremlin, and shareholder relations and financing sources became intransparent, assumedly using illegally gained money. ¹⁹⁶ Since the end of the 90’s and especially since the beginning of Putin’s presidency in 2000, there is again a trend towards more governmental control, appropriation and state ownership of the media economy. ¹⁹⁷ Putin has cut down the power of oligarchs in recent years, not only in media business.

Television

The largest national TV-channels are now owned by the government or by governmentassociated companies: Rossija (RTR) is to 100% state-owned, Pervyj Kanal (Channel One, the former ORT) and NTV belong to companies with more that 50% government shares resp. controlling stakes. ¹⁹⁸ These companies are officially private companies, but their management exerts influence on the programming. “Approximately two-thirds of the 2,500 television stations in the country were completely or partially owned by the federal and local governments, and the government indirectly influenced private broadcasting companies through partial ownership of such commercial structures as Gazprom and Eurofinance Bank, which in turn owned controlling or large stakes of media companies.” 199

The main reason for measures against disagreeable players in the field and their editorial policy was the war in Chechenia, but also the catastrophe of the submarine “Kursk” and the hostagetakings in the Nord-Ost Theatre in Moscow 2002 and in Beslan in September 2004 accounted for this. ²⁰⁰ The most spectular case of state invention was the takeover of the TV-Channel NTV by the state-owned energy company Gazprom in 2001. NTV belonged to the media empire

¹⁹⁴ Deppe (2000); Trautmann (2002 : 123f)

¹⁹⁵ The Constitution of Russia in English: The President of Russia, Official Web Portal; “Rights and Freedoms of Man and Citizen”, Article 17 ff.; http://www.president.kremlin.ru/eng/articles/ConstEng2.shtml (20.11.2006); The state secret is subject to broad interpretation. It therefore holds the risk of misuse for information concealment. Cp. Otte (2002 : 17) and Simonov (2001).

¹⁹⁶ Netstudien.de: Russlands Oligarchen. Wladimir Gussinski (Stand: 01.02.2006); http://www.netstudien.de/Russland/gussinski.htm (26.01.2007)

¹⁹⁷ Gladkov (2003); Siegl (2005); Ruschin (2005)

¹⁹⁸ Gladkov (2003) and Russlandanalysen 7 / 2003, p. 7; Pervyj Kanal (Channel One) was called ORT (Obshchestvennoye Rossiskoye Televideniye) from mid-1990s until 2001. According to a recent government publication, the Russian government controls 51% of its shares.

¹⁹⁹ U.S. Department of State: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Russia - 2005

²⁰⁰ Kertman: ‘Freedom of Speech’, Report, Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), 14.06.2000

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“Media-Most”, founded by Vladimir Gusinsky. According to media observers, NTV was the last independent national TV channel in Russia (the last independent non-major channel, REN-TV, changed ownership in 2005). This is especially important, as Television is still regarded as the leading medium in Russia, and NTV, Rossija and Pervyj Kanal cover most of the Russian Federation and achieve the highest viewer rates countrywide. ²⁰¹ After being arrested, Gusinsky had to sell his shares of Media-Most to Gazprom, he lives now in exile in Israel. ²⁰² Following the takeover, many critical NTV-journalists were dismissed.

A similar development happened to the media empire of oligarch Boris Beresovsky, a strong supporter of Putin in his first election. After encouraging government-critical media coverage, he ‘fell in disgrace’ and had to give up control over the national TV channel ORT. He sold off most of his shares in media business and since leaving Russia he financially supports oppositional forces from his exile in Britain. Gusinsky and Beresowski later also became active in supporting Russian online news media.

Press

Concerning the print media, there is more owner- and opinion plurality, but a similar development can be observed, although the majority of the print media is still privately owned. ²⁰³ After a boom of the press in the era of Glasnost, it fell victim to an economic crisis. Due to rising production costs, many newspapers went bankrupt, became dependent on state subsidies, or were bought by government-associated companies. ²⁰⁴ Between 1992 and 1999 the print run decreased by 79%, and the financial crisis in Russia in 1998 only added up to this development. ²⁰⁵ Take-overs hit also one of the largest national newspapers: In 2005, Gazprom bought the daily Izvestia. A report on Human Rights states that “in late 2005, after a change of personnel at Izvestiya, the newspaper's editorial staff was reportedly told on several occasions to be careful not to provoke Kremlin authorities.” ²⁰⁶ The latest case in 2006 was the takeover of the publishing house ‘Komersant’ and the liberal newspaper of the same name, formerly belonging to the Beresovsky-empire, by an entrepreneur close to the Kremlin. ²⁰⁷ The only nationwide newspaper which is considered to be absolutely independent of ‘political money’ is the “Novaya Gazeta”, which gained a sad reputation after one of its journalists was assassinated in Oktober 2006. 208

²⁰¹ Cp. Russlandanalysen Nr. 58 / 2005, Gladkov (2003) and Brunmeier (2005); ORT covers 98% of the Russian population, RTR 96% and NTV 75%; 98% of the Russian people have access to TV (Ruschin 2005).

²⁰² There are different versions how this took place, one is that he was forced to sign a contract while being arrested. see: Netstudien.de: Russlands Oligarchen. http://www.netstudien.de/Russland/gussinski.htm; (26.01.2007)

²⁰³ cp. Brunmeier (2005 : 32); for more details on changes in press ownership, see

http://zhezhe.wordpress.com/russian-media/ (26.01.2007); Trautmann remarks that the terms “private” or “state”-owned are too simplyfying to describe the Russian situation, and that they cannot be applied because the relations between state and economy are more complicated. (p. 154f). However, I will, too keep it simple, stick to these terms.

²⁰⁴ Brunmeier, ibid.

²⁰⁵ Otte (2002); Schneider / Allan: Interview mit Olia Lialina, Telepolis 21.02.2000;

²⁰⁶ U.S. Department of State: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Russia - 2005

²⁰⁷ Reporter ohne Grenzen, Pressemeldung vom 06.10.2006

²⁰⁸ Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Moscow on Oct. 7, 2006

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Brunmeier remarks that a pluralistic press landscape exists only in Russia’s metropoles, whereas in the regions, only 3% of the population reads national newspapers. ²⁰⁹ The regional press is often financially dependent on local authorities and politicians, which thereby have a means to put them under pressure, ²¹⁰ although a few courageous publications can be observed, which fight for press freedom on the local level. The St. Petersburg Times remarks in 2006, that “…local journalists are adressing issues that national television channels stopped covering long ago, and which appear rarely in the national press.” 211

Radio Broadcasting

The politically and economically most independent media sector in Russia remains radio broadcasting, although the regulations for licensing were tightened recently. The state-run radio stations had a technical advantage in the past, but private stations are catching up and gain a growing part of the audience. 212

Echo Moskvy is a broadcast station founded 1990 in the tradition of Glasnost and renowned for its critical political reporting. It belonged to Media Most until 2001, and is now consequently owned by Gazprom. But the question of ownership does not always and coercively lead to an adaptation of the editorial policy, as the Echo Moskvy staff shows: “Employees continued to exercise program control at the radio station […], although it is owned in part by Gazprom. The station maintained an independent editorial position, offering political figures across the entire political spectrum the opportunity to air their views and cover issues skirted by other electronic media.” ²¹³ Brunmeier states, that a change of the editorial line can be expected in the future and that the program has already shifted towards a larger proportion of entertainment. ²¹⁴ However, since the Soviet era, radio broadcasting at large has lost part of its influence to the now leading medium Television. 215

2.2. INDIRECT CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP

The influence of ownership on the editorial policy of TV channels and newspapers is sometimes exercised quite directly, for instance by dismissing uncooperative editors, or more indirectly - a common method to put media enterprises under pressure is prosecution by the tax authorities, sometimes under false pretenses, and the imposition of high fines which can endanger or destroy the economical existence of small media enterprises. Another means is the withdrawal of governmental advertising orders. ²¹⁶ Besides economical pressure, the content itself is

²⁰⁹ Brunmeier (2005 : 32f)

²¹⁰ ibid.

²¹¹ Eismont, Hewitt (2006)

²¹² Brunmeier (2005 : 27f)

²¹³ U.S. Department of State: l.c.

²¹⁴ Brunmeier (20005 : 30) ref. to Holm

²¹⁵ cp. Kratasjuk (2006), Otte (2002); Heckmann u.a. (2005): Interview with Nikolai Rudenski, Grani.ru

²¹⁶ Simonov (2001); Ruschin (2005); Reporters without Borders: Annual Report 2006

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influenced regarding the bias and proportion: for example “…critics contend that Channel One airs a disproportionate amount of stories focusing on positive aspects of official government policy, while largely neglecting certain controversial topics such as war in Chechnya or social problems.” ²¹⁷ A Human rights report states that “Journalists and news anchors of Rossiya and First Channel [Channel One] reported receiving "guidelines" from the management prepared by the Presidential Administration, indicating which politicians they should support and which they should criticize.” ²¹⁸ Internal censorship works by administrative pressure from higher authorities or self-censorship of journalists, who try to avoid creating ‘difficulties’ by addressing certain delicate topics. ²¹⁹ „Today’s Russian journalists are too often compelled to follow the tough policy of the editor and the elite he is backing up.“ ²²⁰ A number of journalist were accused of libel or defamation in recent years, a practice which evokes the conjecture of a misuse of legal measures. ²²¹ The practice of ‚unwritten rules’ and the abuse of political, legal and economical power in favour of a pro-government media coverage has led to the situation that, although Russia’s constitution and legislation regarding media is very liberal and guarantees freedom of speech in accordance with international human-rights standards, the actual practice of freedom of press, speech and information is restricted to a great extent. ²²² The restriction of governmentcritical coverage influences public opinion, and therefore also the outcomes of elections: “During the election campaigns [2004] the most influental broadcasting channels gave clear preferences to offical candidates, contrary to the legislation.” ²²³ The media are not able to carry out the role of the „fourth estate“ of democracy, which has the task of critically monitoring and controlling the government (watchdog function), thereby giving an informed public the opportunity to decide impartially. But not only indirect censorship and different methods of pressure account for the situation, the journalists themselves play a role too, according to Trautmann: a majority of journalists is guided by commercial interests rather than by principles of neutral and investigative journalism, and serve as henchmen for reporting by order of the government or other political forces, which earns their livelihood. A few years of Glasnost could not entirely break the tradition of self-censorship in the Russian media, too few journalists realize their responsibility as serving the “fourth estate” and a journalism which is guided by political and financial interests has destroyed the trust of the citizens in the media. 224

²¹⁷ Wikipedia entry “Channel One” (Russia), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_%28Russia%29 (as of 21.01.2007)

²¹⁸ U.S. Department of State - l.c.

²¹⁹ cp. Simonov, ibid.

²²⁰ Ruschin (2005)

²²¹ ZheZhe [dot] us: Russian Media. http://zhezhe.wordpress.com/russian-media/ (20.12.2006)

²²² IREX Media Sustainability Index 2005; Siegl (2005); Otte (2002)

²²³ Ruschin (2005); cp. Interview Iwanow. On the interpretation of the electoral law see Gladkov (2003)

²²⁴ Cp. Trautmann (2002), p. 455 ff. “Trotz seiner Verdienste und Bedeutung hat die Glasnost-Phase eine ganze Generation von Journalisten geschaffen, die kaum geeignet erscheint, die „vierte Gewalt“ einer Demokratie zu konstituieren, weil sie ihren Platz und ihre Rolle als Vermittler zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft nicht wahrnimmt.“

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2.3. FREEDOM OF SPEECH? POPULATION POLLS

The case of Media Most / NTV gave reason to a debate about the condition of freedom of speech in Russia. The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) conducted several population and expert polls about the subject in the years 2000, ²²⁵ 2001 and 2002, exploring opinions about the situation of free speech in the country and the meaning of censorship. A poll from June 2000 about freedom of spech stated that 41% of the population believed that the authorities intended to restrict free speech and 50% felt negative about possible restrictions. ²²⁶ 79% of the experts held the opinion that the media are pro-government-oriented. ²²⁷ According to a population poll from November 2000, 40% held the opinion „that journalists often hold back or filter facts for money“ and 45% believed that journalists are unobjective. At the same time, 49% stated that the Russian media needs censorship. ²²⁸ This sounds astonishing and is only comprehensible after knowing that there are different notions about what the word ‘censorship’ means, which also differ from the understanding in the West. In 2001, 62% of the population understood censorship as “supervision of information”. ²²⁹ Some people think it is necessary to have ethical standards for the mass media to restrict depictions of pornography, violence etc. and call this kind of state control censorship. Only 3% of the same survey understood censorship as a restriction of free speech. Another survey asked “what does the term ‘freedom of speech’ mean to you”, and 61% responded “an opportunity to criticize the authorities without fear of being persecuted” - a notion which seems to be a result of the experience of totalitarianism still vivid in people`s memory. ²³⁰ Only 2% associated it with the term democracy. A report of 2002 found out that ‘self-censorship’ not necessarily has a negative meaning: self-control and limits that are determined by moral principles in order to select information, was a common understanding. ²³¹ The outcomes of the surveys sometimes seem to be contradictionary, depending on how the question is posed. 232

A 2004 survey by another research organization states that 38% of the population think that the government endangers freedom of speech and restricts the independent mass media, 46% were of the opposite opinion. ²³³ A more recent poll was summarized as follows: “The All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center’s survey for 2005 reports that more than half of the Russian population (53 percent) believes that the contemporary Russian media face problems

²²⁵ The campaign against Media Most started already in 2000

²²⁶ FOM Population Poll, 14.06.2000; http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/ed000814 (29.10.2006)

²²⁷ FOM Expert Poll, 14.06.2000; http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/ed000842 (29.10.2006)

²²⁸ FOM Population Poll, 08.11.2000, http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/ed002913 (29.10.2006)

²²⁹ A. Petrova: Russians remember what the word „censorship“ means. Population poll report, 15.02.2001; Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/eof010505 (12.11.2006)

²³⁰ FOM Population Poll, 14.06.2000; http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/ed000814 (29.10.2006)

²³¹ A. Petrova: “On limits determined by conscience”; FOM Report, 25.11.2002; http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/eof024405 (29.10.2006)

²³² All polls and reports are listed under the FOM subject directory ‘freedom of speech’; http://bd.english.fom.ru/az/cat/F/freedom_speech (25.10.2006)

²³³ Survey by the Levada Center, October 2004, http://www.levada.ru./press/2004102802.html, quoted according to the German Translation in Russlandanalysen Nr. 58 / 2005, p. 12

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in terms of freedom of speech, and 36 percent of respondents consider those problems significant. The survey also showed that 17 percent of respondents think that leading media outlets are controlled by the authorities.” ²³⁴ At the same time, 52% of the population consider Putin the most trustworthy of all politicians . 235

2.4. DEMOCRATIC CONDITIONS?

The most commonly used term to describe the current Russian government under President Putin is “guided”, “managed” or sometimes “manipulated” democracy. There is a growing consent among scholars, that Russia’s transition to democracy is characterized by strong power struggles among the political and economical élites, and at the same time by a lack of reliability and consistency of governmental institutions. ²³⁶ Many experts see it neither as a democratic nor as an authoritarian system, rather as a hybrid form which combines democratic elements such as free elections with an authoritarian leadership. ²³⁷ In Russia, the president is elected directly by the people, not by the parliament, and is endowed with more power regarding legislation and the appointment of ministers (presidential form of democracy) than in a parliamental democracy system. Putin has managed to extend his power by clever moves in choice of the governmental personnel and by passing new laws, for example the reform of the federal structure of Russia. ²³⁸ This concentration of power in the hands of the president does not conform to the western concept of a stable democratic system, where power is attached more to a political office than to a person. Putin has transformed the political system in his favour, using legislation, media control and informal relations to establish a ‚vertical line of power’ (Machtvertikale), ²³⁹ in which top-down communication plays a greater role than bottom-up. The so-called “Question 2008” is therefore, in which political direction Russia is heading once Putin’s presidency ends in 2008. 240

Surveys, indices and rankings allow a glimpse on the assessment of Putin’s govermental system, the democratic conditions and the situation of the media from a Western point of view. The Bertelsmann Foundation has worked out a ‘Transformation Index’ to measure the actual conditions of democracy in transitional countries. Russia ranks 47th on a scale of 119 countries,

²³⁴ As cited in the IREX Media Sustainability Index 2005, p.185

²³⁵ The All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM): www.wciom.com; The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM): Electoral Ratings; Population Poll, 19.10.2006; http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/E/elect_rating_2006/ed064101 (26.01.2007)

²³⁶ Cp. Alexander (2003)

²³⁷ cp. Alexander (2003 : 22); Mandel (2005).

Sergej Markov: “Managed democracy, it means a combination of democratic institutions and authoritarian institutions.” Simon Marks: “Managing Democracy”; Online News hour, 05.12.2003; Discussion Transcript, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/july-dec03/russia_12-05.html (26.01.2007)

²³⁸ The reform allows him to appoint the district governors directly and personally.

²³⁹ Cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2005), p. 7 and Fritz (2005)

²⁴⁰ According to the Constitution, he cannot be elected for a third term. But there are efforts to change the law in order to make a third term possible (see St. Petersburg Times, 29.09.2006)

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showing deficiencies regarding democracy and market economy. ²⁴¹ The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), which also played a role in the Internet development in Russia, monitors the press freedom situation in several countries by an annual report that takes into consideration numerous factors to measure the sustainability of media. According to the Media Sustainability Index 2005, the situation in Russia has deteriorated in the last 5 years in 4 of 5 factors whereof “free speech” and “plurality of news sources” are two. ²⁴² ‘Reporters without Borders’ (RSF) has ranked Russia in its “World Press Freedom Index 2006” on place 147 in a list of 168 countries. ²⁴³ According to RSF, 14 journalists have been killed in Russia since the year 2000, the latest case was Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006. None of the 13 preceeding cases of supposed murder was solved by the legal authorities, according to the ‘Committee to Protect Journalists’. ²⁴⁴ The Glasnost Defence Foundation, a non-governmental organisation in Russia dedicated to monitor the freedom of speech and to provide legal support for journalists in their work, puts the number much higher and has registered 92 cases of unnatural deaths of journalists since 2000. ²⁴⁵ The death toll of journalists in a country is often used by NGO’s as an indicator for the lack of democratic conditions, stating that Russia belongs to the world’s most dangerous countries for reporters. ²⁴⁶ To sum up the judgements and opinions of NGO’s and Western experts, the notion prevails that there is currently no sufficient opinion pluralism in the Russian media to enable democratic conditions and vice versa.

2.5. HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND OUTLOOKS ON THE INTERNET ROLE

However, it is important to note that the ‘inside’ view of the Russian on their own country differs significantly from the ‘outside’ view in the West, due to different social and historical preconditions. There is, for instance, a greater loyality to the president than usually in Western democracies, even if failures become public. Despite the criticism regarding his authoritarian leadership and the restriction of independent media, Putin enjoys a strong support among the population and is appreciated for establishing more economical, political and legal stability in the country than his predecessor Yelzin. ²⁴⁷ To get a complete and comprehensive picture of the situation in Russia, it is not enough to measure it with western benchmarks of democracy, but complex socio-historical coherencies must be taken into consideration.

²⁴¹ The Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2006; Nations with democratic deficiencies are also called “defect democracies”, a term which seemed to me too judgemental in this context. See Wikipedia Germany: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defekte_Demokratie (as of 26.01.2007)

²⁴² IREX Media Sustainability Index 2005, p. 184

²⁴³ Reporters sans frontières, World Press Freedom Index 2006

²⁴⁴ Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/russia_murders/russia_murders.html (25.10.2006); For more details on the unsolved cases, see the report by N. Ognianova (2005)

²⁴⁵ Russlandanalysen 113 / 2006; The Glasnost Defence Foundation: www.gdf.ru

²⁴⁶ C. Fitzpatrick: "Russia: Monitors Say Russia Among World's Most Dangerous Countries For Reporters”, Radio Free Europe, 02.05.2005

²⁴⁷ Interview with A. Bikkulov, 20.10.2006, Conversation with Prof. Gavra, 12.10.2006

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One has to consider again the power relations that are effective in the Russian media, and the flows of communication performed by governmental institutions. There is, according to Simonov, a long tradition in Russia regarding the information flow and its division into ‘information for the elite’ and information for the people, which was practiced during the Tsar rule and later, in a modified form, in the Soviet Union. The information for the élite was confined to certain power circles, such as the government and the secret service. “Censorship used to play the role of a "checkpoint" between the two cycles, preventing the general public from getting access to the information for the chosen.” ²⁴⁸ The information for the people was basically a top-downcommunication, whereas a bottom-up “feedback channel” was generally weakly developed or not existent at all. Simonov further characterizes the role of censorship: “[…] censorship had been something of a two-way valve that, in addition to preventing the general public's access to "elite" information, blocked the infiltration of "common" information into the upper-level flow by eliminating feedback and turning the top echelons into hostages of their own, specialized, closed or secret, sources of information about external social developments: that kind of information used to be supplied by security or intelligence services first and foremost.” 249 The abolition of censorship in 1990 nourished hopes that Russia would ‚automatically’ transform into a state with a free information flow, a hope that did not take into consideration the almost complete absence of a democratic tradition ²⁵⁰ and the “very negative impact on public attitude towards the freedom of information in Russia, where several generations of people had grown up with no freedom at all and found themselves unprepared for making free choices in any area, including the sphere of information.” 251

Coming back to the present and based on the fact that Television can still be considered as the leading medium for the time being, it is noteworthy that Kratasjuk states: “The TV-format is more suitable for broadcasting straightforward meanings imposed by the dominating élites, while the Internet, which functions as a free exchange of opinions, is ‘pluralistic’ by definition.” ²⁵² She also gives an outlook on changes to come and reasons for a future situation developing in favor of the Internet: “The Internet is high on the list of mass media that the inhabitants of the capitals now prefer to the TV”, ²⁵³ thereby giving the Internet a potentially greater role in the overall media landscape.

Another important factor for the development of the media system is time: Russia has proceeded in the transition from a communist media system to a capitalist media system (with “retrograde” elements) since a relatively short time span of approx. 15 years. The media system in Western countries, for example regarding TV, developed in a time span of more than 50

²⁴⁸ Simonov (2001)

²⁴⁹ Simonov (2001), ibid.

²⁵⁰ The system of a two-party parliament was introduced in 1905 and survived only for 12 years. Cp. Goriunova (2006 : 195)

²⁵¹ Simonov, ibid.

