Virtual Democracy: Polit.ru in Moscow (Research Brief)

My research focused on interviews with people working with the web site, www.polit.ru, at some point since its founding in 1998. The goal of the research was to assess the degree to which Internet journalism continues to serve as a platform for views expressing criticism and opposition of government positions in the Russian Federation. Several things emerged from this. First, it became clear during the interviews that most interviewees wished to express their neutrality, not opposition, to the government. Only one interviewee expressed an openly oppositional standpoint, and she had stopped working with polit.ru in 2004. Interestingly, she emphasized that many web journalists felt this way but had become exceedingly cautious about expressing this openly, themselves falling into a variant of “newspeak.” In general, my investigation strongly confirmed reported observations on the closing of journalistic space in Russia since the early 2000s. Second, I decided in Moscow to try and expand sites under investigation to follow up on this, but had limited success. I am currently trying to arrange some additional web interviews using the program Skype with people at Echo Moscow, the only openly oppositional radio station of any significance that also has developed a companion news web site.

Download the pdf at the top of this page for the full brief.

Marc Garcelon, of Yeshiva University, was a 2010-11 Short-Term Travel Grants (STG) fellow.