Remember my earlier post about the new research project "Web Wars: Digital Diasporas and the Language of Memory"? The project will soon officially kick off, and we are now inviting applications for a Researcher position at the University of Bergen. This will be a two-year parttime position (50%) which starts June 1, 2010.

Lebedev and Tolstaia during the interview (picture Eugene Gorny)

 Aleksei Kostroma (1993). Picture from FoR post 05.10.09 

Four mini-mini-reviews of recent and upcoming publications which scrutinize the RuNet from various disciplinary angles.

Two workshops, held in the UK next Spring, address a broad range of new-media related questions. Initiated by Natalya Rulyova & Jeremy Morris (Birmingham), our own Vlad Strukov (Leeds), and Seth Graham (SSEES), they bear the overall title New Media in New Europe-Asia. The organizers are applying for CEELBAS support and plan to publish a selection of papers in a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies. 

How much is online social networking embedded in academic practices? In the future, to what extent will digital networking tools such as Hyves, Facebook, or LinkedIn become a locus for scholarly dialogue and interaction? If the answers to these questions are as yet unclear, a growing number of scholars does subscribe to social network sites -- and not only to share pictures of their latest night on the town. That social networking is becoming an increasingly influential instrument for academic information exchange, indicates the launch of a social networking site targeting scholars: academia.edu. Besides such intriguing tags as 13th-Century Mercantile Communities of Iran and Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing, the site also boasts a Slavic Languages and  Russian Studies subdivision. Now before you rush there with wild expectations: academia.edu is clearly in its infancy. Launched last September, it doesn't exactly match the size of non-scholarly competers: for Russian studies, only 49 people provided their details until now; for Slavic Studies, the group is even smaller. Neither does the design deserve a prize for esthetic refinement.And yet, the project has potential. First of all, it's simply fun to browse a list of colleagues who inserted details on their professional affiliation, photographs, and, most importantly, a profile which allows you to quickly single out colleagues who share your research interests. Tags provide an easy way to search for specific scholarly themes - say 'Post-Soviet regimes,' or 'Nationalism' (not that there are many more Russian Studies tags out there at the moment, but that might be a matter of time).But most important, I think, are two tiny links saying 'Add X as a contact' or 'Send X a message'. For anyone who hesitates to contact colleagues whom they Googled, this might just do the trick: academia.edu users put their profile on the site with the very goal of being contacted. Working on Vaginov? Contact Anthony Anemone at New York's New School University! Or is Alexander Dugin and right-wing activism more up your research alley? Send a message to Andreas Umland at the Katholische Universitaet Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, who would like to 'hear from people with similar research interests ... and from those wanting to publish their dissertations, monographs, edited volumes or document collections in the ... book series "Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society".' Or, even better perhaps: add your own profile. Yours truly certainly plans to do so before this day is ended.ER

Some few days ago Sonia Zekri, Moscow correspondent of the renowned German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, dedicated a short article to Dmitrij Medvedev’s videoblog (the article is not online on the newspaper's website, but 'reprinted' in Robert Amsterdams blog). Zekri, whose reports from Russia are always as enlightening as entertaining, notes a change in the Russian president’s media policy: while previous video messages by the Internet freak Medvedev did not allow for commentary (see one of Sudha’s previous posts), Russian users were now enabled to engage in direct discourse with their President. And they did, as Zekri illustrates with a bunch of sometimes comical, sometimes touching citations. These comments are by no way only positive. At contrary, critical questions are put forward concerning the social and economic perspectives of the country (the general topic of the videoblog session was on sports and leisure culture). Zekri’s articles ends nevertheless sceptical with regard to the political potential of the Runet: the trendy presidential video-blog, to her mind, reproduces only an archaic ritual digitally reloaded: tzar Dmitrij talks to his virtual people promising to take care of their needs. Without any results in “real politics”. (here's the original quote in German: "Russland hat eine jahrhundertelange Tradition des Eingabe- und Bittstellerwesens. In einem Ozean der Willkür war die kniefällige Adresse an den Zaren oft die letzte Hoffnung. Das Internet setzt diese Tradition fort, technisch reibungslos, politisch folgenlos").Zekri’s sceptical evaluation of the Internet’s democratic potential is well in line with Runet research in East and West (some words will be said on that by Floriana Fossato in the First Issue of Russian-cyberspace Journal “Virtual power. Russian politics and the Internet” that will hopefully appear on the net in spring 2009). While ‘the Kreml’ is well aware of the web’s ever growing significance for political PR, truly interactive projects by top politicians until now are the exception. And when initiated, researchers, including myself, tend to interpret them as mere efforts to design participation where no real political engagement is wished. Nevertheless, from time to time, I catch myself at the thought that sometimes we tend to judge very spontaneously, while the effects of changes in political communication take more time. In other words: is it really adequate to label the new interactive format of Medvedev’s videoblog a disguised half-Tzarist, half-Soviet communication ritual – already after its very first release? Or does this belong to some kind of reverse, negative self-fulfilling prophecy? This is unfortunately no answer to the questions asked by Sudha in the previous post, but rather some new expression of doubt concerning the methodological problems and potentials of Runet research.H.S.