²⁵² Kratasjuk (2006 : 35)

²⁵³ Kratasjuk, ibid., p. 38

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years. The point is not just to adopt a Western style of media content and a Western model of

media  system, but to relocate and settle a transformed post-soviet-identity, which can be  

mirrored  or amplified by the picture of national identity in the media. 254 How this identity  

contributes  to the formation of a specific Russian Internet shall be one of the topics explored in  

the  next chapters.  

3.  THE CULTURE OF RUNET - USERS, CONTENT, NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS  

The  Russian section of the Internet is something “unique 255 and the term RuNet “has almost no  

analogue  in Western languages 256 The development of a separate national and cultural  

Internet  section is especially likely to occur in those countries which do not use the Latin  

alphabet.  257 The RuNet bears several features which can be traced back to characteristics of  

the  Russian national community and identity. The aim of the following chapters is to describe  

these  characteristics on the basis of several different topics, such as: Westernization vs.  

Russification  specifics of content and the success of homegrown’ products the blogging-  

Service  “LiveJournal the Internet-“élite - VIPs and personalization news media on RuNet and  

political  technology. Blogs and news media are especially important as they provide platforms  

for  the expression and diffusion of political opinions which can become relevant as a  

contribution  to public opinion.  

3.1.  WESTERNIZATION VERSUS RUSSIFICATION  

As  Schmidt / Teubener state, “The boundaries that confine this assumed RuNet’ may be  

accordingly  to language, technology, territory, cultural norms, traditions or values and political  

power  258 , whereof the language boundary is the most obvious and practically decisive one. The  

tendency  of the Russian Internet to create an online sphere separated from the rest of the  

online  -world’ is contrasted with the striving for connection with the global information sphere  

following  the collapse of the Iron Curtain. These different patterns of appropriation,  

Globalization  , Westernization’ and Russification’ coexist among RuNet-users. 259 The tendency  

towards  isolation from the global Internet may at first have been fostered by historical  

preconditions  : the isolation of the Soviet Union as part of the Eastern Bloc during the cold war  

and  little knowledge of other languages, particularly English. 260 Vassilieva stated in 2000, that  

  “Russian communities seem not to be interested in attracting outsiders’ to internal discussions.  

254  Cp. Kratasjuk, ibid.  

255  Andrej Sebrant, as cited by Zhitnyuk (2004)  

256  Schmidt / Teubener (2006a)  

257  cp. Schmidt / Teubener, ibid.  

258  ibid.  

259  cp. Schmidt / Teubener, ibid.  

260  cp. Vassilieva (2000) This, of course, doesn’t apply to the Russian Diaspora.  

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The language problem may also account for the small number of RuNet sites translated into English in the early years, and the necessity to do so might not be acknowledged due to an attitude of self-sufficiency. Furthermore, the RuNet content is dominated by national topics, which might not be of particular interest to the rest of the global Net, even if translated into English. ²⁶¹ On the other hand, the Internet “offers the possibility to escape narrow, national contexts” ²⁶² and connects Russia to the globalized information sphere. For the first time, it gave the Russian audience the possibility to prove and compare the national media content with international mass media and to assess it with a western point of view. ²⁶³ In the context of globalization, “the Internet […] has often been perceived as a means of effacing differences between local cultures and, sometimes, even as a tool of coercive unification of the world in accordance with the values of liberalism and the American way of life” states Gorny, here referring to Paul Treanor. ²⁶⁴ But even in the age of globalization, social traditions can remain strong enough as to render the influence of Westernization, at least to a part, ineffective: “It has been found that national cultures are highly resistant to the unification impacts of the Internet and preserve their individuality.” ²⁶⁵ The concept of “glocalization” could be applied here - in terms of the usage of a globalizing technology to foster a local or natonial culture.

Another specific of the RuNet shall be mentioned in this context: the success of ‚homegrown’ products, such as the multifunctional portals Yandex and Rambler, in opposition to major international corporations. Google failed to gain a quasi-monopoly as a search-engine in Russia, which it has in many other countries. Whether this is due to unsufficient retrieval of cyrillic websites or because Russians just prefer to use Russian Internet portals, can not be judged here. But the failure of big Western Internet brands to gain a foothold in the Russian market is remarkable. In 2001, Lycos flopped because “it failed to win over Russian users who preferred using the local services of Rambler and Yandex. It appears that Russia, traditionally viewed as a backward country by the West, has created Internet products that are capable of successfully competing with internationally popular resources such as Yahoo, Altavista, MSN, etc.” at least in Russia itself, where the development of Internet services and products is maintained mostly by domestic companies. The globalizing influence of multinational companies on the RuNet is not as strong as it was expected five, six years ago. 266

²⁶¹ Vassilieva (2000)

²⁶² Schmidt / Teubener (2006a), p. 19

²⁶³ cp. Bruchhaus (2001 : 25), ref. to Zasurskij

²⁶⁴ Gorny (2004), p. 10

²⁶⁵ Gorny, ibid.

²⁶⁶ Zhitnyuk (2004)

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3.2. THE RUSSIAN ‘LIVEJOURNAL’-COMMUNITY

The blogging service „LiveJournal“ (LJ) comes originally from the USA and is one of a multitude of blogging services offered internationally on the Internet today. However, this blogging service became extremely popular among Russian users for several reasons: First of all, it provided a multi-language environment and enabled Russian users to open blogs in their own language. Secondly, it provides technological features which seem to be especially suitable for Russian users, and correspond very well to the Russian’s sense of community and collectivism, for example the possibility to keep large friend’s lists. The Russian LiveJournal community is “the largest virtual Russian-speaking community, uniting Russians from all over the world”, and “LiveJournal” has become the Russian synonym for “blog”. ²⁶⁷ In 2006, the number of Russian blogs hit the 1 million-mark. ²⁶⁸ The history of Russian LiveJournal (RLJ) ²⁶⁹ began in the year 2000, when Roman Lebjov opened his first blog, and LJ, initially conceived as a communication tool for American teenagers, soon became a playground for Russian intellectuals, such as journalists, media workers, authors and artists, a professional, mature audience with a creative potential and a higher age than the average American LJ blogger. ²⁷⁰ “The Russian LiveJournal domain is different. For some reason since the beginning, it has attracted a disproportionably high number of the "Who's Who" in the informational and cultural space -- journalists, writers, publishers, politicians, etc. Russian is the largest non-English domain of the LiveJournal, with almost 200,000 accounts.” ²⁷¹ America’s blogspaces are much more fragmented, whereas Russian blogs are concentrated on the LJ. 272

The location of the LJ service on a server outside the Russian territory made the RLJ users feel free from the potential reach of the Russian jurisdiction and governmental regulation. “There are quite subtle explanations for LiveJournal's popularity: Many Russians would not trust a Russian company to handle their personal information like passwords and credit cards, nor would they want to be subject to Russia's draconian legal system and "dialogues" with the secret services.” polemizes E. Morozov in the “International Herald Tribune” 2006. 273

RuNet pioneer and Internet researcher Eugene Gorny, who has analysed the phenomenon of Russian LiveJournal (RLJ) in 2004, poses and proves the hypothesis, that “the Russian LiveJournal community shows a considerable deviation” in its collective behaviour from the

²⁶⁷ Gorny (2004), p.1; Although the original LiveJournal is originated on a server in the USA and therefore not a “.RU”domain, it is counted here to the RuNet due to its cultural characteristics.

²⁶⁸ Evgeny Morozov: “Meanwhile: Russia’s last refuge: the blogosphere”. International Herald Tribune, 25.10.2006. The LiveJournal Statistic http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml counts ~ 400.000 bloggers in the territorium of the Russian Federation (last visit: 11.01.2007)

²⁶⁹ In Russian „Zhivoj Zhurnal“ or shortly „ZheZhe“.

²⁷⁰ Gorny, ibid., p.9

²⁷¹ Kirill Pankratov: „Censor This! Eye on Blogs“. The eXile, 01.07.2005

²⁷² Pankratov, ibid.

²⁷³ Morozov, l.c.

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average American LJ bloggers (and supposedly from bloggers of other nationality too). ²⁷⁴ Furthermore, he refines his thesis, stating that “The deviations of Russian LiveJournal from LiveJournal as a whole may be explained to a certain degree by the influence of the Russian culture and national character upon the users online behaviour.” Referring to several scientists, who have done research on the Russian national character, he identifies typical peculiarities, among them a strong sense of community and collectivity, commitment to a group and the acceptance of belonging, a “mutual obligation to help among the network members”, a tradition of sharing and exchanging (blat) through informal personal networks, a reliance on unwritten rules and alienation from the state and mistrust in official institutions. ²⁷⁵ “Electronic sobornost” is a term introduced by the Russian scholar Mikhail Ebstein, referring to “the concept of spiritual unity, which nevertheless allows for individual creativity and self-realization” ²⁷⁶ and transfers a traditional value of Russian society onto the social structure of electronic networks. Onlinejournalist Arutunyan writes that “the all-for-one and one-for-all mindset of the Russian Livejournal community is one of the reasons why it's as centralized and cohesive as it is”. 277

The RLJ blogs show a high level of interconnection compared to average American LJ blogs: there are thousands of individual blogs “tightly interwoven” with each other and the bloggers buddy lists often contain several hundred people. ²⁷⁸ The strong connectivity, which can be seen in contrast to the Western value of individuality and independence, is described by early adopter A. Zhitinsky: “It seems to me that at a certain stage one’s journal becomes so deeply rooted in the common network, ties itself by a thousands threads with other journals and LJ in general, that one seems to cease to belong to oneself.” ²⁷⁹ The topics discussed in the journals are rather serious political and cultural subjects, and not so much limited to private life matters as the American teenagers’ blogs. This together with the “higher significance of reading others posts”, turned the RLJ into a popular and commonly used platform among RuNet users, which built a politically aware community that is attentively watched by the offline world, causing reciprocal effects between online- and offline-social networks.

LJ is used not only as a discussion forum, but also as an information source. “RLJ has become an important source of news and opinions on a wide range of topics and a strong competitor of “official media” for the attention of the audience. Many RLJ users admitted that they ceased reading other web sites or visit them via links in LJ.” ²⁸⁰ Offline media paid increasing attention to the RLJ phenomenon, and a rising number of articles and publications about RLJ appeared, together with a recognition of RLJ as an information source: “The use of RLJ as a source of the firsthand information (for example, the users accounts on the acts of terrorism they had

²⁷⁴ Eugene Gorny: “Russian LiveJournal: National specifics in the development of a virtual community” (2004)

²⁷⁵ He refers i.a. to Berdyaev, Miller, Peabody, Ledeneva. For the subject of blat, and its resemblance to resp. distinction from the LiveJournal community, cp. Bowles (2006), p. 32, quotation Konradova.

²⁷⁶ Schmidt / Teubener (2006a)

²⁷⁷ A. Arutunyan: “Blog Wars. American Censors and Russian Snitches”. The eXile Nr. 217, Moscow, 01.07.2005

²⁷⁸ A. Vorobey, as quoted by Gorny (2004)

²⁷⁹ as quoted by Gorny (2004), p. 14

²⁸⁰ Gorny (2004)

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witnessed) by the traditional media also strengthened its reputation and popularity.” ²⁸¹ Burning political topics, for example the Yukos-affair, are disputed in the LJ community, as Pankratov describes it: “The endless sentencing of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev naturally brought about intense shouting matches in the LiveJournal community. […] Some bloggers posted analysis of convoluted privatization transactions according to the prosecution's arguments, full of Power-Point charts.” 282

Regarding the influence of RLJ on public opinion, Gorny stated that: “Although the number of Russian LJ users remained insignificant [in the first years], these users were powerful enough in the online world to establish their own ratings, to decide what was important and to influence public opinion”, within the scope of the online community. Regarding the choice of topics discussed in the blogs, he says that it can be used as “a handy tool for the study of public opinion”, although “the RLJ users tend to be more liberal than Russian society as a whole”. But the more the number of users grows (and it has grown exponentially in recent years), the more it represents society as a whole, and a more privately oriented, unpolitical mass of newcomers came on the scene, turning the intellectual opinion leaders into a minority with ceasing influence. 283

Despite its widely spread popularity among the RuNet users, not every RuNet user has a LJ blog and it can still be regarded as a kind of subculture which has its own insider language and serves as a means for cultural identification. Inside the LJ community, there are ‘inner circles’, consisting i.a. of LJ pioneers, popular persons who attract a lot of ‘friends’, links and connections to their blogs, and outer circles, consisting of newcomers and a mass audience less experienced. ²⁸⁴ The inner circle élite recruits users from the outer circle, and there is even an exchange between the online and the offline world, insofar as these people actually meet each other personally in the political and cultural capitals of Russia. 285

In 2004, Gorny analysed that the Russian community had little interaction with international bloggers, and that in general they were not very much “interested in overstepping the limits of the Russian language-world”. If this still is the case to the same extent today, would require further investigation. A growing exchange between the english-speaking RLJ-users and international bloggers can be observed in the “Blog War” issue, which will be treated as part of Chapter 5.7.

²⁸¹ Gorny, ibid.

²⁸² Pankratov (2005), l.c.

²⁸³ cp. Gorny (2004) p. 35

²⁸⁴ Conversation with Prof. Gavra, 15.11.2006

²⁸⁵ cp. also Gorny (2004) p. 24

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3.3. THE ‘INTERNET-ÉLITE’

The development of the Russian Internet, as sketched very briefly in Chapter 1, can be divided into the early stage during the 1990’s, and the turn into a mass medium since the year 2000, when many newcomers (chainiki) ²⁸⁶ came to populate the Internet and user numbers rose quickly. ²⁸⁷ Of course, this division is artificial and should here only be used to clarify the difference of the two stages. During the 90’s, the RuNet was mostly populated by the so-called ‘Internet-élite’, mostly male, high-educated people - intellectuals, artists, journalists, ITspecialists, who also belonged to the early adopters of LiveJournal. These user-developers were creative, experimented with the new medium, and used it as a means for self-realization, which became possible for the first time on a large scale after Glasnost and Perestroika: “Das Medium wurde zum Symbol der Aufbruchsstimmung der Perestroika, zum Inbegriff für freie und uneingeschränkte Selbstentfaltung und Kreativität im globalen Kontext.“ ²⁸⁸ They discussed political and cultural topics online, and developed the first RuNet projects, for example the pioneer of online-journals ‘Zhurnal.ru’ in 1996: …“The publisher was Dmitri Itskovich, chief editor was Eugene Gorny. Practically all current and active independent “network figures” were attracted to the project. Declaring itself as a network culture newsmaker, Zhurnal.ru became “a school of Russian network journalism” and “a testing area of the Russian Internet”.” ²⁸⁹ An alternative network-culture emerged, untouched and disregarded by the government. The ‘early adopters’ were not motivated by commercial interests, but were merely driven by pure enthusiasm. ²⁹⁰ Many of them lived in the Diaspora and used the RuNet to stay in touch with their national culture and community and to compensate feelings of alienation. ²⁹¹ They also had the privilege of access to new media, which the majority of their fellow countrymen still lacks.

The term ‘Internet-élite’ is a controversial one, and creates a dichotomy between an élite and the mass of ordinary users, which came in the second stage: the ‘chainiki’ or newcomers, in Russian slang. ²⁹² The élite is also described as intellectuals or ‘intelligenzija’, - intelligenzija in the Soviet Union were critically minded academics, artists and scientists, who didn’t take part in the official policy, but were not necessarily oppositional. At times of the Stalin era, the education of technical scientists was supported by governmental programs; ²⁹³ later, scientific academics formed a great part of the Soviet and Russian diaspora. Part of the intelligenzija became dissidents, a term connected to the clandestine production and distribution of samizdat, underground literature prohibited by the official cultural policy. As the production and distribution of samizdat was illegal, the regime critics risked to get convicted and arrested.

²⁸⁶ Chainik means literally “teapot” or “teakettle” and is a commonly used word for newcomers in any field (e.g. cardriving), who behave kind of clumsy and unexperienced.

²⁸⁷ Bowles (2006)

²⁸⁸ Schmidt / Teubener (2005)

²⁸⁹ Gorny (2000): Chronology of the Russian Internet 1990 -1999

²⁹⁰ Zhitnyuk (2004)

²⁹¹ Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2006) p. 120

²⁹² Bowles (2006 : 21)

²⁹³ cp. Goriunova (2005), p. 196

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As Goriunova points out, the intelligenzija was a kind of educated, spiritual, critical but not affluent élite, whereas “the ‘intellectuals’ - in the modern Russian view of the term - are the highly educated people serving the ruling political and economic relations within the sphere of political communication”, ²⁹⁴ thereby taking advantage of power relations instead of opposing them. Many of the early RuNet developers later became commercially very successful in the field of government public relations and achieved a kind of VIP-status on the RuNet. But, in regard to the 90’s, Bowles states that “against Russia’s specific historic background, the RuNet élite recalls the underground intelligentsia of Soviet times, with its ambivalent status as a social and intellectual network set apart from mainstream and political thought.” It revives the tradition of the “Russian kitchen’s discussions” of the Soviet era online. But the idea of an intellectuals’ ‘club’ (Tusovka) ²⁹⁵ and the “image of a closed circle is at odds with the popular perception of the Internet as ‘free-for-all’ ”, which later became possible with the development of common user-orientated software. ²⁹⁶ Many members of the RuNet-Tusovka knew each other personally, and as the amount of users grew, some of the pioneers gained a popular status, which created a user hierarchy, a “subculture with leaders and a pecking order rather than a limitless expanse.” ²⁹⁷ The RuNet became therefore highly personalized ²⁹⁸ and the prominent acteurs often cooperated and gained considerable authority and influence in the field of projectdeveloping. Among them are Gleb Pavlovski, founder of the Russian Journal and the Foundation for Effective Politics (FEP), Marat Gelman (gallery owner and co-founder of FEP and Russian Journal), Anton Nossik (editor of Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru, Vesti.ru), Maksim Kononenko (author of the satire-blog „Vladimir Vladimirovich“, editor Dni.ru) and Andrei Levkin (editor of Polit.ru, Russian Journal, SMI.ru), only to mention a few. Since the beginning of the new millenium, the RuNet has, similar to the ‘Western” Internet, become more commercialized, albeit in a different way and not to the same extent.

As the RuNet user population grew, a further differentiated social stratification could be observed. There are not only ‘chainiki’ and the old RuNet-pioneer-élite, but also a “middle class” of educated professionals, who use the Internet for professional purposes. Whereas the ‘old’ RuNet-élite now plays a role mainly as content providers for political discourse, the educated professionals use it as a means of getting information from quality sources. Apart from that, there is a Internet mass audience with different interests, which consumes “yellow press” online sources. So one could, broadly speaking, identify three types of users regarding sources, content and audience: the political élite, the educated professionals and the mass audience. 299

²⁹⁴ Goriunova, ibid.

²⁹⁵ Schmidt / Butilowski / Teubener (2005); Schmidt / Teubener (2005)

²⁹⁶ Bowles, ibid., p.26

²⁹⁷ Bowles, l.c.; cp. Schneider / Allan: Interview Olia Lialina (2000)

²⁹⁸ Schmidt / Teubener (2006a) p. 14

²⁹⁹ Conversation with Prof. Gavra, 16.11.2006

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4. NEWS MEDIA AND POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY

4.1. NEWS MEDIA ON THE RUNET

Most of the relevant online news media on RuNet were founded in the years 1997 - 1999: The Russian Journal, Polit.ru, Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru. and Vesti.ru, followed by Grani.ru and Dni.ru in 2000. ³⁰⁰ The economic crisis in 1998 has led to a growth of Internet news resources because many of the journalists formerly employed at ‘offline’ news gazettes migrated to the Net. ³⁰¹ All these journals are genuine online projects and not online versions of offline newspapers, and are counted among the most popular news sources on RuNet, according to ‘Ramblers Top 100’. ³⁰² Each of them has its own profile, whereof Polit.ru, one of the successors of Zhurnal.ru after its cessation in 1999, is maybe the most unconventional one. Initiated by Andrei Levkin as part of Zhurnal.ru, its chief editor is now Vitalij Lejbin. The editors aim at providing a high quality, authentical information resource that differs significantly from the ‘dishonest’ governmentcontrolled media. ³⁰³ The post-perestroika was characterized by a growing need for political and historical reflection and Polit.ru wants to provide a platform for the discussion and analysis of ideological standpoints, which mirror and clarify the personal relationship of the people to the contemporary history of their country. ³⁰⁴ At the same time, as Lejbin states, they refuse to call themselves ‘oppositional’. ³⁰⁵ Polit.ru had about 30.000 readers per day in 2005 ³⁰⁶ , making it one of the mostly-read online-media.

The Russian Journal (Russkij Zhurnal) ³⁰⁷ was founded in 1997 by Gleb Pavlovsky and is chiefedited since then by himself. It offers articles and analyses about Russia’s political and cultural situation and the information society and was the first online-journal with the same quality standard as print magazines for the “Intelligenzija” ³⁰⁸ Russkij Zhurnal turned out to be a great success: “For years it remained one of the most influential platforms for exchanges by Russian intellectuals and it paid special attention to the emergence of what is referred to as ‘Russian Net culture’, its resources, protagonists, curiosities, successes and failures.” ³⁰⁹ Both Polit.ru and Russian journal are read by a culturally interested audience.

