Anastasia Golubeva and Diana Ishmatova
In Russia, in the face of centralized control of other media, discussion on political issues was forced out to the Internet space, making it the only platform where opinions are openly shared between political figures representing opposition, social activists and individual citizens.
Our study in 2012 showed that 77 % of respondents use the Internet to read the information on the policies and activities of government. 38 % not only read the news, but also share them with friends and participate in discussions online. The rapid development of social networks in Russia contributes to this process. 19 % of the respondents are registered in groups focused on addressing social and political issues, 8 % of respondents have experience in creating and disseminating political content. Opportunity to add the vote for or against the decision online is a very attractive form of public e‐participation for young people. 20 % of respondents have experience in signing online petitions, and 49 % of respondents expressed a desire to participate in online petitions in the future. Only 18 % of respondents do not use the Internet for public and political purposes.
Growth in involvement of young people in the online bottom‐up political activity clearly correlates with the growth of faith in the ability of ICT to solve the problems of democracy( 45 % of respondents in 2010 and 70 % in 2012 stated that they believe in this opportunity). These findings are in line with motivation theory, stipulating that experience of participation in political or other social processes has a direct impact on individuals’ belief in the efficacy of their acts( Verba 1967).
The character of current non‐institutionalized online public participation in Russia demonstrates its potential to impact the distribution and access to power and overcome the factors constraining current low public participation revealed by the respondents, i. e. the inability to impact governments’ decisions, a lack of information about government activities and distrust of government.
In fact, it appears that these same factors shaped( if not provoked) the emergence of online political activism in Russia. In a situation of a lack of participation mechanisms capable to consider citizen input, the lack of information about government activities coupled with low trust to government institutions, the public was pushed to turn into producers of political online content. Political blogs are used for spreading knowledge, increasing awareness and debating issues of social and political importance, as well as for mobilizing opposition for offline actions. More importantly some of these actions proved successful not only in placing political issues that were extensively discussed online and collectively determined to be of public importance to government controlled TV and other traditional media, but also in forcing the government to change their decisions, as was in the case of protests against Gazprom tower construction in St. Petersburg which were organized with an aid of Internet technologies( Alexanyan et al 2012).
Thus, non‐institutional bottom‐up e‐participation clearly demonstrates its ability to overcome the obstacles that top‐down e‐participation has failed to. However, there is another important reason for low participation revealed by the respondents. It is concerned with fear of participating in public activities and reluctance to risk one’ s own freedom. So how does bottom‐up e‐participation compare in this regard?
Using the Internet to criticize the government and to directly appeal to powerful parties abusing their power can have negative consequences for online protesters. These risks have the potential to be reduced by participating in collective action instead of acting individually. Alexanyan et al( 2012) reported that those who act as part of larger online communities appear to have some level of protection and be less susceptible to offline government pressures. This is not as apparent for those that act on their own or as a part of traditional brick and mortar civil society organizations.
The above mentioned examples of increased political activism do not allow us to draw conclusions about the scale of the phenomenon. There are also clear limitations in terms of the power of impact; in spite of available examples of online actions making some impact on government decisions, it is more common that they do not, and that decisions that favor the powerful continue.
Another limitation is concerned with the number of people engaged in online political actions, which is obviously influenced by the rate of Internet use in the country. According to the data provided by the FOM survey, Internet penetration in Russia has reached 48 % as of the end of 2011( FOM 2011). It means that half of the country is limited not only in exercising active forms public participation, but even in having access to information about events taking place in the country. This was the case of protests against election
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