With the Russian authorities about to launch an official Law Enforcement Site, and Chinese blogs being closed for their damaging political content, it is the perfect moment to visit a symposium on 'War, Conflict, and Reconciliation on the Internet'. Well, the John Moores University at Liverpool has organized one. This Wednesday, January 21, three speakers from different British universities will consider how issues of cultural memory, peacemaking, and xenophobia - among other topics - take shape in digital spheres.If the mini-symposium - which lasts a mere two hours - doesn't tackle Russian developments in particular, the last speaker does zoom in on the Russian-speaking Internet. Adi Kuntsman, co-organizer of the Internet Studies Festival later this year, will present a talk labeled 'Cyberwars and Cyberhate', about 'Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism and Homophobia on the Russian-Language Internet'. For where-when-what information, surf to this website: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/MCA/91705.htm. If the Internet Studies Festival sounds more like your thing, here is the festival link: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/MCA/91522.htm. The festival theme sounds inviting enough: the participants will ponder 'Internet on the Move: Mobility, Technology and Everyday Life'.ER  

A post on unsolved riddles, pending questions, and unanswerable queries.First of all, simmons_fan asked me in a comment about the following:"Моя коллега по исследованию российской блогосферы ищет одну статью. Она её описывает следующим образом: 'All I know is vague - that it is a study on the Internet, and FSB involvement, and how the FSB works to distract/disorganize etc online content. It was written in the early 2000's (like 2002) and has 3 authors. The person who was telling me about it referred to the article as an example of how the FSB has people who, for instance, add all sorts of "flames" or tdistracting comments to political articles in order to distract the conversation from important issues etc.'" (simmons_fan, your link makes me wonder whether your colleague is perhaps Karina Alexanyan?)I can't say I haven't tried. I asked colleagues, googled my head off, but all I can come up with is this podcast with three 'authors' - Linor Goralik, Vlad Strukov, and Olia Lialina - including, among other topics, a discussion 'On Internet control, censorship, copyright and child protection'. Interesting, yes, but surely this is not the article that your colleague is looking for, simmons_fan? Does one of our readers have a clue, perhaps?Secondly, two of my students are drafting plans for exciting essays, on topics which have been explored substantially less extensively than, say, populist motifs in Lev Tolstoy's work. The first is on Russian flash animation, the second on Russian virtual museums (in the broad sense - think Memorial's Virtual Gulag Museum, but also websites like madeinussr.com, which we discussed earlier). This is not the place to enter into the specificities of the essays. This is the place, though, to ask potential specialists for useful sources. As a literary-cum-cultural-studies scholar, I am familiar with some writings on flash animation (by Maevski & Borodkin, for instance, and by Vlad Strukov, whom I just mentioned and who is one of our RC colleagues), but I don't have an overview of the field. The same goes for the digital museums: there is Museums and the Web by Bowen, Bennett & Johnson (1998), there is a useful online article by Takashi et al. - but what else? And what is there specifically on Russian museums and the web? Which first-rate sources are we overlooking? Ideas, comments, suggestions - all are warmly welcomed.ER

Is the Internet in Russia a political factor of 'real' significance? Or do the countless websites, journals, and blogs simulate rather than stimulate political activity and decision making? These and related questions are central in the brand new first issue of The Russian Cyberspace Journal: Virtual Power. Russian Politics and the Internet. The issue was launched this week and is fully accessible online.As the name suggests, the journal is a kin of this blog - it is published by a team of scholars which partly overlaps with this ZhZh team. In Virtual Power, they and other international specialists explore the representation and mediation of Russian political discourse - with special attention for last year's most significant political events: the presidential elections and the Georgia-Ossetia conflict. Now before turning to the contents, let me stress that we are keen on discussing these with colleagues and interested readers in this blog. Feel free to add critical comments: tell us what you like, what you miss, which questions the articles stir, with which assertions you agree, with which you don't - and if so, why you do or don't. For this first issue, we are especially keen on peeping in our readers' minds.So, what can you expect between the two virtual covers of this first journal issue? Some teasers, with links that bring you to the right articles with one mouse click. The emphasis of the issue is on social networks and participatory digital platforms - think blogs, or chatfora (Rutten, Schmidt, Goroshko/Zhigalina, Fossato). Several authors make a distinction between official media and unofficial, digitally enhanced networks (Schmidt, Strukov), and between the presentation of political events on the state-controlled television and their mediation on oppositional web sites (Lapina-Kratasiuk, Sokolova).Other contributors analyse how the Internet - that allegedly neutral, transnational medium - is used to disseminate national imagery and expressing national sensibility (Strukov, Hofmann). The issue reaches beyond the borders of the Russian Federation in analyses that consider the cases of Belarus (Krivolap) and Ukraine (Hofmann), and that position the new media developments in post-Soviet space in relation to a wider axis of what was once deemed the Second World (Saunders).Maybe you never reached this conclusion, and you are now deeply immersed in one of the articles to which the above links can take you. But in case you're still there: we hope that you'll enjoy our discussion of virtual power - and we heartily encourage you to join it here. ER