Gazeta.ru was the first daily Russian online newspaper in 1999, issued by the Foundation for Effective Politics with Anton Nossik as its chief editor. Due to its prominent staff, the site attracted much attention even before going online, and the user expectations were justified:

³⁰⁰ Gorny: Chronology of the Russian Internet

³⁰¹ Levkin, as cited by Olia Lialina, Interview Telepolis; cp. Kratasjuk (2006 : 39)

³⁰² If a site belongs to ‘Ramblers Top 100’ is announced by a banner on the website. A listing of Ramblers Top 100 e.g. in the area of Politics can be found at http://top100.rambler.ru/top100/Politics/rate0.0.shtml.ru (26.01.2007)

³⁰³ Schmidt / Butwilowski / Teubener (2005)

³⁰⁴ Cp. Polit.ru portrait and the statement of Kirill Rogow on Russian Cyberspace.org: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/portraits/de/portraits_polit.htm (in German) (25.11.2006)

³⁰⁵ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b), p. 67

³⁰⁶ Schmidt / Teubener (2005)

³⁰⁷ The Russian Journal: http://www.russ.ru/; English version: http://english.russ.ru/ (as of November 2006)

³⁰⁸ cp. Brunmeier (2005 : 127)

³⁰⁹ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b) p. 67

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“Gazeta.ru held the top position in the popularity ratings, convincingly demonstrating that it is possible to create an information resource on the Internet which is not only inferior [sic] in quality to press publications but considerably exceeds them in efficiency.” ³¹⁰ After a few months, Gazeta.ru was taken over by the Yukos oil company and changed its editorial team, now consisting of professional, former print journalists. Gazeta.ru is on top of the RuNet rankings for years and is considered as one of the most influencal online media in Russia. 311

Anton Nossik, also editor-in-chief of the newswire Lenta.ru, said that “the information content and consumption in Russia by far exceeds that in many industrialized and well-off nations, because Russians are very fond of reading and the process of creating RuNet’s information treasury did not involve state officials.” ³¹² In a Times Magazine article about the success of Lenta.ru from 2001, he revealed that "I am receiving some pressure from people who would like to manipulate our articles, who are offering money to me or to my journalists to publish something." ³¹³ “Yekaterina Parkhomenko, a journalist at Lenta.ru, says every time there is a crisis in Russia, the site gains new readers: "It grows twice or three times because they don't believe the official, or maybe they believe but they want to know the second opinion about it, a different opinion."” ³¹⁴ Brunmeier confirms this opinion in her research, saying that catastrophes like the hostage-takings in Beslan and in the Nord-Ost Theatre in Moscow led to a considerable growth in demand for online news media because the information available on the state media was unsufficient or distorted and a large part of the population trusted online media more than Television. ³¹⁵ The financial crisis in 1998 drove thousands of users to the website of the Ros Biznes Konsulting news agency, one of the few reliable information sources during the inflation crisis.

Grani.ru, founded in 2000 and financed by exile-oligarch Boris Beresovsky, takes a decidedly oppositional position and deals with precarious topics of domestic policy such as terrorism, human rights, the war in chechenia and the Yukos-affair. ³¹⁶ In the scandal about the arrest of the former head of the Yukos oil-empire, oligarch Michail Chodorkovsky, Grani.ru took a clear pro-Chodorkovsky position. ³¹⁷ According to experts, the journalistic work of Grani.ru goes close to the limits of the press freedom currently granted by the Russian government. ³¹⁸ The question of ownership is decisive, not only in case of Grani.ru. Many of the Net news media belong to oppositional forces and are financed by the political money of fallen oligarchs: Gazeta.ru is supported by Michail Chodorkowsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky funds Newsru.com. ³¹⁹ Still,

³¹⁰ Gorny: Chronology of the Russian Internet; He supposedly meant “superior”.

³¹¹ Brunmeier (2005 : 134)

³¹² Zhitnyuk (2004)

³¹³ Jill Dougherty: “Russia's Internet whiz kid tackles the news”. TIME Magazine, June 4, 2001, Vol.157, No.22

³¹⁴ Dougherty, ibid.

³¹⁵ Brunmeier (2005 : 131ff)

³¹⁶ Heckmann u.a. (2005): Interview with Nikolai Rudenski, Grani.ru

³¹⁷ Schmidt / Butwilowski / Teubener (2005)

³¹⁸ ibid.

³¹⁹ Russian Cyberspace.org: Interview with Dmitri Iwanow (2004), Long version

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regarding the content, deputy chief editor of Grani.ru, Nikolai Rudenski states that “there is no

governmental  or oppositional information, information is either objective or biassed. 320 In any  

case  , as in the offline world, a dinstinction must be made between private financing of news  

media  and government-financed and -controlled news media, such as Strana.ru, although there  

are  also mixed forms here, and the situation is not always clear.  321

There  are different opinions about the influence of fallen oligarchs who are involved in RuNet  

resources  and take an oppositional stance against Vladimir Putins policy. Some see therein a  

biased  , but valuable alternative to state-supported information sources, some think that one evil  

is  replaced by another. 322 Criticism is based on the role these oligarchs played before they  

changed  allegiance and fell in disgrace’ As former supporters of the president they took  

advantage  of the enmeshment of political and economical power and were not detained by  

scruples  regarding their financing methods.  

In  order to evaluate the influence of RuNet news media, it is important to have a look at the  

audience  and the user numbers. In 2000, polit.ru-editor Misha Fishman stated, that the  

influence  of online-journalism in the media landscape was growing, but was still confined to a  

specialist  audience, due to the limited accessibility of the Internet. 323 It was widely used in the  

world  of politics, media and business, but not common in the general public. In 2004, 10 of the  

Internet  users were interested in news media, 324 transferred to the situation of today, it would  

mean  that 10 of 23 Internet users in Russia read online news sources - 2,3 of the whole  

population.  A second opinion confirms that only a fraction of Internet users reads news online,  

and  that the online news media have a small, but professional and influential audience.  325

Lenta.ru  and Gazeta.ru belong to the web media most often used by journalists and, in  

consequence  , information from online news agencies and magazines flows into the content of  

traditional  media. 326 But the number of online readers is growing quickly, compared to print  

media  : Polit.ru had about 30.000 readers per day in 2005, 327 which is quite a lot compared to  

quality  offline’ newspapers - the Izvestia’ for example has approx. 70.000 readers per day.  328

  “The news sector of the RuNet is still a national newspaper of sorts, read by a small, socially  

and  geographically contained part of the population , states Kratasjuk in 2006, and at the same  

time  points out the idealistic potential of the Internet: “Nevertheless, the Internet brings back the  

faith  in the realization of an ideal journalistic model: the principles of plurality, multiple points of  

320  Heckmann u.a. (2005): Interview with Nikolai Rudenski, l.c. This is a re-translation from a quote taken from the  

German  translation.  

321  Acc. to Brunmeier (2005 : 131), the five market leaders in online news media - Roz Biznes Konsulting, Gazeta.ru,  

Lenta.ru  , Utro.ru and Newsru.com are all financed independently (as of 2004)  

322  Schmidt / Butwilowski / Teubener (2005)  

323  Schneider / Allan: Interview with Olia Lialina (2000), Comment by Misha Fishman.  

324  Rambler, as cited by Zhitnyuk (2004)  

325  Interview with A. Bikkulov,  20.10.2006

326  Brunmeier (2005 : 130)  

327  Schmidt / Teubener (2005)  

328  Conversation with Prof. Gavra,  10.11.2006

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view, ongoing critical discussion, diversity and political neutrality are suggested by the nature of this medium”, an ideal conception that shall be put into perspective later on. 329

Summing up, it can be said that the influence of online news media on public opinion at present is not decisive, but that the popular online sources have a good standing in terms of quality, credibility and timeliness and are well able to compete with comparable quality print newspapers. Especially in times of crises, they have a fastly growing circle of readers, compared to the diminishing print run of the print press and therefore a great future potential once the number of Internet users grows.

4.2. KOMPROMAT

Not a news medium, but a very popular RuNet site and at the same time a Russian phenomenon is Compromat.ru, an online magazine that collects compromising information (Kompromat) about famous people in politics and the business world. ³³⁰ Compromat.ru aims to unmask “VIP’s”, politicians and businessmen and their “dirty business”: “Politicians and big businessmen do everything they can to hide the seamy underside of their work from the people. We unmask them”, claims chief-editor Sergei Sokolov in a “Libération”-article. ³³¹ According to Sokolov, Compromat.ru was the first to publish details about Michail Chodorkovsky’s criminal past. Regarding the audience, he says that they try “to reach a certain élite: politicians, legislators, businessmen, journalists”. Due to its popularity, Compromat’s influence shall not be underestimated, altough the information on the site is not verified. This is only one of the reasons, why “press freedom activists are far from convinced by these strange heroes of investigative journalism. “These guys discredit press freedom,” complains Ruslan Gorevoi of the Glasnost Defence Foundation […]. “Because of publications like this, the government can turn around and say: ‘Just look what it leads to - press freedom!’” ” ³³² There are suspicions that Compromat uses sources inside of governmental institutions, playing a double-sided game of uncovering delicate issues about Russia’s economical and political élite, but not being truly independent. Some sources claim that the targeted placement of disinformation is possible for a certain amount of money, leading to downright “information wars” especially in pre-election periods. ³³³ The tradition of publishing Kompromat existed long before the homonymous online magazine was launched, which is only the most popular of many websites disseminating Kompromat. Kompromat is also published in traditional Russian media, but the Internet is a

³²⁹ Kratasjuk (2006)

³³⁰ http://www.compromat.ru

³³¹ Lorraine Millot: “Kompromat Digs up Dirt on Russia’s Elite”; Libération (Paris), Jan. 2, 2004

³³² Millot, ibid.

³³³ cp. Brunmeier, p. 113f; A comprehensive analysis of the function of desinformation, propaganda and instrumentalization of information is given by Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher (2001), p. 133ff., albeit they come to a different conclusion in regards to the effect of the Internet. If one supposes the current Russian „regime“ to be authoritarian, the Internet could undermine governmental propaganda in terms of a counter-public, a topic which will be examined more in depth in Ch. 7.

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particularly  suitable means to seed politically charged disinformation, 334 and compromising  

material  and canards launched on the Internet are often taken up by the offline media.  335

Disinformation  and Kompromat is a common argument for the call of conservative politicians for  

stronger  Internet content control - one prominent example was the anti-Lushkov-site lujkov.ru,  

which  was launched right before Juri Lushkovs election for mayor of Moscow.  

It  is worth mentioning in this context, that in 1999 the site SMI.ru (“Information and  

Misinformation)  was opened, whose “current objective was an expert analysis of rumours and  

speculations  originating in information fields. 336 The initial goal was to shed a light on the  

common  strategy of political disinformation, but in the year 2000, SMI.ru was transformed into a  

kind  of press review, with a systematic overview of all Russian media, especially online media,  

and  comments on their publications. 337 SMI.ru was founded by the FEP and belongs to the  

government  -financed web projects, therefore it is not truly objective, but rather represents a  

subtle  form of tendentious influence on journalists, who use it as a source of information.  338

4.3.  POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY  

Gleb  Pavlovsky and his companions play(ed) a role not only as founders and editors of news  

magazines  , but also as political technologists’ Political technology’ is a fixed term in the  

context  of politics, public relations and the media in Russia and is related to the term political  

consulting  ’ or spin doctor’ in Western language use, but with a slightly different meaning and  

sometimes  a negative connotation, depending on the point of view. Some call it “Black PR ,  

implying  the use of Kompromat, disinformation and illegal manipulation methods for the  

realization  of strategic goals in political PR-campaigns.  339

The  Foundation for Effective Politics (FEP), the key player in the field of political technology until  

2002,  was established in 1995 by Gleb Pavlovsky and Marat Gelman as an independent public  

consulting  organization. 340 It gained public attention first through an election campaign for Boris  

Yelzin  in 1996, then as “president-maker in Putins election campaign in 2000 and Pavlovsky  

also  worked as a political consultant for the Kremlin. 341 Pavlovsky is, due to his close ties to the  

government  , sometimes referred to as the “grey cardinal of the Kremlin. The Foundation  

realized  several state-approved content projects for the government, such as the national news  

service  Strana.ru, but at the same time it was involved in the publishing of many of the news  

334  Kratasjuk (2006)  p.39

335  Schmidt / Teubener (2005)  

336  Gorny: Chronology of the Russian Internet www.smi.ru SMI is the abbreviation of „sredstva massovych informacij“,  

which  means “mass media  

337  Brunmeier (2005 : 135)  

338  ibid., p. 140f  

339  cp. Brunmeier (2005), p. 108 -  115

340  Bruchhaus (2001 :40) FEP Fond Ėffektivnoj  Politiki

341  cp. N. Kevorkova, Interview with Gleb Pavlovsky, http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5596-10.cfm (20.12.2006)  

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resources mentioned above. The success in the field of political PR, combined with the influence of the FEP as a financer and publisher - Pavlovsky, Gelman, Nossik, Levkin ³⁴² and others took part in the realization of Russian Journal, Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Vesti.ru and many other RuNet projects - earned them a reputation of spin doctors and opinion leaders on RuNet. ³⁴³ If one adds up all FEP online projects, the Foundation has developed into the most influential virtual media empire in Russia. 344

Coming back to the idealized concept of the Internet as a platform for unbiassed journalism and a means of free expression, Kratasjuk subtends that “The impartiality of web journalism is, of course, just a myth: the political spin doctors realized the potential of the new medium a long while ago and the web media have survived by fulfilling specific political orders.“ ³⁴⁵ It means that the power relations which are effective in the offline world also function on the Internet, or, “a reproduction of the Russian political reality in the Internet” took place. ³⁴⁶ The adjacancy to the power centre and the supposed ability to influence election outcomes (Lenkungsmacht) by the manipulative power of political PR, together with their ambigious role in the development of RuNet resources, created a mythical aura of conspiracy around the political technologists:

“The term ‘political technologist’ itself is, in the Russian context, of a somewhat dizzying nature and differs from the English analogue, ‘spin doctor’. But within the Russian Net community -and beyond its borders - the term is far from being so neutral. On the contrary, it has acquired a kind of mythical status, mostly with a negative connotation. Endowed with almost demiurgic forces, the political technologist’s most effective weapon is the so called “black PR” as a tool of disinformation. Such black PR, the manipulation of public opinion with the help of compromising materials (kompromat), is feared like a kind of black magic, which fits well into the framework of conspiracy, so popular in the contemporary media world.” 347

The activity of the political technologists for liberal, critical online projects on the one hand, and the work by order of the government on the other hand seems to be contradictionary to Western observers. Marat Gelman, for example, fosters critical art projects on the Net, ³⁴⁸ and Gleb Pavlovsky doesn’t deny his dissident past (he was imprisoned in the Soviet Union due to dissident activity), ³⁴⁹ and started with a mission statement that “strongly collides” with his later political activities. ³⁵⁰ Marat Gelman himself sees his occupation quite functional: A political technologist provides politicians with consulting and tools to realize their strategic goals. He “does not identify himself with the promoted messages and political ideas, but concentrates on

³⁴² Andrei Levkin (Ljewkin) is author of the novel „Golem, the Russian Version“, in which a political technologist, supposedly with Pavlovsky as a role model, is one of the main protagonists. Cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2005)

³⁴³ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b)

³⁴⁴ Brunmeier (2005 : 135)

³⁴⁵ Kratasjuk (2006 : 39)

³⁴⁶ Vassilieva (2000)

³⁴⁷ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b), p.69, ref. to Brunmeier (2005), p. 108-115

³⁴⁸ http://www.guelman.ru/

³⁴⁹ Russia’s Who’s Who; Russia Today, http://russiatoday.strana.ru/en/top100/most_fam/3443.html (10.11.2006)

³⁵⁰ Schmidt / Teubener, l.c., p. 68

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successful public relations”, ³⁵¹ thereby he rejects being called an opportunist. Gelman later also worked for the state-controlled TV Channel Pervyj Kanal. Maksim Kononenko, author of the Putin polit-satire “Vladimir Vladimirovich™”, who worked for the same channel, acts out his critical-creative side on the famous blog. ³⁵² Others suffered from moral conflicts, such as journalists who worked for FEP publications. ³⁵³ The career of the former RuNet-‚intelligenzija’ as PR-consultants of the government can be explained by their intellectual, technological, cultural and creative potential, but their ambiguity and double-faced role in political and cultural life can be traced back, that is one thesis of Schmidt / Teubener, to “the discrepancy between personal convictions and official behaviour (…) of Soviet times when one participated in an official party meeting while mocking the system in the privacy of one’s home.” ³⁵⁴ The RuNet contains both of it: the (semi-)private „kitchen-table“-club and the official political line, and the astonishing thing about this is that both were partly developed by the same people. But the explanation patterns which refer to the socialist era shall not be overstretched here, since the change of the political system puts the political technologists in a different context. As for the psychological explanation, it is also interesting to mention that Eugene Gorny in his research about the RLJ community has identified ambivalence, contradictoriness, and the convergence of oppositions in one’s personal attitudes as a characteristic of the Russian ‘national character’. 355

In 2002, fifteen of the Foundation for Effective Politics’ web projects, among them Strana.ru., Vesti.ru and SMI.ru, were taken over by the state media holding VGTRK. ³⁵⁶ The background of this sale, by which the FEP lost most of its empire, was a canard about the dismissal of the Gazprom chairman on the website of Strana.ru, a reason for the government to extend its control over the online media even more. ³⁵⁷ Way before the take-over, journalists formerly employed there mostly judged Strana.ru as a ‘propaganda organ’ of the Russian government. Marina Litvinovich said, that it is quite difficult to create a medium which is loyal to the government and at the same time to preserve the principles of free speech. She described it as a conflict between the own conscience and self-censorship. 358

In an article translated by the Russian Issues.com, which belongs to Strana.ru, the authors described Strana.ru and other FEP resources as quite balanced: “Although Mr. Pavlovsky's editions have always positioned themselves as official, ones reflecting and preaching nothing

³⁵¹ ibid., p. 69

³⁵² http://vladimir.vladimirovich.ru/, English and German version available

³⁵³ Schmidt / Teubener, l.c., p. 62

³⁵⁴ ibid.

³⁵⁵ Gorny (2004), p. 12, referring to Peabody: “…contradictoriness that has traditionally been considered the most prominent trait of Russian personality when neither of conflicting tendencies is suppressed but all appear at the manifest level.”

³⁵⁶ Glikin, Rostova (2002); VGTRK = All-Russian State TV and Radio Broadcasting Company

³⁵⁷ Brunmeier (2005 : 136)

³⁵⁸ Acc. to a quotation from an Interview with Litvinovich on Nethistory.ru (2003), German translation, as quoted in Brunmeier (2005 : 139). Litvinovich was formerly CEO at Strana.ru and became later one of the most decided critics of Putin’s regime and supporter of the oppositional Garry Kasparow.

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but the political line of the Kremlin, they nevertheless managed to preserve a definite degree of independence in their evaluations and judgment. That was, properly speaking, what made them interesting. More than that, Strana.Ru was regarded not only as just a well-informed web publication but also as a very influential medium reflecting a quite concrete position of definite power circles. It is common knowledge that many a high-ranking official used to start his morning Internet browsing by clicking on Strana.Ru.” They further speculated about the change in the editorial line after the takeover: “Before, Strana journalists managed to steer a line between the Scylla of officialdom and the Charybdis of negativism, between the sugary tedium of state-owned press and the opposition pathos of private media. Pavlovsky's Internet paper undoubtedly had affinities with the first branch of power, while remaining an inalienable part of the fourth. After all, Strana writers were journalists, not state employees. Will it be now substantially different from what we see on the second channel?” ³⁵⁹ The takeover by the state media company in 2002 was seen as part of a development of merging and concentration in the media market in favour of state-owned companies, which eventually could lead to a distinction of the remaining dissonant voices in the concerned web media - thereby a parallel can be drawn to the situation of the ‘traditional’ media described in Chapter 2.1.

However, according to Dmitri Ivanov, who worked for the FEP for several years, the influence of government-financed web projects should not be overestimated, because the user is still free to decide what he wants to read on the Net. There is a much wider range of information sources on the Internet than on the Russian Television Channels and the state-owned Net media are not very popular among the users. 360

5. INTERNET POLICY ON THE RUNET

5.1. PUTINS INTERNET POLICY

On the 28. December 1999, when Putin was still Prime minister, he initiated a round table between the government and Internet representatives, which should mark the starting point of Internet policy during his presidency. At this meeting, he pronounced: „The government will not try to find a balance between regulation and freedom. The choice will always be in favor of freedom”, a statement which gained a certain notoriety later among his critics, who mocked it as hypocritical in view of the Internet draft laws issued by the government. ³⁶¹ The Internet lobby was represented by Internet Service Provider (ISP) and Internet Content Provider (ICP)

³⁵⁹ Maksim Glikin, Natalya Rostova: “Pavlovsky Nationalized”. The Russian Issues.com, 04.07.02; The Russian original version of the article was published in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta (www.ng.ru), a newspaper basically critical of the government.

³⁶⁰ Interview Ivanov, short version (Telepolis 2005) and long version (Russian-Cyberspace.org 2004); similar Brunmeier (2005 : 140)

³⁶¹ Mellnick (2002): Russia in the Internet Age: Balancing Freedom and Regulation (Conference Report), Brunmeier (2005 : 44ff) and Bruchhaus (2001), p. 45, 56 (quotation Makarov)

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organisations  and non-governmental resp. parastatal organizations, such as ROCIT, which play  

a  role in Internet regulation. 362 While the ISP’s were willing to cooperate with the government,  

the  content providers uttered concern about the freedom of speech on the Russian Internet,  

which  was evoked by the plans for the draft law “About the Registration of Net Mass Media  363

A  change in the Russian Internet policy could be already observed in the year 1999, when Putin  

was  still head of the secret service FSB (Federal Security Service), with the invention of “SORM  

2”,  which will be treated in depth further below.  364

There  is, of course an official line which proclaims that Internet development will foster the free  

exchange  of information, the development of democratic conditions, the New Economy’ and  

information  technology for the good of the country. Putin himself has a very positive attitude  

towards  new technologies, which corresponds with his strive for an image of Russia as open,  

dynamic  and forging ahead in terms of economic development. 365 This image is especially  

important  for good relations and successful cooperation with the West - for example in  2001

government  representatives called for more Internet regulation of e-business, copyright etc., in  

view  of Russia’s projected entry into the WTO. 366 Two important initiatives will be mentioned in  

this  context: the “Elektronnaja Rossija -Program (e-Russia-program) and the “Information  

Security  Doctrine  

A  , in a Western view, very odd representation of government propaganda’ for the Internet was  

the  2004 official jubilee gala for the 10 th anniversary of the RuNet since the registration of the  

ru  -domain in 1994. The gala was broadcasted in a TV show, and the “RuNet Award 2004 was  

granted  to 15 companies and projects that contributed to the development of the RuNet, among  

them  Gazeta.ru, Grani.ru and Polit.ru. 367 The show embedded’ the RuNet into the context of  

high  culture’, showing a ballet performance and the RuNet even received the blessings of a  

patriarch  of the Orthodox Church. 368 The event reminds in a strange way of Soviet state galas,  

which  celebrated in a monumental manner the country’s achievements in the field of  

technology  , science and economic progress. An update of the award is presented on the site  

www.10ru.ru  with the banners shown below.  

362  Internet Content Provider is sometimes abbreviated as CSP - Content Service Provider ROCIT „Rossijskij  

Obschestvennuj  Tsentr Internet Technologij (Russian Public Center of Internet Technologies) (Vassilieva 2000)  

363  Brunmeier (2005 : 44)  

364  Vladimir Putin was head of the FSB from July 1998 to August 1999.  

365  Cp. Bowles (2006 : 24)  

366  Yury Travkin, St. Petersburg Times v. 13.02.2001, http://www.sptimes.ru/story/14359 (20.12.2006)  

367  Schmidt: „Showtime oder Showdown?“ Telepolis v. 25.11.2004.  

368  Schmidt / Teubener (2006b), p. 51f Schmidt (2004), ibid.  

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Fig.  3. and 4.: Banner advertisement for the RuNet Award  

2006.  Source: http://www.10ru.ru (18.11.2006)  

Self  -regulation of the RuNet is concerned with several areas of Internet policy: first, with  

administrative  matters, and second, with problems regarding the content, such as the  

prohibition  of inappropriate content. The parties involved are the government, governmental  

organisations  assigned with Internet administration, non-governmental organisations, such as  

associations  of Internet Service Providers and Content Providers with commercial background,  

and  , last but not least the users and online communities. A distinction can be made regarding  

self  -regulation through a) organizations that interact with the government, which deal mostly  

with  administrative matters, and b) self-regulation inside of online-communities, which deal  

mainly  with content matters. Bruchhaus found out that in the year 2000, there were no  

organisations  existent which could represent the interests of the whole RuNet-community (users  

and  providers) 369 Instead, there were different conflict lines between the government and ISP  

representatives  , between ISP’s and ICP’s, and among different ISP-organisations. 370 Basically,  

the  community was structured along the same pattern as the Russian offline society: there were  

the  political élite, the companies and their economical interests, and the citizens. 371 Vassilieva  

states  that „The reproduction of the Russian political reality in the Internet has influenced the  

ability  of the RuNet "to be governed within , which would mean that power structures are formed  

that  correspond to the power structures of the “real world and inhibit the creation of  

independent,  Internet-specific structures.  

369  Bruchhaus (2001 : 60), ref. to quotations by Milicky / Gryzunova  

370  cp. Bruchhaus, ibid., and Brunmeier (2005 : 44ff)  

371  Gryzunova, as cited by Bruchhaus, l.c.  

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Since the first round-table meeting between government representatives and Internet organizations in 1999, the regulation of the RuNet was primarily dominated by two subjects: the administration of the Domain-Name-System (DNS) and the licensing of Internet media, the topic of Chapter 5.2.3. Self-regulation in online-communities will be the topic of the chapter „Blog Wars“ in which the question is posed, if a virtual community can manage to set up its own rules resp. self-regulation, once a community has grown as big and diverse as the LiveJournal community.

5.2. LAWS AND LEGAL REGULATIONS

5.2.1. General Situation

In the early years of Internet development in Russia, there was naturally no legislation “tailormade” for the Internet. According to Alexander, the first phase of Russian Internet policymaking and legislation “[…] were attempts by the government to deal with the new challenge of the IT revolution by using the old mechanisms of bureaucratic oversight and control.” ³⁷² Between 1991 and 1996, six laws were passed that were connected to information technology, information policy or mass media: the Law on Mass Media (1991), the Database Law (1992), the Roskominform Statute (1994), the Information Law (1995), the Communication Law (1996) and the Information Exchange Law (1996). ³⁷³ The Information Law from 1995 guarantees freedom of information and data protection, and entitles the citizens to access governmental information resources; the law about international information exchange from 1996 shall safeguard Russia’s participation in the global information sphere. 374

In the meantime, there have been numerous, partly draconian drafts of laws concerning the Russian Internet, many of which never came into force. ³⁷⁵ Regarding the legal situation in the year 2000, an expert stated that there are already enough existing laws, the problem is only that they are either totally ignored, and/or that they have to be applied to the Internet, implemented and that an effective legal system is needed to enforce them. ³⁷⁶ An open letter by the RuNet community to the government in 2000 pointed in the same direction, claiming that there is no need to implement new laws, but that a modification of existing legislation would be sufficient. ³⁷⁷ In 2001, the State Duma negotiated 15 bills to regulate the Internet - some of them have been impossible to implement or counterproductive, for instance the proposal that “only officially registered, self-employed business people should be able to shop in Internet stores”. ³⁷⁸ In the

³⁷² Alexander (2004)

³⁷³ Alexander, ibid., u. 2003; Brunmeier (2005 : 69); Trautmann (2002 : 125f)

³⁷⁴ Otte (2002)

³⁷⁵ Cp. Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2005): Interview with Dmitri Iwanow, short version; cp. Brunmeier (2005 : 65)

³⁷⁶ Ref. to Tom Adshead, St. Petersburg Times, 13.02.2001; http://www.sptimes.ru/story/14359 (December 2006)

³⁷⁷ Brunmeier (2005 : 45)

³⁷⁸ The St. Petersburg Times, 13.02.2001, http://www.sptimes.ru/story/14359 (December 2006)

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following  years, several regulations were issued regarding e-commerce, intellectual property  

and  data protection, digital signature and so forth, but the focus should be put here on two laws  

that  were especially important with regard to Internet content and free speech / egalitarian  

concerns  : SORM and the amendment of the Law on Mass Media about the registration of  

websites.   

5.2.2.  Surveillance: The System for Operational-Investigative Activities (SORM)  

The  Federal Law on the System for Operational-Investigative Activities’ - shortly SORM - came  

into  force in 1995, and was extended by the Ministry of Communication to application on the  

Internet  in 1998 (SORM 2) 379 SORM 2 allows the FSB to monitor e-mail and Internet traffic -  

officially  in order to fight computer criminality, terrorism and espionage - but it evoked fears, or  

better  to say, caused an outcry among the RuNet community that was reminded of surveillance  

activities  by the KGB in the Soviet Union. 380 The first version of SORM 2 enabled the FSB to  

force  Internet service providers to install hardware on their servers to monitor e-mails and  

Internet  usage of the ISP’s customers. 381 It was followed up by a revised version in 1999,  

making  the surveillance even more effective: it “required all ISPs to route their incoming and  

outgoing  data through FSB computers. 382 Because the FSB at that time also controlled the ISP  

licensing  procedures, it could put non-complying ISP’s under pressure by withdrawing their  

license  and disrupt their online connection. There was one prominent case, that of the ISP  

  “Bayard-Slavia , who was threatened after the FSB had required his customers data and  

passwords  and wanted to force Bayard-Slavia’s manager Murzahanov to implement the  

necessary  surveillance technology. Murzahanov refused to act accordingly, the ISP was  

disconnected  and his capital was frozen, but Murzahanov filed a complaint of  

unconstitutionality.  383 Another effect of SORM 2 was forcing the Service Providers to pay for the  

required  surveillance technology themselves, which can cause financial problems, threatening  

the  existence of small ISPs. Alexander assumed that the FSB’s demand for ISPs to pay  

themselves  for the spying hardware has threatened to put many small sub-providers out of  

business  (who represented 90 percent of Russia’s 360 ISPs in 1999), giving a greater market  

share  to a few larger ISPs. This is especially interesting in connection to, as Alexander claims,  

the  relatively “high government stake in the Internet service providers market at that time - the  

largest  ISP for example, Relcom, was completely government-owned. 384 A question to be  

pursued  in this context is, if ISP with a high governmental stake tend to be more conform with  

government  positions when it comes to tricky questions of Internet policy. (vgl. Ch. 5.1)  

379  Bruchhaus (2001 : 58) SORM “Systema operativno-rozysknajh meropriyatii“  

380  Alexander (2003) Bowles (2006 : 23) The NGO “Moscovsky Libertarium has started a public campaign against  

SORM  2 since 1998, and the organization has documented SORM extensively on its website www.libertarium.ru  

381  Bowles, ibid. cp. Alexander, ibid.  

382  Alexander, ibid.  

383  F. Rötzer (1999b), Alexander, ibid.  

384  Alexander, ibid.,  6

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After extensive public criticism, SORM 2 was revised and now the FSB had to obtain a warrant before starting any surveillance measures. ³⁸⁵ Nevertheless, Human Rights activists criticized that “there appeared to be no mechanism to prevent unauthorized FSB access to the traffic or private information without a warrant.” ³⁸⁶ On the contrary, in 2000 another decree was issued which stated that the FSB had no longer to inform companies about their targets of interest before monitoring information flows. Not only were the previous SORM regulations maneuvering in a judicial grey area, this prikaz, which only legalized an already common practice, was clearly unconstitutional, because it violates the secrecy of the post. 387

However, regarding to the rise of Internet usage after 1999, it is the sheer amount of data traffic that makes a complete surveillance of users impossible, due to the limited staff and technological capacities of the FSB. ³⁸⁸ Already back in 1999, the authorities had difficulties to provide personnel with the necessary IT-knowledge to set up and handle the monitoring system. ³⁸⁹ According to an expert opinion, the goal of the FSB never was to monitor all RuNet users, but to follow certain suspicious persons, who already gave a hint to criminal activities. ³⁹⁰ Human rights activists are of different opinion and deny that SORM is only used to track potential criminals: a report issued in 2003 states that the Information Security Doctrine which President Putin signed in 2000, “…indicated that law enforcement authorities should have wide discretion in carrying out SORM surveillance of telephone, cellular, and wireless communications”, further claiming that officers and high authorities in the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the FSB “…used their services' power to gather compromising materials on political and public figures, both as political insurance and to remove rivals.” ³⁹¹ Thus, SORM became a means for the gathering of Kompromat. 392

There is a widespread tendency to fearmongering among RuNet users, caused by SORM and other draft laws, and a suspicious attitude towards Putins policy, assuming that his government actually has the intention to put repressive control on Internet communication, which, even if that proved to be true, it likely has not the resources to carry out. ³⁹³ This fear can be explained by the historical background of totalitarianism, and of course by Putins strong control of the Television market. Whereas similar laws have been drafted in other countries, e.g. the Communication Decency Act in the USA, the population there did not react as alarmed (if that is appropriate or not, remains an open question). ³⁹⁴ One has to consider in this context, that the RuNet community represents still only a fraction of the Russian population, whereas in the USA

³⁸⁵ Alexander, ibid., p.10

³⁸⁶ The U.S. Department of State: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Russia 2003

³⁸⁷ Prikaz N 130; Bruchhaus (2001 : 59), Brunmeier (2005 : 57)

³⁸⁸ Alexander, Bowles, ibid.

³⁸⁹ cp. Rötzer, l.c., and his depictions of the Bayard-Slavia case.

³⁹⁰ Interview with A. Bikkulov, 20.10.2006

³⁹¹ U.S. Department of State, l.c.

³⁹² cp. a. Brunmeier, p. 59

³⁹³ Bowles (2006)

³⁹⁴ Bowles, ibid.

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Internet use is widespread, so that the users’ social structure is closer to represent an average of the whole population, also regarding attitudes towards content control and other Internet policy concerns.

5.2.3. The Registration of Websites as Mass Media

One cause among others for the call for stronger Internet regulation was the “exit-polls scandal” in 1999 during the Duma elections: The website “Elections in Russia” (www.elections99.com) published the results of exit polls ³⁹⁵ on the election day, which is prohibited for “offline” mass media according to the Russian election law. ³⁹⁶ The site, run by the FEP, became the “most popular, visited and cited resource of Russian political Internet” and attracted more than 50 000 visitors on election day, “references to all channels of the central TV, and numerous responses in the Russian and foreign press.” ³⁹⁷ The site was closed down, and the absurdity of this case is that the FEP later asked for permission of publication of exit polls, and the answer of the central election commission was that it is neither allowed nor forbidden, revealing a legal loophole that should be filled by the draft law “About the Registration of Net Mass Media” in January 2000. 398

The draft, which aimed to extend the existing legislation for mass media to online media as well, caused a lot of discussion in the RuNet community. Mass media in Russia have to be registered at the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, and the online media were now, according to the law, also be defined as mass media (SMI). ³⁹⁹ This applied, according to the draft, to all websites which are periodically updated more than once a year and provide information for an unlimited audience, a definition which embraces almost all sites on the RuNet. The registration fee ranged from 150 Rubel for uncommercial cultural and educational websites, approx. 1500 Rubel for general information up to 15.000 Rubel for websites with erotic content. ⁴⁰⁰ The registration should be obligatory and critics called the draft too rigorous, because the definition comprised also most of the private homepages, which thereby would have come under state control. But after all there were also different voices and the attitude towards registration was not always negative. Besides duties and obligations it also has some advances like tax reliefs, the protection of intellectual property rights and public recognition: “Dmitry Itskovich, who runs the news and information site Polit.ru, said in a telephone interview that this bill had raised more fears than many online news organizations felt were justified. Many of the organizations had already voluntarily registered with the ministry not only in order to

³⁹⁵ Exit poll: poll of the voters just after they have left the polling station.

³⁹⁶ Bruchhaus (2001 : 57): Article 46.3 of the law on the election of the President of the Russian Federation.

³⁹⁷ Gorny: Chronology of the Russian Internet

³⁹⁸ As part of the “Law on Mass Media”; Bruchhaus, l.c.; Brunmeier (2005 : 49)

³⁹⁹ For the definition of „mass media“ by the Law on Mass Media, see Otte (2002), p. 10

⁴⁰⁰ Vassilieva (2000); Brunmeier (2005: 50)

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qualify  for tax breaks available to the media, but also to be officially recognized, he said. 401 The  

directive  of January 2000 never came into force, but was followed up by another draft law in  

2002,  according to which the registration is voluntary. 402 As a consequence of unclear cases like  

the  above described exit polls scandal, it became a common practice among content providers  

that  they decided by themselves if their information source is a mass medium and if they want  

to  be registered or not, and the new draft legitimated this practice. 403 In 2004, about 1300 online  

publications  were registered at the Federal Agency of Press and Mass Communications.  404

There  seems to be currently no governmental enforcement to get websites registered and press  

and  Internet mass media in Russia don’t need to procure a license. 405 But the discussion about  

website  registration continues and some conservative politicians such as Moscow’s Mayor  Juri

Lushkov  still see obligatory website licensing as an appropriate means to control the RuNet  

content.   406

5.3.  GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED CONTENT  

The  government finances, as already mentioned above, sources like Strana.ru and SMI.ru, and  

InoSMI.ru,  as information channels to position itself on the Net in terms of news content. 407 For  

the  scholar Marcus Alexander, theses sources are a method of the government to gain more  

content  control rather than by the crude method of direct censorship. He refuses the notion that  

the  spread of the Internet leads automatically to an increase of freedom of speech and to  

democratization  of the concerned country and develops the theory that the Russian government  

wants  to increase its control on public opinion and the public information space by government-  

sponsored  and -controlled Internet content. 408 He calls this Putin’s “third way of Internet policy  

between  Western liberalism and total control of information flows as noted, for example in  

China  , which corresponds to the hybrid democratic-authoritarian governmental system in  

Russia  : “Traditionally, authoritarian governments have responded to the IT revolution by  

censoring  sources of free and unbiased information (China, Singapore, Middle East), while  

democratic  governments focused on public concerns such as protection of minors and hate  

speech  (United States, European Union) Alexander defines the Russian government as non-  

democratic  , and detects a dangerous development, now that the government is more  

401  St. Petersburg Times v.13.2.2001, http://www.sptimes.ru/story/14359 A voluntary registration was already possible  

since  1997 (Brunmeier, p.47), the first online journal which was registered in 1997 was Pavlovskys “Russian Journal  

  (ibid., p.127)  

402  Brunmeier (2005 : 50) Version of the law from 2003: Law of the Russian Federation "On Mass Media" No. 2124-1 of  

December  27, 1991, as of December 8, 2003.  

www.medialaw.ru  /e pages/laws/russian/massmedia eng/massmedia eng.html (last visited December 2006)  

403  Bruchhaus (2001 : 57)  

404  Brunmeier (2005 : 128), ref. to Seslavinsky, Federal Agency of Press and Mass Communication.  

405  Deppe (2000), Kap.  4.4

406  Brunmeier (2005 : 62) Lushkov (2004)  

407  The official government websites like www.government.ru are not subject here - although they belong to the subject  

area  of “e-democracy  

408  M. Alexander: The Internet in Putin’s Russia: Reinventing a Technology of Authoritarianism (2003)  

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experienced in handling the Internet than in the early years: “Not only does the paper [his article] refute the claim that the IT revolution can automatically lead to more freedom and better democracy in Russia, but it also shows the danger of an authoritarian government learning how to appropriate the benefits of the Internet in order to increase its control over the public information space.” Alexander sees the Information Security Doctrine as a strategy paper which postulates more governmental control over the development of the information infrastructure. His theory is also closely related to Pavlovsky’s FEP, the manipulative power of political technology and the use of government-associated websites for political campaigns. “Once a government decides it is unable to control the Internet medium completely, […] it starts to prop up Internet content providers to compete against independent ones. Once this competition starts, the structure of the information space is radically transformed, both in relation to that of totalitarian states and that of democratic states. What emerges is a third way, as an undemocratic government enters competition for maintenance and propagation of its image and power among its population.” If there is really a competition between government-sponsored content providers and independent content providers in terms of audience and ownership and if a clear distinction can be made regarding the content is questionable. As an BBC article from 2001 states, „There are a number of good news sites whose political sympathies are hard to discern, and some of the news sites Mr. Pavlovsky has had a hand in creating are also relatively tolerant of the opposition.” ⁴⁰⁹ Apart from Strana.ru, which was initially funded by private sources, it might be difficult to label the FEP projects merely as a government organ. The influential power of government-associated sources lies not so much in their influence on the population resp. the voters, but in their closeness to an influential elite in Russian society in terms of production and reception, which exponentiates their influence. The share of Internet news source readers in the population was minor at that time anyway.

But the main counter-argument to rebut Alexander’s hypothesis is the users’ free choice: nobody can force them to visit the governmental sites, therefore the influence and manipulative power of FEP-run sites like Strana.ru might be much less than Alexander depicts it. ⁴¹⁰ As he admits, he didn’t “take into consideration any complexities such as […] individual’s patterns of information consumption and use” in his model of ICP and government interaction. The Internet is not a closed information space with a limited number of frequencies or channels, therefore the government’s stake in Internet content might become minor in relation to the growth of the overall content. Private users also can become content providers - they are not convicted to stay a silent audience, which passively consumes the content offered to them. The government advertises for its web resources in the traditional media, which might impress the majority of viewers who are still unfamiliar with the Internet. But it doesn’t seem very obvious why the government should use the Internet to excert its manipulative intentions, when it is a lot easier to exert influence on the traditional media, especially TV (and the control mechanisms are

⁴⁰⁹ Steven Mulvey: Russian Internet Politics. BBC News Online v. 5.3.2001 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1198603.stm (26.01.2007)

⁴¹⁰ Cp. Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2005): Interview with Dmitri Iwanow (2005), short version

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already there). ⁴¹¹ In addition to that, the majority of the now growing ‘mass audience’ of Internet users is apolitical, ⁴¹² which on the other hand is contiguous to Alexander’s assumption that “It may be simply false to assume that intelligent, educated, and young persons in a country such as Russia will flock to the Internet in order to find the truth about their government, and then use the Internet to spread this truth and mobilize opposition.” 413

A similar thesis to Alexander’s is presented by Schmidt / Teubener in their article “(Counter) public sphere(s) on the RuNet?”. They claim that the government has two strategies of information control: first, government-sponsored content, and second, suspicion-triggering government propaganda about the new medium Internet. This information is spread through the government-controlled media TV and press, and because three quarters of the population still have no experience with the Internet, they have to rely on this information. The Internet is depicted as a dangerous, unruly space with all kinds of criminal threats and risks, as in the notorious press article by Moscow’s mayor Juri Lushkov: “The dark side of the Internet”. ⁴¹⁴ This strategy works because there is still a strong trust in what the government says and a tendency to be obedient among the people, which stems from the era of socialists hierarchy. Curiosity towards the potential of the new medium is opposed with government propaganda, aiming to inhibit a too strong self-determination of the people in Internet usage, instead of informing people how to deal with potential risks. This information control strategy supports the aim of the government to stay in power. However, the strategy of government propaganda as sketched here briefly will have an eventually obsolete influence the more the Internet experience among the population grows.

Yet another, very interesting “approach” to user manipulation is the site InoSMI.ru, which has also been owned by the VGTRK since 2002. The site offers a choice of news articles about Russia from international media in a translated version - basically a good idea, only the real intentions of the site are dubious because the translations are sometimes incorrect and tendentious, distorting the original message of the articles. ⁴¹⁵ This leads to defamation, flaming and insulting comments on part of the Russian readers in the InoSMI forum, ⁴¹⁶ who claim that foreign correspondents and journalists are discrediting Russia and besmirch Russia’s public image, an accusation quite well known from government circles, who are often more concerned about the damaged image of the country in the Western world than about the consequences of the actual criminal act, catastrophe or calamity, which caused the negative image in the first

⁴¹¹ cp. Iwanow, ibid.

⁴¹² Iwanow, ibid.

⁴¹³ Alexander, l.c.

⁴¹⁴ Luschkow (2004); Izvestia, 16.05.2004.

⁴¹⁵ Brunmeier (2005 : 142f), ref. to Michael Thumann and Boris Reitschuster; More evidence about misleading translations in Russian newswire reports: David McDuff, http://halldor2.blogspot.com/2005/12/return-of-censor.html (20.01.2007)

⁴¹⁶ cp. Boris Reitschuster’s article “Journalisten wie Goebbels und Frauen wie Ferkel” - für kritische Berichte kommen Journalisten in Russland an den Online-Pranger. Focus Online v. 17.01.2006; Boris Reitschuster is correspondent of the German news magazine „Focus“ in Moscow and author of the book „Putins Demokratur“.