Now that issue 1 is online, we at The Russian Cyberspace Journal are keen on compiling material for our next issue. Do you have a scholarly interest in social-networking practices? With a special focus on the RuNet? Do consider the below call for papers for the RC journal, issue 2. We are a peer-reviewed journal and our first journal has been avidly visited in the past weeks - in other words, thorough feedback and a wide audience would be guaranteed. Questions about the CFP are welcome here in the blog. ERCALL FOR PAPERSThe Russian Cyberspace Journal, issue 2: 'From Comrades to Classmates: Social Networks on the Russian Internet' Deadline: 1 July, 2009At the beginning of 2009, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation had approximately 150,00 members, while there were over 20 million users of odnoklassniki.ru, a social networking site for former "classmates." Russia's dominant political party, "United Russia," commands some 2 million members; however this pales in comparison to the 18 million active members of the popular networking platform Vkontakte.ru. While political activity in party organizations is certainly different from the spontaneous, informal, and often apolitical participation in social networks on the web, these comparisons demand inspection. Over the coming decade, sociologists predict a general shift from formal to informal organization of social groups and communities. Undoubtedly, this shift will be shaped by contemporary networking technologies. The Russian Cyberspace Journal, issue 2, aims to examine the structure, taxonomy, function, and significance of social networks on the Russian Internet. What role do these new web-based forms of socializing play in contemporary Russia, particularly given the paradoxical stereotypes of Russian society as collectivistic on the one hand, and amorphous and apathetic on the other? Does social networking in Russia represent a cultural form specific to post-Soviet Russia, or is it only an unreconstructed and uncritical adaptation of "Western" net practices?For 'From Comrades to Classmates', we seek contributions that approach social networks as a critical component of politics, society, culture, education, and economics. We are interested in exploring a number of questions, including: Have new social networks replicated and/or replaced Soviet traditions of social mobilisation? What is the role of social networks in maintaining Russia's regional integrity and binding together the widely-dispersed Russian- speaking diaspora? What can we learn about post-millennial everyday practices-dating, business associations, public relations-from the operation of Russian social networks?For more information, including guidelines and contact information, please visit the CFP link on our website.

   images from Olga Lialina's Anna Karenina project (discussed by Vlad Strukov in the kultura issue in question)Henrike Schmidt has already blogged about the German version, but since yesterday the English version is available as well: 'Notes From the Virtual Underground. Russian Literature and the Internet', the first 2009 issue of the online journal of Russian cultural life kultura, is now online, available in full-text format for free. Conceived by the Russian Cyberspace team, 'Notes From the Virtual Underground' is a thematic kultura issue focusing entirely on the production and consumption of Russian literature on the Internet. As Henrike wrote, it complements the contents of our own first journal, 'Virtual Power: Russian Politics and the Internet', with explorations of the cultural and literary spheres - think analyses of electronic libraries (Schmidt), of deconstructions of the literary canon in net art (Strukov), the specificities of Russian literary blogs (Rutten), and interviews with Pavel Protasov and Aleksandr Kabanov, on copyright issues and local Internet mythologies, respectively.In her entry Henrike also pointed out the links between this and earlier kultura issues, which zoomed in on Russian libraries and the nexus between Russian language and social change, among other topics. For those interested in the latter, I would like to add another link, to Landslide of the Norm, the Bergen-based research project on interrelations between Russian linguistic liberalisation and literary development in - mainly - the post-Soviet period. Not only was Landslide of the Norm the forerunner of the emphatically new-media oriented research project The Future of Russian: Language Culture in the Era of New Technology (in which yours truly is involved since March 1, and about which you'll hear more in this blog in the future) - but the Landslide team itself also devoted considerable attention to the question how linguistic identity and linguistic norms are performed online. If you want to know more, have a look not just at the site, but also at the ensuing book publication, Landslide of the Norm: Language Culture in Post-Soviet Russia. (Lunde & Roesen, eds., Bergen 2006). The 'Landsliders' are currently preparing another book, on post-Soviet (linguistic) norm negotiations, which will contain additional RuNet-related material. We'll keep you updated, ofcourse; but for the moment, that publication is still in the making.ER