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place. ⁴¹⁷ The outcome of this kind of information distortion is in any case not an objective ability to judge foreign media content, as it was expected in the first years of RuNet development, when readers for the first time had the possibility to compare national and international news media on a large scale. The question remains, who benefits from this kind of resurgence of East-West animosities. Three Russian Internet researchers published a study in 2003, investigating political forums on the RuNet - they came to the conclusion that the flaming of content critical of the regime could be a concerted action of the FSB, who sends ‘professional’ letter-to-the editor-writers that vilify western books and press articles critical of the Russian government. 418

5.4. E-RUSSIA PROGRAM AND INFORMATION SECURITY DOCTRINE

The above mentioned Information Security Doctrine belongs to the official line of the Russian Government in Information Policy and is described by Alexander as defining Internet Policy as national security concern and endowing the government with the right to engineer Internet development. ⁴¹⁹ This is especially interesting in connection with the government program “e-Russia”, which was launched in 2002, and aimed at fostering the development of the Internet infrastructure throughout the Russian territory. The e-Russia-program contains an education and information strategy which indicates a different approach to Internet policy. It counts among its goals and directives:

- to create a technological basis for civil society development via free access to

information

- to support development of independent media through wide use of ICT

- to create an effective ICT legislation basis, including information security and protection of personal data guaranteed by the Russian Constitution

- maximum decreasing of administrative barriers for ICT use and implementation and guarantee of state safety and citizens rights and

- to guarantee information transparency and openness of the Russian Government to civil society, creation of conditions for effective interaction between government and citizens on the basis of wide use of ICT 420

⁴¹⁷ Recent examples were the statements of President Putin about the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

⁴¹⁸ cp. Brunmeier (2005 : 144f), ref. to Polyanskaya / Krivov / Lomko’s survey „The virtual eye of Big Brother“ (2003), originally published on www.cjes.ru (Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations);

cp. also Zerahn: “Der virtuelle Arm des Kreml”, Die Tageszeitung v. 15.01.2007, referring to flaming of Reitschusters book “Putins Demokratur” in the Amazon customers forum.

⁴¹⁹ Alexander (2003), p.11, 15

⁴²⁰ Excerpts from the presentation „e-Russia and e-Moscow-Programs”,

http://www.russia-gateway.ru/content/pages/topicpage/?category_id=7980 (18.12.2006); (here also further Information on the e-Russia-Program); Interview with A. Bikkulov, 20.10.2006;

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The initial budget of the program of 2.6 billion USD was cut down to less than 20% of the sum. The cutback of the budget largely affected the implementation of the program. ⁴²¹ Accordant to the Information Law from 1995 which guarantees information freedom, all governmental and federal authorities are since 2003 obliged by the e-Russia-program to publish information about their structure, duties and proceedings online. In reality, only a fraction of governmental websites fulfil this claim - the goal to achieve more transparency in governmental institutions and thereby reduce the widespread corruption, is far from reach. 422

Non-governmental actors „have been quick to view the e-Russia initiative as a potential overture to actual repression.“ ⁴²³ Despite the official proclamation of the Internet as a liberating force and the commitment for “constitutional human and civil rights and freedoms in the field of obtaining information” ⁴²⁴ in the Security Doctrine, Alexander claims that it is “defining the limits to rights of individuals and private groups to use the Internet; and pushing the government into an aggressive policy to expand its control over the Internet in Russia.” ⁴²⁵ There is a high priority in the Information Security doctrine for national interests and for ensuring law and order, ⁴²⁶ but the governmental funds of the e-Russia program still finance only the infrastructure for Internet development. ⁴²⁷ In addition, it is questionable if the e-Russia program is very effective at all: ”A poll conducted in 2003 showed that more than 70 percent of Russians have heard nothing about the e-Russia plan, and only 17 percent surveyed thought they would definitely benefit from it.” ⁴²⁸ Dmitri Ivanov says that he can’t see any strategy of the government in Internet policy. ⁴²⁹ This would lead to the assumption, that many of the regulations and plans exist only on paper, without effective exertion. Alexander comes to the seemingly inconsistent conclusion that “The reception of the e-Russia plan among ordinary citizens fell far short of enthusiastic, indicating that despite the decline in freedoms, Russia is far from being a closed society where citizens welcome any opening that can lead to increased freedom of speech - in this case, the government's promotion of IT use.” 430

⁴²¹ Alexander (2003), Brunmeier (2005 : 82f)

⁴²² Brunmeier (2005 : 90ff); Website of the government of the Russian Federation: www.government.ru. Website of the President: http://www.president.kremlin.ru/eng/

⁴²³ Bowles (2006 : 24)

⁴²⁴ Information Security Doctrine 2000, as cited by Alexander (2003)

⁴²⁵ Alexander (2003)

⁴²⁶ For more detailed information about the content of the doctrine see Trautmann (2002 : 120ff)

⁴²⁷ Interview with A. Bikkulov, 20.10.2006

⁴²⁸ Alexander (2004)

⁴²⁹ Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawski (2005): Interview Iwanow, short version

⁴³⁰ Alexander (2004)

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5.5. THE PROBLEM OF EXTREMIST WEBSITES

Speaking of risks and threats, there is in fact a growing problem with extremists’ websites on the RuNet. Estimates of the amount range from 40 to more than thousand extremist, fascist, racist and misogynic sites. ⁴³¹ A precedence, which caused again a discussion about more rigorous legislation to conquer the virtual threat, was an act of violence in a Moscow synagogue in January 2006, after which the culprit admitted to be influenced by antisemitic websites. One of the draft laws discussed in the State Duma suggested to punish incitement to racial and religious hatred with up to five years of imprisonment. ⁴³² Human rights activists counter that the existing legislation in the extremism law from 2002 is sufficient and only has to be carried out effectively. They fear restrictions of freedom of speech, although they themselves are threatened to become victims of hate crime: death lists on the Internet call for the killing of government critics and human rights activists, as reports the St. Petersburg Times on October 13, 2006. ⁴³³ A death list of 89 people was published on the website of the radical nationalist group “Russian Will”, and another nationalist group, the “National Sovereign Party of Russia” has listed 63 ‘anti-nationalist’ people on their site. Another disturbing interrelation exists between the occurrence of hate crimes in the city of St. Petersburg and instructions for xenophobically motivated actions issued on the Internet. As the ‘Nowyje Iswestija’ reported in March 2006, there seems to be evidence, that the online instructions served as a model for an actually committed hate crime earlier this year. ⁴³⁴ Racist hate murders in St. Petersburg have occurred repeatedly in recent years, the latest case was the murder of an indian student on September 24, 2006. ⁴³⁵ The neofascist Nationalist Bolshevik Party is supposed to have connections to circles who actually commit these crimes. The party was banned by the Supreme Court in 2005, but their website is still available. ⁴³⁶ Most of the problematic websites are known to the government of St. Petersburg, but the problem of prosecution is to prove a causal connection of hate speech on the Internet and actual hate crimes. ⁴³⁷ This causality exists, at least in the opinion of Pavel Krasheninikov, Head of the Duma commission for civil-and criminal law, and is the main motivation for the new draft law which calls virtual incitement to racial hatred a crime. ⁴³⁸ But even if extremist websites are banned from the RuNet, often the

⁴³¹ Ria Novosti: “40 Russian extremist sites hosted on the Internet - official“; news item, 19.04.2006; http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060419/46604607.html (26.01.2007); Ria Novosti: „Russisches Internet als Zankapfel“, 19.01.2006.

⁴³² Ria Novosti: „Russisches Internet als Zankapfel“, 19.01.2006.

⁴³³ „Human Rights Activists Face Death Threats“, St. Petersburg Times v. 13.10.2006

⁴³⁴ „Nowyje Iswestija: Anleitung für Straßenterror im Internet“. Ria Novosti v. 28.03.2006

⁴³⁵ Ali Nassor: „Indian Student Killed by Masked Attackers“, St. Petersburg Times v. 26.09.2006

⁴³⁶ Russland Aktuell, 30.06.2005

http://www.aktuell.ru/russland/politik/nationalbolschewistische_partei_verboten _2849.html; Website der NBP: http://nbp-info.com/ (22.12.2006)

⁴³⁷ Ria Novosti, 28.03.2006; Interview with A. Bikkulov, 20.10.2006

⁴³⁸ „Russisches Internet als Zankapfel“, Ria Novosti v. 19.01.2006

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close-down lasts only temporarily - “Russianwill.org” was shut down in October 2006, accessible in November, and inaccessible again in December 2006. 439

The most common strategy to escape Russian jurisdiction is to move the site to a foreign server, as was the case for the Chechenian rebels’ information site “Kavkaz.org”. The Russian government tried to close down the site several times, for political reasons of course, and the site made a real odyssey on foreign servers to Sweden, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia England and Canada. ⁴⁴⁰ The site changed its domain name to www.kavkazcenter.com, then to www.kavkazcenter.Net, has many mirror sites with different domain names, and is inaccessible from time to time. ⁴⁴¹ The Kavkaz Center provides coverage of the Chechenian conflict from the view of the Chechenian federalists resp. rebels, which is of course oppositional to the Russian government position. Kavkaz.org became the most well-known case of unsuccessful prosecution of a website by the Russian government. The Kavkaz Center sets in his mission statement “…the goal to cover the real events in Ichkeria under the conditions of total informational blockade, and bring to the world community the truthful information about the war, war crimes, the facts of genocide of the whole nation by the invading state and the position of the defending side - the Chechen Mujahideen.” 442

The Kavkaz Center is not the only website of Chechen rebels that was closed down - in 2002 a department of the Interior Ministry identified and shut down all websites associated with Chechen fighters (among them chechen.ru and chechenpress.com), and sent a formal complaint to all foreign countries that hosted such sites. ⁴⁴³ The closure was undertaken on base of a new law that aimed to ban all kinds of extremist activity on the Internet. ⁴⁴⁴ In the course of the measure, also pornography on the RuNet was prosecuted, for which the Russian legislation provided no appropriate regulation at all. 445

The case of Chechen Rebels’ websites is quite different from the ‘Neo-Nazi-problem’ described above, even if the Russian government calls the Chechenian rebels terrorists. It has a political interest to cut off this flow of information which runs oppositional to the governments official line presented in the offline media. In the case of neofascists, racists and hate murders the official line is not always so clear, as there are widespread anti-immigrant and xenophobic tendencies

⁴³⁹ According to the St. Petersburg Times, the site was closed in the second week of October. I loaded it on Nov., 21, but couldn’t load in on Dec. 22., 2006.

⁴⁴⁰ The information about the countries was collected from different sources: Brunmeier (2005 : 67); Conversation with Prof. Gavra on 19.09.2006; RSF: Reporters Without Borders: The Internet Under Surveillance, Report 2003; http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7141 (21.01.2007); „Police Battling pornography and Chechens“, Prima News, 05.012.2002; www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/news/2002/12/5/21923.html (21.01.2007)

⁴⁴¹ www.kavkazcenter.Net, visited on Nov. 22. 2006, inaccessible on Nov. 24 ^th ; Last visit on Dec.22.,2006.

⁴⁴² http://www.kavkazcenter.Net/eng/about/ (22.12.2006)

⁴⁴³ Radio Free Europe, RFE/RL Newsline Press Report, Vol. 6 / Nr. 226, 4.12. 2002; www.rferl.org/newsline/2002/12/041202.asp (20.01.2007); On Jan. 21, 2007, chechenpress.com was closed, but chechen.ru was available.

⁴⁴⁴ Reporters Without Borders: The Internet Under Surveillance, Report 2003; http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7141 (21.01.2007)

⁴⁴⁵ „Police Battling pornography and Chechens“, Prima News, 05.012.2002; www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/news/2002/12/5/21923.html (21.01.2007)

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in the population, among certain politicians and a tolerant attitude among prosecutors, which prevented many culprits from actually getting sentenced. 446

5.6. INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION

ESTIMATION OF THE DEGREE OF STATE CONTROL ON THE RUNET

Fearmongering occurs frequently in the RuNet online community, ‘trained’ in long years of draconian draft laws about Internet regulation of which only few came into force. But despite of an ongoing discussion about draft laws and the call for more governmental control of the RuNet, there exists no effective and country-wide state control so far. ⁴⁴⁷ This can be ascribed to the lacking implementation of already existing legislation, and, regarding the technical possibilites of surveillance and control, to a lack of capacity and the possibilities to bypass such measures. “Too manifold are the ways to elude these measures by encrypting programs or by transferring activities and data to a server abroad.“ state Schmidt / Teubener. ⁴⁴⁸ The authors come to the conclusion that a total state control of the RuNet is impossible, similar to the opinion of other experts. Obligatory licensing of websites would lead to a mass exodus of RuNet sites to foreign servers, and an overall content monitoring would require human resources that the government authorities cannot provide. ⁴⁴⁹ The only real ‘threat’ so far was the close-down of several websites by court decisions, who accused the website owners of libel, defamation or incitement - an effectful method to silence oppositional and critical voices - and the shutdown of Chechen rebel websites according to the extremism law in 2002. ⁴⁵⁰ In July 2006, the Federal Council approved a law which newly defined who is to be regarded as a “terrorist or extremist” - with a very broad definition. The possible effect of the law on the media was not yet incorporated in this thesis. 451

There might be another reason why the RuNet so far has been a relatively free and unregulated space compared to the offline media: Censorship exists only where it’s worth to censor something, argued Dmitri Ivanov in 2004, and added that the RuNet was not yet a medium widespread and influential enough in Russia to be censored. That is why state control still concentrates on the leading medium Television, because the chance to influence public opinion is much higher there. ⁴⁵² Following this argument, Internet censorship would become more likely with growing Internet penetration and speculations about a new version of the law on mass

⁴⁴⁶ cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2006b), p. 57; There were several articles in the St. Petersburg Times in fall 2006 about the problem.

⁴⁴⁷ cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2006b); Brunmeier (2005 : 61)

⁴⁴⁸ Schmidt / Teubener, ibid.

⁴⁴⁹ Brunmeier (2005 : 66)

⁴⁵⁰ Brunmeier (2005 : 69f)

⁴⁵¹ The law became broadly known to the media in the wake of the death of Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006. Cp. for example BBC News: “Russia law on killing extremists abroad” by Steve Eke, 27.11.2006; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6188658.stm (20.01.2007)

⁴⁵² Interview Dmitri Ivanov, short and long version (Russian Cyberspace.org)

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media keep on emerging, ⁴⁵³ but a regulation which would introduce the “Chinese Model” seems to be unlikely, because the Russian government at least wants to uphold a democratic appearance and not promote additional negative publicity in the West, which is already alerted about the lack of press freedom in Russia. ⁴⁵⁴ A state deputy of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications has called for the introduction of content filters on certain segments of the RuNet in 2005, but experts state, that an effective filtering would require all RuNet traffic to be routed through a single server, which the private ISPs would never accept. ⁴⁵⁵ IT- and Communication Minister Leonid Rejman has stated in 2005 that the government does not intend to implement any filters, central regulation or other kinds of censorship measures. 456

As Sergej Kuznecov has put it several years ago: The RuNet is and will be but the only place, where there is in fact no censorship… the only place where it’s possible to talk freely about mayor Lushkov, drugs and bandits, where nobody can force the author to delete the word ‘whore’ or ‘discourse’ from his article. In a way it’s the classical Samizdat with all ist advantages and disadavantages. ⁴⁵⁷ This may sound a bit nostalgic these days, but it reflects quite well the feeling of freedom that the RuNet pioneers had when they entered this virtual space and apparently the artistic and political freedom ist still there, even when it is covered by growing commercialisation. But this freedom can also bear serious problems, which are again connected to political opinions adjoined to extremist positions, as will be shown the chapter about “Blog wars” below.

5.7. “BLOG WARS” OF THE LIVE JOURNAL COMMUNITY

In October 2006, the Russian ‘blogosphere’ got upset about the news, that the cyrillic section of LiveJournal will be outsourced to a Russian company named “SUP”, bringing up speculations and rumours about alleged plans to control or censor the RLJ blogs. ⁴⁵⁸ The company, owned by oligarch Alexander Mamut, has RuNet ‘founding father’ Anton Nossik among its managers, who, despite his liberal political position in the blogger-community, made many LiveJournal bloggers suspicious about the intentions of the company and the function of the planned “Abuse Team”, responsible for the monitoring and suspension of blogs with inappropriate content. Nossik’s background as a former political technologist, together with the ownership of dubious oligarch Mamut, nourished new fears among the blogger community, such as: “Since he [Nossik] is

⁴⁵³ Speculations about proposals on corrections of the mass media law in December 2006: “Moscow City Duma wants to limit media freedom”; Prima News, 24.12.2006; www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/news/2006/12/24/37373.html (20.01.2007)

⁴⁵⁴ Brunmeier, l.c., 65ff

⁴⁵⁵ J. Corwin, Radio Free Europe, October 2, 2005, referring to a statement of deputy Andrei Romanchenko.

⁴⁵⁶ Ria Novosti, 02.02.2005, http://en.rian.ru/onlinenews/20050202/39701153.html (20.12.2006)

⁴⁵⁷ Translated according to Kuznecovs’ quotation in Schmidt (2003a) (in German); Original source in Russian: http://www.netslova.ru/teoriya/kuznet.html (22.11.2006)

⁴⁵⁸ E. Morozov: “Meanwhile: Russia’s last refuge: the blogosphere”. International Herald Tribune, 25.10.2006. Global Voices Blog Archive: “Russia: LJ and politics”; www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/10/28/russia-lj-and-politics/ (13.11.2006); Суп: http://sup.com

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known to be politically opinionated, there are fears that an Abuse Team controlled or influenced by him will use a very broad definition of xenophobia. We fear censorship”. ⁴⁵⁹ This “second blog war” was preceeded by a first one, which occurred in 2005: The American LiveJournal-Abuse Team, which belongs to the Six Apart Ltd. Company, shuts down a blog of a RLJ user, because he has posted a manipulated Soviet propaganda-poster on his blog, which says instead of “Kill a German”, “Kill a NATO Soldier”. ⁴⁶⁰ The close-down was followed by protests and political disputes among the RLJ community, with people threatening to leave the service, if the Abuse Team wouldn’t change its policy. Apparently, it was a task too difficult to handle for the Americans, who, “with a single Russian translator on the team, just didn’t have the resources to understand” the specific context of the Russian community. ⁴⁶¹ Anton Nossik expressed his worries about the future prospects: “A wide understanding of Terms of Service is a straight road to spreading censorship over an unlimited scope of authors whose views could seem unacceptable for political reasons.” ⁴⁶² Some of the utterances in the disputes showed ideological and political demarcation and confrontation lines inside the RLJ community, as well as between Russians and Americans, and the most malicious postings even triggered notions that reminded of cold-war fronts. 463

The suspiciousness of the RLJ bloggers about the takeover and future monitoring and moderation of the RLJ blogosphere by the “SUP”-company is contradictionary to the position Nossik took in the “first Blog War”, but was evoked by some utterings he made about intentions to wipe out fascists and xenophobes from RLJ. ⁴⁶⁴ But, as Kirill Pankratov, a journalist writing for the Moscow-based “eXile” states, the “Russians got used to a much freer Internet, with no censorship at all. They had their self-contained community, where in fact every user could delete offending messages at his own blog if necessary.” ⁴⁶⁵ This community is as well populated by anti-semites, xenophobes, ethnic separatists, homophobes, misogynists, militant feminists ⁴⁶⁶ and contains a lot of hate speech, which might explain the worries expressed above (also neofascists claim that they have a right to free speech). The number of intolerant, nationalist, xenophobic etc. Internet users has risen strongly in recent years, compared to the 1990s. ⁴⁶⁷ At least Pankratov claims that there is no leaning or dominance in a particular political direction which might stifle differently minded people. The difficult question about censorship is “about the impartiality in the choice of what to censor, and whether or not there should be any kind of

⁴⁵⁹ The fears are expressed e.g. in the forum http://community.livejournal.com/sup_ru/33527.html, by LJ user Alex Mashin and many others. (last visit 14.11.2006)

⁴⁶⁰ A. Aratunyan: “Blog Wars. American Censors and Russian Snitches”. The eXile Nr. 217, 01.07.2005

⁴⁶¹ Aratunyan, ibid.

⁴⁶² Aratunyan, ibid.

⁴⁶³ cp. Aratunyan, ibid.

⁴⁶⁴ Kirill Pankratov: “The Last SUPper of Russian blogs?” In: The eXile, Nr. 250, Moscow, 03.11.2006; It should be mentioned here, that “The eXile” stands close to the leader of the banned National-Bolshevik Party, Edvard Limonov. The newspaper might therefore have a biased view on Free Speech concerns. Nevertheless, I found the article of Pankratov useful to quote here.

⁴⁶⁵ Pankratov: “Censor This! Eye on Blogs”. In: The eXile, Nr. 217, Moscow, 01.07.2005

⁴⁶⁶ Pankratov (2006)

⁴⁶⁷ Brunmeier (2005 : 144)

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outside moderation and control.” ⁴⁶⁸ Freedom of speech after all is always a matter of balancing and the question is who will be in the decisive position to separate the appropriate postings from the inappropriate ones. This is the difficult task, which the new - now Russia-based - Abuse Team has to solve. Normally the Abuse Team only takes action, if a blogger has called attention to a posting he finds inappropriate, as they don’t scan the whole LJ communication. But the misbehaviour of a few bloggers to snitch on other bloggers and thereby shoving opponents off the scene, has made the blogger community more sensitive towards potential “censoring” tools. ⁴⁶⁹ Normally, members of the Russian LJ community would not report some misbehaviour to any higher authority, that’s against the Russian sense of community, and also corresponds to a certain mistrust towards authorities. They would rather try to solve the problem among each other. ⁴⁷⁰ LJ-Manager Brad Fitzpatrick meanwhile tried to ease LJ users fears and worries about the takeover and opened a forum with a FAQ and a dialogue about the most common questions. 471

Pankratov also points out that the whole LiveJournal phenomenon has “far been ignored by the Western media” ⁴⁷² - similar to E. Morozov, who was surprised how little attention the story about the “first blog war” has received in the Western media. ⁴⁷³ Pankratov assumes that everything which doesn’t fit in the Western image of Russia created in the media is unlikely to be covered, whereas the influence of RLJ in Russia is considerable: “Since July 2005, LJ only grew in importance in Russia's political discourse. It became widely used in practically every local electoral campaign, every political movement and faction, especially youth-oriented, as well to spread intrigues, "kompromat wars" and so on”. ⁴⁷⁴ The influence and importance of “such a robust nation-wide political community, bringing together a broad intellectual élite with their readers in a single space”, he claims, can be interpreted as a “strengthening of the civil society in Russia”. 475

⁴⁶⁸ Pankratov, ibid.

⁴⁶⁹ cp. Aratunyan, l.c.

⁴⁷⁰ Conversation with Natalia Ipatova, 24.11.2006

⁴⁷¹ SUP Fabrik - List of questions/concerns, http://community.livejournal.com/sup_ru/33527.html (14.11.2006)

⁴⁷² Pankratov (2005)

⁴⁷³ Global Voices Blog Archive: “Russia: LJ and Politics”. http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/10/28/russia-lj-and-politics/ (13.11.2006)

⁴⁷⁴ Pankratov (2006)

⁴⁷⁵ cp. Pankratov, ibid., referring to the ”Ivannikova”-case, were a woman, accused of murdering her assumed raper, was set free due to public pressure.

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6. IS THERE A COUNTER PUBLIC SPHERE ON THE RUNET?

6.1. INTRODUCTION, DEFINITIONS, CONTEXT-SETTING

In order to establish a connection to the notion of the Internet as a contribution to democratic plurality, as a means to express views that exist off-mainstream and a platform suitable to provide a space for the ‘breeding’ of digital subcultures, it is necessary to explore if subcultures or a counter public exist on the RuNet. A lot of research in this direction has been done by the “Russian Cyberspace.org”-project, and some of their ideas will be cited and used, among them the “decidedly non-opposition statement” they received from many RuNet acteurs, which runs contrary to the Western conception of a counter public sphere or culture of resistance. But first of all, it is necessary to clarify where the terms ‘counter public’ (sphere) and subculture come from, out of which societal context, even if a fixed definition might not be possible.

Subculture was first defined as everything which was not ‘high culture’ - this is the former understanding which was common until the middle of the 20 ^th century. Today, according to a broader understanding of ‘culture’ i.a. through the Cultural Studies, the term ‘culture’ embraces high culture, popular culture and all subcultures, i.e. all subsystems of one culture. ⁴⁷⁶ Subculture is always connected to a certain mainstream culture and the society in which it exists. A subculture can be characterized by a rebellious attitude or a radical political ideology, but this is not necessarily so. The self-conception as ‚oppositional’ doesn’t make sense outside of the context and the symbolic codes of the society in which the subculture emerges. Different subcultures develop their own symbolic codes and languages, e.g. according to clothes, fashion, language, music, ideological and political symbols and so forth. Digital subcultures develop, accordingly, digital codes and languages which are connected to the technological environment wherein they emerge. ⁴⁷⁷ “If the subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, then it may be described as a counterculture.” ⁴⁷⁸ The related term „counterculture“ became popular through the student protest movements of the 1960’s and “is used to describe a social group whose values and norms of behavior run counter” to those of the societal mainstream. ⁴⁷⁹ Countercultures define themselves in opposition to the cultural and political mainstream in society, but “are incapable of independent existence”. 480

The German researchers Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher define counter public (Gegenöffentlichkeit) as activities for the dissemination of information and opinions, thatbased on a critical approach towards the media - try to attract the people’s attention on subjects

⁴⁷⁶ Ref. here i. a. to the ‚cultural turn’, as depicted by Stuart Hall in: Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997)

⁴⁷⁷ cp. Goriunova (2006)

⁴⁷⁸ Wikipedia Entry ‘Subculture’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subculture, as of 12.12.2006

⁴⁷⁹ Wikipedia Entry ‘Counterculture’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture as of 12.12.2006

⁴⁸⁰ Goriunova, l.c.

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that are neglected by the traditional media, but are nevertheless important for the general public”. ⁴⁸¹ This definition might bear a too strong cultural imprint from the West German context to be applied as such on the specifics of the Russian Internet and society, where such a distinct tradition of media criticism did not exist in this form.

The counter public sphere could - to put it simply - be defined as a space where counterculture takes place, is practiced, but not necessarily with a political connotation. If the Internet in Russia represents such a place, must be seen in the context of different social preconditions and the historical background of socialism. The “uniform information space” in the USSR created different preconditions for the formation of a counterculture than in the West, and as a consequence of political suppression, the 1968er student movement didn’t emerge to the same extent in Russia as in the USA and Western Europe. ⁴⁸² The subculture of dissident tusovkas and the circulation of samizdat existed underground and some researchers and RuNet pioneers see the RuNet culture of the early years as a continuation or equivalent of Soviet underground culture. 483

6.2. RUNET ACTEURS AND THE “NON-OPPOSITIONAL” STATEMENT

The RuNet of today is not a controlled information space, and the other media are under state control only to a certain extent. Some RuNet protagonists and scientist are therefore of different opinion, stating that the dissident culture of the Soviet times is not a suitable model for the critical public on the RuNet. As Goriunova states, for some people “…there is no use speaking in terms of mainstream, domination and resistance or counterculture, as the initial historical, economic, and social conditions of the society drastically differ from those where such a discourse was raised and developed.“ ⁴⁸⁴ The dissident intelligenzija in the Soviet Union defined itself in contrast to the official culture dictated by the CPSU and would not emerge or exist without this contradiction to the repressive state apparatus:

“Offensichtlich ist die sowjetische Dissidenz jedoch kein Modell für die heutige kritische NetzÖffentlichkeit in Rußland. Zu sehr richtete sich diese in ihrem bürgerrechtlichen Engagement wie in ihren ästhetischen Abgrenzungsversuchen gegen die Staatsmacht. Und reproduzierte damit, so die herrschende Re-Interpretation der nachfolgenden Generation, die Werte des Systems lediglich mit einem negativen Vorzeichen.” 485

In their research about the RuNet, Schmidt and Teubener found that many RuNet pioneers refused to be called „oppositional“, although they published some web content that would range,

⁴⁸¹ Plake / Jansen / Schuhmacher: Öffentlichkeit und Gegenöffentlichkeit im Internet (2003), p. 25; Original quote in German, see part 1, Ch. 2.3.3., footnote

⁴⁸² Not taking into account here the extraordinary events of the Prague Spring in 1968.

⁴⁸³ cp. Schmidt / Butwilowski / Teubener (2005)

⁴⁸⁴ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b), p. 71

⁴⁸⁵ Schmidt / Teubener (2005)

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in a Western understanding, in the category of a ‘counter public sphere’ or ‘oppositional’. ⁴⁸⁶ Eugene Gorny says that he does not approve the term counterculture, because the word “counter” implies some kind of confrontation or fight, which gives the term a negative connotation. ⁴⁸⁷ Instead, the alternative sources on the RuNet rather form another kind of cultural space than the official one, which coexists with other kinds of online presence (one could speak of coexisting multiple public spheres). This corresponds to the self-conception of many ‘alternative’ RuNet news sources: for example chief editor of Polit.ru, Vitalij Lebjin “clearly rejects the idea of ‘opposition’ and ‘counter public sphere’ .“ ⁴⁸⁸ Schmidt and Teubener state:

„Ungeachtet der offensichtlich wachsenden Bedeutung des Internet als Medium einer kritischen und alternativen Öffentlichkeit in Rußland, versteht sich die Szene selbst in weiten Teilen keinesfalls als Opposition. Während sich - leicht zugespitzt - die westliche Netzöffentlichkeit mit wohligem Kampfgeschrei in das virtuelle Getümmel stürzte und gegen Kommerzialisierung, Regulierung und Instrumentalisierung des Freiraums Internet mobilisierte, bleiben die Artikulationen der russischen Netzkultur vergleichsweise still und bescheiden, ungeachtet ihrer ja von höchster Instanz - den Nachrichtendiensten - bestätigten Effizienz.“ 489

The question is if the concept of a public sphere, according to theories developed by Westerneuropean scholars such as Habermas during the division of the world in Western and Eastern Bloc and, built on that, concepts of counter public spheres can be applied to the political context in Russia today. The component of resistance, which resonates in the term ‘counter’, together with the context of the student movement in the 1960s in which these terms got their actual connotation, had a different meaning in the political situation of the Soviet Union, where resistance never was possible publicly, but only in private spaces and ‘underground’. Open debate and discussion, not to mention the ideal of rational discourse and democratic deliberation, ⁴⁹⁰ as supposed by Habermas as a precondition for the achievement of a societal consensus, is something that only grows through a ‘tradition’ of practice and is still rare in Russia today. ⁴⁹¹ The term ‘oppositional’ and oppositional forces are, in a democratic system, connected to an effective political opposition represented by parties in the parliament, which

⁴⁸⁶ cp. “Decidedly non-opposition”. Schmidt / Teubener (2006b); In their article about (Counter) public spheres on the RuNet, the authors use the word “counter” either in brackets or in quotation marks.

⁴⁸⁷ Ibid., p. 65, 66; Gorny as cited by Schmidt / Teubener.

⁴⁸⁸ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b), p.67

⁴⁸⁹ Schmidt / Teubener (2005)

⁴⁹⁰ Deliberation: „meint die (öffentliche) argumentationsbasierte Kommunikation über politische Fragen auf

Versammlungen, in Gremien und in der Medienöffentlichkeit.“ „Voraussetzung für eine deliberative Demokratie ist ein Diskurs über alle politischen Themen, der auch als Deliberation bezeichnet wird.“ (Wikipedia, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative_Demokratie, 22.12.2006)

⁴⁹¹ Cp. Brunmeier (2005 : 122), about the election campaigns 2003 and 2004: „Eine lebhafte öffentliche Diskussion, die zu den wesentlichen Bestandteilen demokratischer Wahlen gehört, wurde durch die einseitige Berichterstattung der staatlich kontrollierten Fernsehsender unterminiert.“ An example for a practice of transparency in the media would be parliamentary debates, which are completely broadcasted on Television, like, for example on Phoenix; Cp. also Webster (1995 : 102).

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appears to be weak in Russia, compared to Western democracies. ⁴⁹² But there always exists also a non-official, non-legitimated opposition, which constitutes itself in counter- or subcultures. The term subculture is often associated with some kind of cultural, political or even illegal underground, for which, obviously, the Internet provides much more space than the traditional media. Whether such a counter- or subculture, disregarded of the statements mentioned above, exists on the RuNet, shall be explored in the next chapter.

6.3. EXPRESSIONS OF RUNET ‘COUNTERCULTURE’

In opposition to the statements mentioned above, there are as well researchers and authors, wo are convinced that something like a counterculture (russ.: Контркультура) and oppositional thought exists on RuNet, which manifests itself in the form of online literature, short stories, blogs, contributions and discussions in forums, creative works like films and images, and a certain RuNet slang. ⁴⁹³ First, some rather unpolitical examples of creative RuNet content will be discussed, followed by a presentation of more explicit political projects.

6.3.1. Udaff.com and Padonki

One of the most popular ‘counter cultural’ sources on RuNet is Udaff.com, a site that lives mostly on the posting of the creative works (“kreativs”) of its contributors and authors which form the Udaff-community. Udaff.com exists since 2001, and its also famous predecessor, Fuck.ru, was active from 1998 until 2000. The common ‘genre’ on Udaff are personal short stories, which revolve around subjects of drug and alcohol consumption, sexual relationships and explicit descriptions which range on the verge of pornography, and, together with depictions of marihuana use, bring the content close to illegality. ⁴⁹⁴ The stories are written out of a male and macho perspective, with an attitude and language of disdain for women (frauenverachtend), and the site is garnished with pornographic pictures. The Udaff-users are heterogeneous regarding age, profession and social strata, but are male dominated and intolerant of homosexuals. ⁴⁹⁵ If the Udaff stories form a genre of their own is questionable, but, as Goriunova states, „The Udaff.com subculture has its own stylistic and genre particularities, a particular language and a visual symbolism. It also declares a range of ideological principles” and the Udaff authors frequently call themselves “counter-cultural writers”. ⁴⁹⁶ Wherein the ideological principles consist

⁴⁹² Cp. The Public Opinion Foundation: Electoral Ratings, Population Poll 07.12.2006, according to which 27% of the population would vote for Putin’s Party “United Russia” in a upcoming election, whereas all other parties gain between 6% and less than 1%. 22% would not vote at all and 31% didn’t know how to decide.

http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/policy/party_rating/stat_rating/party_ratings_2006/ed064808 (19.12.2006)

⁴⁹³ Cp. Schmidt / Teubener / Zurawksi (2005): Interview with Dmitri Iwanow.; Cp. Brunmeier, Gorny.

⁴⁹⁴ Olga Goriunova (2006): Male Literature of Udaff.com and Other Networked Artistic Practices of the Cultural Resistance.

⁴⁹⁵ Goriunova, ibid., p. 187

⁴⁹⁶ ibid., p. 187, 190

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- except of the slogan “sex, pot, alcohol” - does not become clear, and the subcultural component seems to be confined to the use of illegal drugs and obscene language, that would not be accepted in any other, ‘official’ media. If the Udaff content represents a counter-culture or mainstream-culture, can be discussed, and the number of members is too large to form a unified opinion about that. Many see themselves as part of a counterculture, but the site may be too popular to represent a sub-culture. As one member states, it rather represents the “predominant culture of Russian men between the age of 20 and 40”, the „real culture of the male population in this country”. ⁴⁹⁷ Goriunova concludes that “the Udaff.com literature cannot be widely commercialized, for it is non-normative and obscene, but this does not deprive it of its mainstream masculine qualifications.” ⁴⁹⁸ An online playground for Russian men, it reflects their clichéd notions about themselves and about women in general. If it is called part of a “protest culture”, the question is, what precisely the goal of such a protest could be. As Udaff is not mainly dedicated to the discussion of political topics, it rather represents a niche or valve for male ‘creativity’ which finds no platfom elsewhere in the Russian media. 499

Udaff-users frequently name themselves padonki (scumbags), an alteration from the Russian word podonki (scum), and connected to the padonki slang, a subcultural language style which developed on the RuNet and can be traced back to its early years. Padonki is characterized by deliberate erroneous spelling (for example “frames” spelled as “fraimz”), word transformations, a special terminology, the use of idioms, obscene words and speech formulas. ⁵⁰⁰ Its origin might be linked to the accidental misspellings of Russian words caused by the faulty encoding of cyrillic characters in the dawn of the RuNet and these misspellings sometimes give the words a double meaning. ⁵⁰¹ The jargon padonkov became usual on ‘Fuck.ru’ and its successor Udaff.com, and since 2005 it also spread in the Russian LiveJournal community, a reason why it is often referred to as the “ZheZhe language”. ⁵⁰² Gorny states that “it can be also read in terms of cultural resistance - not only against official discourse but also against globalization, with its ubiquitous English. The jargon has distinct counter-establishment and counter-cultural connotations but it is mostly used as a means of irony, expressivity and fun.” ⁵⁰³ RLJ provides the soil not only for subcultural linguistic blossoms, but also for a multitude of other creative expressions, such as e.g. creative modifications of a painting by the american musician and artist John Lurie (see below). The original text in the speech bubble - “Surprise” - was replaced by the padonki word “preved”, a modification of “privet” (meaning ‘hallo’ in Russian). The picture

⁴⁹⁷ An Udaff contributor, as cited by Goriunova, p. 188

⁴⁹⁸ ibid., p. 193

⁴⁹⁹ Another very popular countercultural site is Litprom.ru; All conclusions and judgements made here are based on Goriunovas article, as I, due to my lack of Russian language, was not able to carry out some research on the Udaff content myself.

⁵⁰⁰ Gorny (2006)

⁵⁰¹ Cp. Ch. 1.2 and Schneider / Allan (2000): Interview with Olia Lialina.

An alphabetical listing of padonki expressions and explanations in English can be found on Russki-mat.Net, a kind of dictionary for Russian swear-words, under “Jargon Padonkov / Scumbag’s Slang”: http://www.russki-mat.Net/e/padonkoff.htm (26.01.2207)

⁵⁰² Gorny (2006); ZheZhe is an abbreviation of Zhivoj Zhurnal (LiveJournal)

⁵⁰³ Gorny, ibid.; Accentuation added subsequently.

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gained remarkable popularity, circulated in the RJL community on a large scale and was altered into a number of different varations. The „preved“ phenomenon was even subject of press articles and some users “formed an online community solely to varations on the theme”. ⁵⁰⁴ As a means for political agitation in form of protest banners, one of the variations was created by a RLJ user in the context of “Blog Wars”:

Fig. 5: Altered version of the picture “Bear Surprise” by John Lurie.

Source: http://blog.artnn.ru/2006/05/10/prevedru-polnyiy-preved (28.12.2006)

At last, the genre of animated cartoon and its most prominent figure “Macjanja” shall be mentioned briefly, because it gained Kult-Status already years ago on the RuNet. Macjanjas creator is Oleg Kuvaev, a painter and creative artist, who also contributes to the RLJ journal community by blogging satirical videos. ⁵⁰⁵ Again, as in the case of Udaff.com, the status as a subculture (in the sense of a cultural niche) can be questioned, because Macjanja gained great popularity among RuNet users of the “second generation”. 506

⁵⁰⁴ cp. Victor Sonkin: “The "preved" phenomenon gained enormous popularity on the Russian-language Internet with the speed of an avalanche”. The Moscow Times, May 12, 2006

and the Wikipedia Entry “Preved”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preved (27.12.2006).

⁵⁰⁵ Bowles (2006); The Macjanja movies (in Russian) can be watched on: www.mult.ru/projects/mas/ (12.12.2006); Information about Oleg Kuvaev: http://www.sams.spb.ru/paint_e.html (in English) and http://peoples.ru/art/designer/kuvaev91693v/index.html (in Russian). (22.01.2007)

⁵⁰⁶ Bowles, ibid.

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6.3.2. Characteristics

The RuNet counterculture is generally characterized by an almost limitless freedom to express anything in terms of drug use, alcohol, sex and politics, not restricted by any kind of ‘political correctness’ - a freedom that is not understood in comparable Western sites and forums, for instance in Germany, where expressions of neo-nationalists are closely observed and the denial of the Holocaust is forbidden by law. In Russia there exists also a long tradition of anecdotal jokes (анекдо́ ты) and black humour, that was used to spoof literary or other cultural works. Political jokes and satire reach back to the days of the Soviet underground, and could for the first time flourish openly during the period of Glasnost, whereas in the era of Stalin, telling of political jokes could lead to imprisonment. ⁵⁰⁷ The RuNet plays without doubt a great role in the further prospering of Russian counter- and subcultural expressions. The afore mentioned political satire blog “Vladimir Vladimirovich™” by Maksim Kononenko belongs to the most frequently read RuNet sites, and Udaff.com reaches user numbers that range in the dimension of political news magazines like Polit.ru or higher. ⁵⁰⁸ Such a great popularity questions the status of the sites as ‘countercultural’ or at least ‘subcultural’. The characteristics of RuNet countercultural expressions can be summarized as follows: 509

- a spirit of ‘anything goes’, no taboos, no political correctness

- wide use of explicit language, frequent descriptions of drug use, alcohol use, sexual practices and violence

- political incorrect content, such as xenophobia, racism, homophobia, misogyny

- parody, black humour and anecdotal jokes applied to any kind of cultural works (popular and high culture)

- a ‘tolerant’ attitude towards copyright concerns and intellectual property, promoting a culture of sharing 510

The limitless ‘freedom of speech’ on the RuNet has of course its disadvantages: compared to the early years of the RuNet, when liberal and democratic attitudes prevailed, the number of people with nationalist, intolerant and extremist attitude has risen in recent years. ⁵¹¹ Insulting and offending postings, for example in forums of news media appear frequently (cp. Ch. 5.3,

⁵⁰⁷ Lewis Ben: Totgelacht! Eine Geschichte des Kommunismus; Dokumentation (BRD 2006); Erstausstrahlung: Arte TV, 08.01.2007; http://www.arte.tv/de/woche/244,broadcastingNum=598179,day=3,week=2,year=2007.html; On the other hand, telling jokes lost some of its fascination during Glasnost, because joke-telling had the function of a vent or outlet in the Soviet Union.

⁵⁰⁸ cp. Goriunova (2006), p. 184

⁵⁰⁹ The information was compiled from a conversation with Natalia Ipatova, researcher on Russian online communities, on Nov. 24., 2006, and the Wikipedia entry “Russian counterculture”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture (29.12.2006)

⁵¹⁰ Schmidt (2003c); Schmidt / Teubener (2006a)

⁵¹¹ „Wenn diese Foren Ende der 90er Jahre ein Ort des freien Meinungsaustausches der russischen „Intelligenzija“ darstellten und ganz im Zeichen der Demokratie standen, so trifft man in den letzten Jahren dort immer häufiger Menschen, die von der liberalen Gesinnung weit entfernt sind. Antisemitismus, Antiamerikanismus, Fremdenhass und unverhüllte Propaganda für die neue Staatsmacht und ihre Politik beherrschen vielmehr die russischen Web-Foren.“ Brunmeier (2005 : 144)

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InoSMI.ru), a reason why some forums had to be closed due to overwhelming xenophobic, racist or other kind of “hate speech”, for example the forum of the news source Grani.ru. ⁵¹² The forum of the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta received a lot of hate speech and disparagement as a reaction to Anna Politkovskayas articles about Chechenia. 513

To adjust the picture of alternative Russian Internet culture, it must be mentioned that also a multitude of respectable literary, cultural and political projects exists on the RuNet. The most well-known ‘offline’-project connected to Net circles is the “OGI”-project, a cultural club in Moscow in the tradition of the intelligenzija ‘kitchen club’, where a variety of cultural events such as readings (Lesungen), lectures, political and cultural discussions, concerts etc. take place. ⁵¹⁴ The reason to mention it here is that the OGI-club has connections to online sources like Polit.ru and others, with RuNet ‘VIPs’ giving speeches and holding discussions about topics that are discussed at the same time on the Net. OGI also comprises a publishing house and a bookstore. 515

6.4. POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROJECTS

6.4.1. Websites

Along with the more culturally oriented RuNet projects, there are of course also a number of politically motivated projects with a more or less decided political goal, which can be classified under the label „protest culture“. A few examples shall be listed here: One is the project Moskva kotoroij njet (“The Moscow which doesn’t exist anymore“), which mobilizes against the urban development policy of Moscows mayor Juri Lushkov and the destruction of architectural monuments in the city of Moscow. The project collects signatures, activates supporters and organizes protest actions. ⁵¹⁶ The site „Sovest.org“ is dedicated to the investigation of facts about the Yukos-affair and protests against the imprisonment of Michail Chodorkovsky and other former members of the Yukos management. Sovest.org presents a counterdraft to the official version of the affair, based on documents about the case, and furthermore formulates protest letters and files petitions in the course of the Yukos lawsuit. 517

⁵¹² “Unsere Seite besaß einmal ein Forum. Dieses mussten wir jedoch nach einiger Zeit aufgeben, da zunehmend extremistische, nationalistische, anti-westliche und anti-semitische Äußerungen das Forum okkupierten.“ Nikolai Rudenski, deputy chief editor of Grani.ru, in an interview with Heckmann et.al., Kultura Analyse 1/2005.

⁵¹³ Brunmeier (2005 : 144), who considers the possibility that the discrediting postings could be placed by FSB-Agents as a campaign to damage Politkovskaya’s public image and that of other regime-critical journalists. She refers to Polyanskaya / Kirov / Lomko (cp. Ch. 5.3, InoSMI.ru).

⁵¹⁴ Prochorowa (2005)

⁵¹⁵ http://www.ogi.ru/

⁵¹⁶ http://moskva.kotoroy.Net/ (26.01.2007); Brunmeier (2005 : 115f)

⁵¹⁷ Brunmeier, ibid.; www.sovest.org; An English version of the site is available. There are a number of international blogs dedicated to the Chodorkovsky case which are not based in Russia, for example http://mikhail_khodorkovsky_society.blogspot.com; http://www.khodorkovskytrial.com/ (30.12.2006)

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A special project of the news magazine Grani.ru is “Russia without Putin” (www.boycott.ru) - a site dedicated against Putin’s politics. An older anti-Putin site, www.antiputin.ru, is not active anymore. Furthermore Oleg Kireev ought to be mentioned, one of the few “real” political underground artists on RuNet, with his anarchistic oriented site www.getto.ru, which has not been actualized since the year 2001, but is still available on the Net. ⁵¹⁸ There exists, as in many other countries, an underground scene of hackers in Russia, and some literature related to hacking and science-fictional subjects. According to an article published in 2000, a peculiarity of the Russian hacker scene is its anti-American attitude coupled with a nationalist and xenophobic mindset. ⁵¹⁹ Consequently, the hacking intrusions were targeting American softwaregiants such as Microsoft - which of course is a global goal of hackers internationally, but normally with a less xenophobic background.

6.4.2. Blogs

As already mentioned in Part 1 and Chapter 3.2, blogs play an important role as a platform for political discussions. They provide the Russian media users with information otherwise unavailable in the traditional media, and establish a connection between political incidents, public action on the streets and the opinions of the large blogger community. They thereby create a kind of feedback channel to public opinion, which the traditional Russian media miss. “In addition to its role as an alternative news source, the Russian blogosphere has had political influence through its promotion and documentation of protests” says a website which provides information about the Russian media system. 520

One example for successful political activism via a personal blog can be found on “The Drunkablog”, in which regime critic Marina Litvinovich is cited from the “Moscow Times”, how she decribes the reaction of blog readers who came to a demonstration against the treatment of a severe hazing incident in the Russian army: "The demonstration came about spontaneously," organizer Marina Litvinovich said Sunday. "I posted a message saying 'Let's go and protest at the Defense Ministry' on my blog, and I was surprised by the huge feedback I got." ⁵²¹ Hundreds of participants gathered at the announced place and, as the blog “ZheZhe [dot] us” reports, “Journalist and frequent blogger Sergey Varshavchik documented the rally, posting pictures of the event the day it occurred. His reporting and other Internet coverage of the event was particularly important as the protest took place during a print media blackout due to a national

⁵¹⁸ More information about Oleg Kireev: http://www.next5minutes.org/viewperson.jsp?personid=1057 (26.01.2007)

⁵¹⁹ Sonja Margolina: „Dostojewskis Erben. Raskolnikow knackt den Microsoft-Code“; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.11.2000; Schmidt (2003c): “Die Idee der Hacker-Anarchie“.

⁵²⁰ No author, ZheZhe [dot] us, http://zhezhe.wordpress.com/russian-blogosphere/ (30.12.2006)

⁵²¹ http://thedrunkablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/all-drunkablog-union-of-talentless.html (30.12.2006). The hazing victim, private Andrei Sychyov, was beaten so badly by other soldiers that he lost both legs and genitals, who had to be amputated after the treatment was delayed several days. Original article: Mereu / Yablokova: “Hundreds Rally for Ivanovs Ouster”, The Moscow Times, January 30, 2006. Cp. Claire Bigg: “Russia: Brutal Hazing Incident Rocks Army.” Radio Free Europe, Friday, January 27, 2006.

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holiday, and the main television channels did not cover the rally.” ⁵²² Litvinovich also hosts the site PravdaBeslana.ru (The Truth about Beslan), a collection of material about Beslan and the Nord-Ost Theatre hostage tragedies. 523

Apart from the RLJ, there is already a number of Russian blogs and blogs about Russia in English, many of them with a decidedly Anti-Putin attitude, for example “La Russophobe” or David McDuffs “A Step at a Time”. ⁵²⁴ They do not belong to the RuNet, but shall be mentioned here, as they provide important alternative political information about Russia for Englishspeaking readers. “La Russophobe” for example collects information about opponents of the current Russian regime and warns of more assaults on regime critics, lists as people in danger Marina Litvinovich, Human Rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina and others. ⁵²⁵ The blog contains an extensive list of links to other Russian blogs, Russia-related media, institutions, persons of political life as well as discussion threads about a large number of controversial political topics.

6.5. NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Natalia Konradowa has done some research on social movements in Russia and their presence on the Internet. In her article, she states that the social movements in Russia differ a lot from movements in Europe, due to the historical conditions. There is for example not a distinct antiglobalization movement in Russia, rather a number of nationalist and other extremist movements which use the term “Anti-Globalization” for their goals. ⁵²⁶ A network of ecological organizations exists, but they are not leftist as comparable organizations in the West (for example Green Peace or the Green Party in Germany), but rather loyal to the government. Extremist youth movements exist both on the right and on the left wing, with the problem of nationalist, neonazi- and neofascist groups being much stronger and more acute than any kind of comparably marginal left-wing extremism.

Social movements often lead to the foundation of NGOs, which give them an official status and enable them to act on the political and legal arena. The Internet is especially important for NGOs, because they can build networks, publish uncensored reports, offer information and support on Internet portals and databases. ”Free flow of information was precisely the appeal of the Internet to NGOs. The ability to network with others inside Russia and convey information to

⁵²² http://zhezhe.wordpress.com/russian-blogosphere/ (30.12.2006); “ZheZhe [dot] us” claims to be an english-speaking representative of the RLJ community with a neutral attitude and provides a lot of information about the Russian media system and its grievance. However, it does not seem to be an active blog which is integrated into the blogger community (as any comments etc. are missing), but rather provides content on the base of formerly gathered information.

⁵²³ http://www.pravdabeslana.ru/english.htm (30.12.2006)

⁵²⁴ http://halldor2.wordpress.com/ (20.01.2007)

⁵²⁵ http://russophobe.blogspot.com/2006/11/sunday-photos-magazine-special-edition.html (30.12.2006)

⁵²⁶ Konradowa (2005): Gesellschaftliche Bewegungen in Russland und ihre Präsenz im Internet

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potential supporters outside was particularly important to pressure groups such as environmentalists, who were often concerned with corporate operations conducted in remote regions of Russia where local populations were very small.” 527

Strictly speaking, Non-Governmental Organisations do not necessarily belong to the counterculture, but they have to be included here, since they play an important role as a political counteracting force to the official government policy and point to political and humanitarian deficiencies in Russia. The choice of NGOs will be confined to the area of freedom of opinion and human rights, as they are relevant to the over-all subject. In Russia, NGOs play a crucial role for the formation and strengthening of the civil society, which can be supported by their engagement. ⁵²⁸ At the same time, the Russian government and authorities have tried repeatedly to hinder NGOs, especially Human Rights organizations involved with Chechenia, in their work. ⁵²⁹ One method to control NGOs more strictly is the new NGO-law, which imposes a time-consuming registration procedure on all foreign NGOs that work in Russia, and further requires regular detailed reports from all national NGOs on their work, which exceeds the personal resources of many organisations. ⁵³⁰ Further hindrances come through tax legislation and complicated access to financing sources. 531

The following list presents a small choice of examples of Russian NGOs in the field of free speech and human rights and their web presences: 532

Freedom of Speech, Media & Society

- Moscovskij Libertarium: a very important organization in the fight for free information, freedom of opinion. Moscow Libertarium was the first organisation which made the SORM initiative public and has documented it extensively on its Website (in Russian): www.libertarium.ru.

- The Glasnost Defence Foundation: fights for press freedom in Russia and supports journalists in legal matters. Extensive documentation and regular reports on all indicents and matters related to the subject (in Russian). www.gdf.ru

⁵²⁷ Bowles (2005), p. 28

⁵²⁸ cp. Daniel / Roginskij (2003), Siegert (2005)

⁵²⁹ cp. Jens Siegert (2005): NGOs in der gelenkten Demokratie; The text discusses the relation between state and NGOs in Russia and comes to the conclusion that there is no systematic inhibition, but legal and political instruments to control the NGOs more thoroughly, and that some cases of direct repression occured.

⁵³⁰ cp. Anatoly Medetsky: 'Worst Fears' of NGOs Realized; The Moscow Times, April 17, 2006 (Archive access denied). Mirrored on IREX, http://www.irex.org/newsroom/inthepress/06/0417-russian-ngos.asp (30.12.2006); St. Petersburg Times, September 19, 2006: http://www.sptimes.ru/story/18855 (30.12.2006). See also http://www.irex.org/newsroom/news/2006/0928-cssp-new.asp; The International Research Exchange Board runs a program where it provides extensive information about for Russian NGOs and Civil Society Development: http://www.irex.org/programs/cssp/index.asp (30.12.2006)

⁵³¹ Siegert, l.c.

⁵³² The estimated number of active NGOs in Russia lies between 40.000 and 70.000; cp. Daniel / Roginskij (2003)

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- Public Opinion Foundation: NGO which issues regular reports, surveys and population polls on a multitude of societal topics. www.fom.ru (English version available)

Human Rights Protection

- Memorial: All-Russia society for the perpetuation of the memory of victims of political repression. Dedicated to the investigation of atrocities and human rights violations in Russia’s past as well as the defence of human rights in the present. www.memo.ru (English and German version available)

- Human Rights Online: large Information portal about human rights providing a database of laws, a library, documents, news about human rights concerns and a forum ⁵³³ www.hro.org (in Russian)

- The All-Russia public movement ‘For Human Rights’: Umbrella Organisation for human rights organizations with more than 100 regional and local organizations listed as its members. The movement brings together both human rights organizations and other civil society organizations and groups. www.zaprava.ru (There is a mission statement in English).

- Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees (UCSMR): Organization of soldiers’ mothers founded in 1989 to combat hazing and other human rights violations in the Russian army. www.ucsmr.ru/english/index.htm. 534

- Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights: its goal is “to support development of democratic institutions and sustainable mechanisms of human rights protection in Russia by addressing public policy issues and facilitating civic participation in policy decisions.” The websites provides a regular newsletter about legislation processes in the State Duma. www.demokratia.ru/en (English version)

- Moscow Center for Prison Reform: organisation which is involved with prisoners rights, the investigation and memory of atrocities in past Gulags and fights for a prison reform and against inhuman conditions in present prisons of Russia. www.prison.org (English version is out-dated)

Of all these organisations, the Memorial society is the oldest and largest human rights organization in Russia. It was founded in the period of Glasnost and Perestroika with the goal to investigate and commemorate the victims of soviet repression and undertake historical research about the persecution and the dissident movement. The society’s first chairman wassignificantly - the popular dissident, scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sacharow. Memorial provides a number of specialized libraries, a repository of documents, a museum and education centers and works on a multitude of human rights concerns in Russia’s ‘hotspots’

⁵³³ Konradowa (2005)

⁵³⁴ The Union planned to form a political party, but faced massive repression from police authorities and political opponents. Cp. St. Peterburg Times, 07.12.2004, http://www.sptimes.ru/story/2260 (20.12.2006)

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today. ⁵³⁵ The largest umbrella organization for moscow-based NGOs is the ‘Narodnaja Assambleja’ (www.civitas.ru).

6.6. SUMMARY

Starting from a ‘Western’ definition and understanding of the terms subculture, counterculture and counter public sphere, it can be stated that the comprehension and concepts of these terms cannot simply be transferred and applied to the Russian cultural context. This finding gets confirmed by the statements of some RuNet pioneers who refused to be called “oppositional” or to take an ideological standpoint. Nevertheless, there are researchers voicing a different opinion, as well as protagonists of RuNet communities who see themselves as part of a counterculture, for example the authors of Udaff.com. The RuNet slang padonki can clearly be regarded as a subcultural expression, and there are plenty of creative works in the form of texts, visual works and videos that bear the characteristics of a subculture, most of which circulate in the Russian LiveJournal community. On the part of politically motivated projects, a selection of websites were mentioned, as well as some samples of blogs. Relating to these, admittedly the research possibilities were restricted to information from English and secondary sources, so that a much greater amount of political websites and blogs in Russian language must be assumed. Non-Governmental Organisations play a crucial role as agents of civil society and as representatives resp. corporations of social movements, especially in the sensitive area of human rights, in which violations frequently occur. In times of an increasingly hostile climate towards Human Rights Organisations in Russia, their presence on the Internet, nationally as well as internationally, plays an important role as a means of information, public relations and mobilization of supporters.

As a résumé, it can be stated that countercultural expressions exist on the RuNet, in the cultural as well as the politically motivated area. These expressions might not be of the same extent, shape and explicitness as is the case of the Western part of the Internet in terms of leftist ideological and oppositional standpoints, ⁵³⁶ but are very explicit in their language and creative depictions. Tolerance among Russians towards utterings of pornographic, xenophobic, misogynic or otherwise extreme character is very broad so that in fact there seems to be a great freedom of expression among RuNet communities, such as Udaff.com and LiveJournal. This freedom of course creates problems, too, which are evoked by insulting postings of forum

⁵³⁵ Memorial: “Who and what is Memorial?” http://www.memo.ru/eng/about/whowe.htm (30.12.2006)

⁵³⁶ Cp. Schmidt / Teubener (2005): „Der russischen Netzkultur fällt es schwer, auf die geänderten gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen in Putins Rußland (…) zu reagieren. (…) Der Abschied vom Naturreservat Internet, (…), hin zu einer Multiplizität von konkurrierenden Öffentlichkeiten, wie es die US-amerikanische Politologin Nancy Fraser formulierte, fällt schwer. Denn diese erforderte eine stärkere ideologische Positionierung, die vor dem Hintergrund der Erfahrungen der Sowjetzeit instinktiv abgelehnt wird.“

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readers that have compelled administrators to take rigorous measures. Inside the communities of RLJ however, it was mostly possible to solve conflicts without help from outside.

Whether or not the kind of counterculture as described above has any real impact on politics is hard to judge at this point. There are a few examples, such as Marina Litvinovich`s appeal to take part in a demonstration which had real effects and consequences in the shape of political action. On all accounts, the RuNet and the English-speaking Internet offers a variety of possibilities and platforms for Russian political opponents and thinkers critical of the government enabling them to express and spread their views to a Russian resp. international audience.

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7. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION PART 2

To recapitulate the findings about the Russian Internet, the relevant points having emerged in the different chapters will be summed up and viewed against the key questions of the thesis. The authoress will then try to come to a conclusion that will be reviewed against the findings of experts.

The first precondition of the RuNet which has to be taken into consideration to judge its agency is an Internet penetration on the Russian territory of about 23% of the population at present and the digital divide between rural and urban regions resp. old and young people. Television is still the main medium for the majority of the population, and has therefore also the greatest impact on the formation of public opinion (or, respectively, on the loss of credibility of the media, the frustration of the population about the coverage resulting in a certain passivity regarding politics). The Internet as a source for a variety of information and a potential platform for the freedom of expression is still available only to a minor part of the Russian population which leads to an information inequality between the young, urban, well-off, educated people and the disadvantaged part of the population. The hypothesis can be posed that, at this stage of the Internet development, the Internet rather amplifies inequalities than to level them.

In times of tight control of the media system and increasing governmental ownership of media companies under President Putin, at least as far as TV and in parts the press is concerned, the Internet can play a major role as an alternative medium to the traditional media. The traditional media are affected by a variety of methods of indirect censorship, by journalists’ self-censorship due to social pressure, by legal prosecution or even by threat to life or physical condition of journalists, so that in the present situation it cannot be assumed that the media in Russia are able to carry out a controlling function in the sense of a “fourth estate”.

There is quite a number of reliable high-quality news sources on the RuNet, which are correspondingly read by an influential part of society, such as journalists, intellectuals, politicians, and academic professionals. Some of these sources have been initiated by RuNet pioneers that later played an influential role as ‘political technologists’ with close ties to the Kremlin. Here, the entanglement of RuNet and politics comes onto the scene, with the implications of 1) the creation of governmental RuNet sources that are funded or owned by the state and practice government-conform news coverage, and 2) the instrumentalization of creative forces of pioneers of the RuNet, but not by any governmental powers, rather by the development of some of these members of the “Internet-élite” to political PR-managers of the Putin administration. Schmidt and Teubener criticize this development out of a Western perspective:

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“The absorption of a critical and creative web community into official and commercial institutions is a phenomenon of general relevance. Thus, the open content movement has been extensively criticized for its collaboration with the global players of the information industry. An assumption of purity of personal notions, economical and political intentions would be naive in a complex world, but the underlying motives differ with regard to the cultural contexts. Whereas, in the ‘West’, collaboration with the capitalist system is discussed, in the Russian context political instrumentalisation - both by the state and the so-called oligarchs - appears to be a sensitive issue”. 537

Dmitri Ivanov, a former associate of the Foundation for Effective Politics (FEP), said in an interview, that he believes that the election propaganda on the Internet has not influenced the outcome of the 2004 election on a big scale - and judges the effect of governmental campaigns on the Internet as almost insignificant. ⁵³⁸ The role of the Internet as a means of effective propaganda - contrary to the view uttered by Marcus Alexander - seems to be minor compared with its role for reliable, impartial news coverage, as a platform for cultural projects, social movements or just a space for the expression of every thinkable opinion in the blogs of the “LiveJournal”-community. As Schmidt / Teubener put it: “… the individual, seemingly apolitical and private use of the Internet may have the most revolutionary impact on the performance of cultural identity, on the emergence of a ‘counter’ public sphere on the Russian Internet as it manifests itself, for example, in the amazing popularity of the weblogs in Russia.” This leads to one of the key questions of this thesis, namely: Is there a significant contribution of the Internet to plurality and a more democratic media landscape in Russia? This - quite broad and general question - can be narrowed down to more specific questions, for example: Do people feel more free to utter their opinion and is there more plurality of opinion and less self-censorship than in TV and the press? According to the findings, this question can clearly be answered with a “yes”. Despite surveillance measures such as SORM and other legal measures described in Chapter 5, and despite the recurrent waves of panic-mongering among RuNet users, there is still no real threat, let alone a total state control of the RuNet, and members of the RuNet community in LiveJournal and elsewhere can practice freedom of speech, opinion and expression to a probably greater extent than members of some Western communities.

Coming back to the key question posed further above, I would like to refer to Viktoria Brunmeier who judges the role, the impact and significance of the Internet in Russia quite positively, as follows: Especially for Russia, the Internet is of utmost importance, because all kinds of sociopolitical positions can be discussed there openly and a counter public sphere can be constituted. The possibility of communication among citizens opens up new perspectives for the development of structures of civil society as a counterpart to the enforced power of state. Many projects, citizens’ initiatives and action groups show that the RuNet is a democratic space free of censorship. However, the problem of these initiatives is, that without the support of the

⁵³⁷ Schmidt / Teubener (2006b : 63)

⁵³⁸ Russian Cyberspace.org: Interview with Dmitri Iwanow (2004). He therewith contradicts the decisive role the FEP played in Putin’s first election in 2000, indicating that the FEP has lost significance in political life.

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traditional media, they do not have a chance to gain public attention and, therewith, no effectivity. 539

Her findings correspond for the most part with my conclusions, with the exception of an additional aspect, namely the role of the traditional media for citizens’ initiatives. Brunmeier says that Internet campaigns are only effective in connection with other media, especially TV. TV as the leading medium and at the same time strongest state-controlled medium with its largely levelled and standardized content, influences the outcomes of elections decisively. The democratic basis in Russia is very weak, as can be seen at the FOM electoral ratings of 2006 (see Chapter 6.2, footnote). There was a high percentage of non-voters and undecided people, combined with an overwhelming majority for Putin`s party “United Russia”. Passivity, indifference and disenchantment with politics is a big problem for the political future of Russia as a democratic system, combined with power claims and power struggles that are going on behind the scenes, pulling the ties and influencing the outcome already in the run-up to the elections. The democratic opposition appears to be weak and the most interesting oppositional force in Russia at the moment might be “A different Russia” - an association of political groups that want to run as oppositional coalition for the elections in 2008 under the leadership of Garry Kasparow. This maybe leads too far away from the actual subject, but should be mentioned here as a background for the potential meaning of an uncensored medium such as the Internet, whose influence can only become greater with increasing Internet access of the population.

Last but not least Habermas should be related to once again, and (quoted from part 1) his prediction of a demise of the public sphere in the 20 ^th century, through 1.) commercialization and monopolization of the media and 2.) the professionalization and manipulation of information through public relations in the field of politics. ⁵⁴⁰ He criticised the manipulative effect of public relations that transform the discourse of public affairs to a mere “display of power” and a play with disguised interests rather than to create the foundations for a rational discourse. ⁵⁴¹ Political technology is the Russian analogy to political PR and spin doctors in Western countries, but with a slightly different meaning. Political technologists in the past had a far-reaching influence as election campaigners serving the interests of the President, and these campaigns were - not only, but among other media - launched on the Internet.

Regarding point 1.), another analogy to the development observed by Habermas can be noted: commercialization is not so much the problem in the Russian media system, but rather the takeover of many media companies by state-associated firms, which also leads to a concentration on the media market, albeit not under the same economic conditions which served as the base of Habermas’ theory. In any case, a growing governmental influence leads to a media coverage that is merely guided by political interests rather than it represents an

⁵³⁹ translated from Brunmeier (2005 : 116)

⁵⁴⁰ Part 1, Chapter 2.2, ref. to Webster (1995)

⁵⁴¹ Cp. Part 1, Chapter 2.2, quotation Webster.

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independent and pluralist media landscape. A - in a Habermasian sense - functioning public sphere cannot be supposed in Russia (even if this may sound like a snap judgement), and the potential of the Internet as an improvement in a situation of lack of participation in political discourse and an “engineering of consent“ ⁵⁴² might be considerable. Whether the emergence of a critical public on the Net will actually affect the course of events and lead to a strenghtening of a civil society - independent from economy and state - cannot be predicted here. It might equally only lead to “a false sense of empowerment“ ⁵⁴³ or to the question as Howard Rheingold formulated it: “Can virtual communities help revitalize civil society, or are online debates nothing but distracting simulations of authentic discourse?” ⁵⁴⁴ At least the Internet plays an important role for the information and communication about political scandals and disasters in Russia that get neglected by the traditional media. In case of a stronger growth of state control, it could bypass these and provide and keep open an impartial information source.

Finally, the main points shall be summarized:

- The Internet penetration in Russia does not yet reach a quarter of the population, but that will change, and, with growing access, the influence of the Internet as a medium contributing to public opinion will grow.

- The Internet resp. the RuNet can contribute to a plurality of opinions in a situation of increasing state control in the traditional media.

- Social movements and their usage of the Net can potentially strenghten civil society.

- The Russian LiveJournal blogging community is a widespread and important platform for free expression and discussion of political topics.

- There is a number of credible high quality news media on the RuNet that contribute to plurality in the news sector.

- There are laws and regulations regarding the Internet, but so far most of them proved to be ineffective, due to a lack of implementation and enforcement or due to the possibility to circumvent them.

- There is a great tolerance and freedom of expression in Russian online communities, regardless of political correctness. The dark side of this development is the increase of xenophobia, racism, nationalism, homophobia, and other kinds of intolerant, backward and extremist mindsets in online forums. This constitutes one of the crucial problems of free speech, ⁵⁴⁵ and creates conflicts which can sometimes, but not always be settled by mechanisms of self-regulation in the concerned communities.

- There are power structures and political interests of the “real world” which become manifest on the Net, such as commercial interests and governmental ownership.

⁵⁴² Boeder (2002)

⁵⁴³ Quotation Papacharissi, Part 1, Chapter 2.3.5

⁵⁴⁴ Rheingold: „Virtual Communities, Phony Civil Society?“ (1998). Rheingold poses this question out of an US-american context.

⁵⁴⁵ cp. Part 1, Chapter 2.3.4

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But because of the expansive character of the Internet, they cannot unfold the same exclusive or expelling character - everybody finds “his place” on the Net, if he wants to. - There are governmental-controlled media on the RuNet, but again, they cannot be so effective as e.g. governmental-controlled TV Channels, because nobody can force the Internet users to read them - they have the free choice.

Anna Bowles gives a general prospect in her article “The Changing Face of the RuNet” saying that „the RuNet is, in 2005, an integrated part of Russian culture. It has not proved to be merely a highway for cultural imperialism, nor has it remained free of commercial globalization, instead diversifying to accommodate these aspects of modern Russian life among many others - a vast expansion that, in itself, seems likely to be proof against effective interference by the government or other bodies.” Taking this as a closing word, the hope remains that the RuNet may prosper as a sphere - and not the last realm - of free speech in Russia, and neither turn into a means of political instrumentalization, nor into a space dominated by xenophobic and nationalist forces, but rather into a medium of support for the development of civil society, irrespective of looming authoritarian tendencies.

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Stöcker, Christian: Jürgen Habermas und die Netz-Nerds; Spiegel Online, 23.06.2006 http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,423204,00.html (26.01.2007)

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Stöcker, Christian: Community-Netz: Die Zeit der Kopfjäger; Spiegel Online, 01.08.2007 http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,429551,00.html (26.01.2007)

Thompson, Garry (2003): Weblogs, warblogs, the public sphere, and bubbles. In: Transformations, Issue No. 7, September 2003;

http://transformations.cqu.edu.au/journal/issue_07/article_02.shtml (19.01.2007)

Villeneuve, Nart: Technical Ways to get round Censorship; in: Reporters Without Borders: Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents; ed. by Sylvie Devilette; France, August 2005, p. 63 - 78; http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Bloggers_Handbook2.pdf (16.01.2007)

Webster, Frank (1995): Information Management and Manipulation: Jürgen Habermas and the Decline of the Public Sphere; In: Webster: Theories of the Information Society; Routledge: London and New York.

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REFERENCES PART 2

Note: The press articles are listed in an extra section on page 118.

Alexander, Marcus (2003): The Internet in Putin’s Russia; Reinventing a Technology of Authoritarianism; Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association, University of Leicester, UK, April 15-17, 2003; http://www.henryfarrell.net/internet/alexander.pdf (27.09.2006).

Ref.: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~malexand/html/papers_and_essays.html (16.10.2006)

Alexander, Marcus (2004): Internet and Democratization: The Development of Russian Internet Policy; http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3996/is_200410/ai_n9466391 (21.11.2006)

Bertelsmann Stiftung: The Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) 2006. http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/ (07.11.2006)

Interview with Dr. Alexander S. Bikkulov, Head of Information, Analysis Service and International Contacts in the e-Development Partnership in the North-West of Russia (PRIOR NW) - (Part of the Electronic-Russia-Program) on 20.10.2006; The Interview is documented as a summarized transcription of an Audio-recording.

Bowles, Anna (2006): The Changing Face of the RuNet. In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006; p. 21 - 33

http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/texts/en/control_shift/control_shift.htm (07.11.2006)

Bruchhaus, Jürgen (2001): Runet 2000 - Die politische Regulierung des russischen Internet. Arbeitspapiere des Osteuropa-Instituts der Freien Universität Berlin, Heft 31 / 2001. http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~segbers/downloads/working_papers/AP31.pdf (17.10.2006)

Brunmeier, Viktoria (2005): Das Internet in Russland. Eine Untersuchung zum spannungsreichen Verhältnis von Politik und RuNet; Verlag Reinhard Fischer, München.

Castells, Manuel / Kiselyova, Emma (1998): Russia and the Network Society. An Analytical Exploration. Paper prepared for the Conference on “Russia at the End of the 20 ^th Century”, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University, Nov. 5-7, 1998; http://www.stanford.edu/group/Russia20/volumepdf/castells.pdf (16.11.2006)

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Daniel, Alexander / Roginskij, Arsenij (2003): Zwischen westlichen Erwartungen und östlichen Realitäten; Dossier Demokratie in Russland / Zivilgesellschaft in Russland; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung: http://www.boell.de/de/05_world/2326.html (30.12.2006); Artikel ursprünglich

erschienen in: Reflexion und Initiative. Zur Arbeit der Körber Stiftung, Band IV (2003)

Deppe, Jens (2000): Über Pressefreiheit und Zensurverbot in der Russländischen Föderation; Disseration der Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Hamburg, Hamburg. http://www.sub.uni-hamburg.de/opus/volltexte/2000/215/html/index.htm (02.11.2006)

Fritz, Erich G. (2005): Stabilität und Ordnung ohne Freiheit und Demokratie? Chancen und Voraussetzungen einer demokratischen Entwicklung Russlands. In: Erich G. Fritz (Hrsg.): Russland unter Putin: Weg ohne Demokratie oder russischer Weg zur Demokratie? Forum Internationale Politik, Bd. 3, Athena Verlag;

http://www.erich-fritz.de/PDF/sonstiges/Russland_unter_Putin.pdf (01.11.2006)

Gladkov, Sabine (2003): Medien und Wahlkampf - Zensur durch die Hintertür; in: Russlandanalysen Nr. 7, 28.11.2003; hrsg. von der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen. http://www.russlandanalysen.de/content/media/Russlandanalysen7.pdf (07.11.2006)

Goriunova, Olga (2006): ‘Male Literature’ of Udaff.com and Other Networked Artistic Practices of the Cultural Resistance. In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006; p. 177 - 197

Gorny, Eugene (Jewgenij) (2004): Russian Live Journal - National specifics in the development of a virtual community; Russian-cyberspace.org, Version 1.0, 13.05.2004 http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/texts/en/gorny_rlj.pdf (16.10.2006)

Gorny, Eugene (Jewgenij) (2006): Russian Live Journal - The Impact of Cultural Identity on the Development of a Virtual Community; In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006; p. 73 - 90

Gorny, Eugene (Jewgenij) (2000): Chronology of the Russian Internet; March 29, 2000; In: International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX): The Internet in Russia: On the Eve of Great Changes; http://www.irex.org/pubs/russiainternet/chronology.pdf (17.10.2006)

Gorny, Eugene (Jewgenij) (2000): Chronik des russischen Internet 1990 - 1999; zusammengestellt von E. Gorny, mit Anmerkungen der Übersetzerin Henrike Schmidt. Version 1.0., 29.03. 2000; http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/lirsk/sphaeren/chronik/vorwort.htm (17.10.2006)

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Heckmann / Kratasjuk / Teubener / Schmidt (2005): Interview mit Nikolai Rudenski, stellvertr. Chefredakteur von Grani.ru; In: Wolfgang Eichwede (Hrsg.): Kultura Analyse 1/2005; „Kultura“, Russland-Kulturanalysen. Neue Räume intellektuellen und kulturellen Lebens in Russland; Oktober 2005, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen

Hohlov, Yuri (2005): e-Russia and e-Moscow Programs; Institute of the Information Society, Presentation presented at the 33rd National Public Technology Information Seminar (2005 SECOP), 13-14 October 2005, Cabo de Santo Agostinho, Brazil. http://www.russia-gateway.ru/content/pages/topicpage/?category_id=7980 (18.12.2006)

International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX): Media Sustainability Index 2005. ISSN 1546-0878. http://www.irex.org/msi/index.asp (07.11.2006)

International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX): The Internet in Russia: On the Eve of Great Changes (2000); http://www.irex.org/pubs/russiainternet/ (17.10.2006). Mit Beiträgen von Gorny, Nosik u.a.

Kertman, G.: Freedom of Speech. Report, 14.06.2000; The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Russia, http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/ed000843 (07.11.2006)

Konradowa, Natalja (2005): Gesellschaftliche Bewegungen in Russland und ihre Präsenz im Internet; Russian-cyberspace.org, 27.12.2005.

http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/texts/de/konradowa_movements.pdf, (16.10.2006)

Kratasjuk, Ekaterina (2006): Construction of ‚Reality’ in Russian Mass Media; News on Television and on the Internet; In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006, p. 34 - 50

Mandel, David (2005): „Managed Democracy“: Capital and State in Russia. In: Debatte, Volume 13, Nr. 2, August 2005, p. 117 - 136; Routledge; Deutsche Fassung: David Mandel: „Gelenkte Demokratie“ in Russland; aus „Inprekorr“ Nr. 404/405 Juli/August 2005; Übersetzung: Björn Mertens;

www.bfs-zh.ch/Themen/International/Europa/Russland/Gelenkte%20Demokratie%20in%20 Russland.htm (22.10.2006)

Mellnick, Keith (2002): Russia in the Internet Age: Balancing Freedom and Regulation. Conference Report, February 18-19, 2002. International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX); http://www.irex.org/mosnetconference/ (07.11.2006)

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Otte, Ines (2002): Medienrecht und Medienwirklichkeit in der Russischen Föderation. In: Arno Wohlgemuth / Kinga Hiller (Hrsg.): Medienrecht und Medienwirklichkeit in Polen, Ungarn und Russland mit Exkurs nach Italien; Arbeitspapiere des Osteuropa-Instituts der Freien Universität Berlin (Arbeitsbereich Recht), Nr. 15/2002;

http://www.oei.fu-berlin.de/recht/media/arbeitspapiere/ap_recht_09.pdf (12.11.2006)

Petrova, A.: Russians remember what the word „censorship“ means. Population poll report, 15.02.2001; The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Russia, http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/az/F/freedom_speech/eof010505 (12.11.2006)

Prochorowa, Irina (2005): Die Erben des Underground oder: Worauf sich die Kultur in Russland stützt. Aufzeichnungen einer Augenzeugin. Übersetzung: Mischa Gabowitsch. In: Wolfgang Eichwede (Hrsg.): Kultura Analyse 1/2005; „Kultura“, Russland-Kulturanalysen. Neue Räume intellektuellen und kulturellen Lebens in Russland; Oktober 2005, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen

The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Russia: “The Internet in Russia”-Poll, 16 ^th Release, Sommer 2006; http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/ocherk/eint0603 (19.10.2006)

The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Russia: Freedom of Speech - Expert- and Population Polls 2000 - 2002; http://bd.english.fom.ru/az/cat/F/freedom_speech (07.11.2006)

Reporters Sans Frontièrs: World Press Freedom Index 2006;

http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/cm2006_eu-3.pdf (07.11.2006)

Ruschin, Dmitry A. (2005): Media and Power in Russia; Paper presented at the conference: “Journalism after September 11”, Aarhus, Denmark, 23./24. September 2005; http://www.djh.dk/STudiePDF/Journalismafter911.pdf (19.11.2006)

Das Russische Internet. Oder: von Zensur, die sich nicht lohnt und Freiheit, die nichts ändert. Interview mit Dmitri Iwanow, 2004 (Langfassung). Deutsche, überarbeitete Fassung, Übersetzung: Martin Proppé. Russian Cyberspace.org (ohne Verfasserangabe), http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/survey/interviews/de/iwanow.htm (29.10.2006)

Russlandanalysen Nr. 113 / 13.10.2006; hrsg. von der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen (2006) http://www.russlandanalysen.de/content/media/Russlandanalysen113.pdf (07.11.2006) Schmidt, Henrike (2003a): Basisdemokratische Ansätze - Selbstregulierung eines Mediums; Version 1.1, April 2003; CyberRus-Projekt, www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/lirsk/sphaeren/pages/demo.htm (16.10.2006)

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Schmidt, Henrike (2003b): Die russische Gesellschaft und das Internet. Informatisierung oder Digital Divide? Version 2.1, April 2003. Mitarbeit: Martin Proppé. http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/lirsk/sphaeren/pages/runet.htm (22.10.2006)

Schmidt, Henrike (2003c): Die Idee der Hacker-Anarchie. Version 1.1, April 2003. http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/lirsk/sphaeren/pages/anarcho.htm (29.12.2006)

Schmidt, Henrike / Butwilowski, Georg / Teubener, Katy (2005): Vom Klub zum Massenmedium? Das russische Internet als Ort intellektueller Debatten und politischen Engagements. In: Wolfgang Eichwede (Hrsg.): Kultura Analyse 1/2005; „Kultura“. Russland-Kulturanalysen. Neue Räume intellektuellen und kulturellen Lebens in Russland; Oktober 2005, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen

Schmidt, Henrike / Teubener, Katy (2005): Russisches Internet (RuNet); Utopie, Polit-Technologie und schwarze Magie; Parapluie Nr. 21, Sommer 2005; http://parapluie.de/archiv/pakt/runet/parapluie-pakt_runet.pdf (16.10.2006)

Schmidt, Henrike / Teubener, Katy (2006a): “Our RuNet”? Cultural Identity and Media Usage. In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006; p. 14 - 20

Schmidt, Henrike / Teubener, Katy (2006b): (Counter) Public Sphere(s) on the Russian Internet. In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006; p. 51 - 72

Schmidt, Henrike / Teubener, Katy / Zurawski, Nils (2006): Virtual (Re)Unification? Diasporic Cultures on the Russian Internet; In: Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova (Eds.): Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2006; p. 120 - 146

Siegert, Jens (2005): NGOs in der gelenkten Demokratie; Dossier Demokratie in Russland / NGOs in Russland; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, http://www.boell.de/de/05_world/3177.html (30.12.2006); Artikel erschienen in Russland-Analysen, Nr. 59, 11.03.2005

Siegl, Elfie (2005): Zwischen staatlicher Kontrolle und Selbstzensur. Zur Lage der Massenmedien im heutigen Russland; in: Russlandanalysen Nr. 58, 4.3.2005, hrsg. von der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen;

http://www.russlandanalysen.de/content/media/Russlandanalysen58.pdf (07.11.2006)

Simonov, Alexei (2001): Law pressed hard by lawlessness; The Glasnost Defence Foundation 2001; http://www.gdf.ru/arh/pub/simonov09.shtml (16.10.2006)

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Trautmann, Ljuba (2002): Die Medien im russischen Transformationsprozess; Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002

US Department of State: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Russia 2003 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 25, 2004; http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27861.htm (16.11.2006)

U.S. Department of State: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Russia 2005 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006; http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61671.htm (16.11.2006)

Vassilieva, Olga (2000): The Governance of and in the RuNet; December 2000, Institute for Humanities and Political Studies (IGPI.RU)

http://www.igpi.ru/info/people/vasiljeva/1096285147.html (07.11.2006)

PRESS ARTICLES

Arutunyan, Anna: “Blog Wars. American Censors and Russian Snitches”. In: The eXile Nr. 217, Moscow, 01.07.2005, http://www.exile.ru/2005-July-01/blog_wars.html (12.11.2006)

Corwin, Julie A.: Analysis: From Censorship to Content Filtering in Russia; Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, 02.10.2005

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/02/e3546d2b-71b3-40ac-8d6e-e69d0a35622e.html (20.12.2006)

Danilova, Maria: “Human Rights Activists Face Death Threats”. St. Petersburg Times, 13.10.2006; http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=19142 (22.12.2006)

Dougherty, Jill: “Russia's Internet whiz kid tackles the news”. TIME Magazine, June 4, 2001, Vol.157, No.22; http://www.time.com/time/interactive/society/whiz_np.html (02.11.2006)

Eismont, Maria / Hewitt, Rebecca: “Regional Journalists Fight for Press Freedom”; St. Petersburg Times, 28.11.2006; http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=19588 (28.12.2006)

Fitzpatrick, Catherine: "Russia: Monitors Say Russia Among World's Most Dangerous Countries For Reporters”, Radio Free Europe 02.05.2005,

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/05/4467cb1f-6cb6-445d-811d-fd8779a8baae.html (26.10.2006)

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Glikin, Maksim / Rostova, Natalya: “Pavlovsky Nationalized”. The Russian Issues.com, 04.07.02; National News Service Strana.Ru, http://issues.strana.ru/announce/15700.html; translated by Aram Yavrumyan. Russische Originalfassung: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, http://www.ng.ru/politics/2002-07-04/2_pavlovskiy.html. (12.11.2006)

Luschkow, Juri: „Die dunkle Seite des Internet“. Izwestija vom 16.05.2004. http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/texts/de/luschkow_spinnennetz.htm (21.11.2006). Russische Originalfasssung unter http://www.izvestia.ru/tech/article105251/ (21.11.2006).

Margolina, Sonja: Dostojewskis Erben. Raskolnikow knackt den Microsoft-Code: Russlands junge Elite; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung v. 14.11.2000

Ognianova, Nina: „Murderers Go Free - Omission - obstruction, secrecy mar investigations into slayings of journalists in Russia.” Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ): “Dangerous Assignements”, Country Report Russia, Fall / Winter 2005;

http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/DA_fall05/Russia_DA_fall-05_FINAL.pdf (20.12.2006)

Millot, Lorraine: „Kompromat Digs up Dirt on Russia’s Elite“, Libération, Paris, 02.01.2004; Source: World Press Review, Vol. 51, No.3, March 2004; Worldpress.org, http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1779.cfm (06.11.2006)

Morozov, Evgeny: “Meanwhile: Russia’s last refuge: the blogosphere”. International Herald Tribune, 25. October 2006. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/25/opinion/edmorozov.php (12.11.2006)

Mulvey, Steven: Russian Internet Politics; BBC News Online Europe, 05.03.2001; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1198603.stm (21.11.2006)

"Nowyje Iswestija": "Anleitung für Straßenterror" im Internet. Ria Novosti, 28.03.2006; (ohne Verf.) http://de.rian.ru/society/20060328/44889753.html (21.11.2006)

Pankratov, Kirill: “The Last SUPper of Russian blogs?” In: The eXile, Nr. 250, Moscow, 03.11.2006; http://www.exile.ru/2006-November-03/the_last_supper_of_russian_blogs.html (12.11.2006)

Pankratov, Kirill: “Censor This! Eye on Blogs”. In: The eXile, Nr. 217, Moscow, 01.07.2005; http://www.exile.ru/2005-July-01/censor_this_.html (12.11.2006)

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Reitschuster, Boris: „Journalisten wie Goebbels und Frauen wie Ferkel“ - für kritische Berichte kommen Journalisten in Russland an den Online-Pranger. FOCUS online v. 17.01.2006; http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/moskau_nid_23727.html (22.12.2006)

Reporter ohne Grenzen, Pressemeldung vom 06.10.2006:

„Petersburger Dialog: Merkel muss bei Putin Pressefreiheit einfordern“; http://www.reporter-ohne-grenzen.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/news-nachrichten-single/article/9/petersburger-dialog-merkel-muss-bei-putin-pressefreiheit-einfordern.html (15.12.2006)

Rötzer, Florian (1999a): „SORM 2; Russland Geheimdienst will freie Hand zum Abhören der Internetkommunikation“. Telepolis v. 21.02.1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/1/1923/1.html (16.11.2006)

Rötzer, Florian (1999b): “Der russische Big Brother und das Internet. Russischer Internetprovider will Verfassungsklage gegen den Geheimdienst einreichen.“ Telepolis v. 21.05.1999 http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2867/1.html (16.11.2006)

Russisches Internet als Zankapfel; (ohne Verfasser); Ria Novosti (Russian News & Information Agency), Artikel vom 19.01.2006, http://de.rian.ru/analysis/20060119/43079011.html (17.10.2006)

Schmidt, Henrike: Showtime oder Showdown? Das russische Internet feiert seinen zehnten Geburtstag. Telepolis v. 25.11.2004; http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/18/18871/1.html (18.11.2006)

Schmidt, Henrike / Teubener, Katy / Zurawski, Nils (2005): Von Zensur, die sich nicht lohnt, und Freiheit, die nichts ändert; Interview mit Dmitri Iwanow, Telepolis 19.01.2005 (Kurzfassung) http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/19/19269/1.html (16.10.2006)

Schneider, Florian / Allan, James: RUNET: Netzkultur im russischen Internet; Gespräch mit der Netzkünstlerin Olia Lialina. Telepolis, 21.02.2000 http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5818/1.html (29.10.2006)

Shanetskaya, Natasha: Analysts Worry Over Internet Regulations. St. Petersburg Times v. 13.02.2001; http://www.sptimes.ru/story/14359 (18.11.2006)

Sonkin, Victor: Salon: The "preved" phenomenon gained enormous popularity on the Russianlanguage Internet with the speed of an avalanche. The Moscow Times, May 12, 2006; http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/167904/ (17.12.2006)

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Zerahn  , Melanie: Der virtuelle Arm des Kreml. Die Tageszeitung v.  15.01.2007

Zhitnyuk  , Pavel (2004): “Russia On-Line In: Russia in Global Affairs No. 4, Oct. - Dec.  2004

http  ://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/9/717.html (29.10.2006)  

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