Venäjänkielisen internetin poliittisen sääntelyn kiristäminen

Tässä artikkelissa käsittelemme internetin venäjänkielisen segmentin, ”Runetin” sääntelyä kansalaisyhteiskunnan ja poliittisen opposition toiminnan rajoittamiseksi. Keskitymme toimenpiteisiin, jotka alkoivat opposition protestiaallon aikana 2011–2013, jolloin Kreml käynnisti päämäärätietoisen kampanjan Runetin poliittisen käytön kontrolloimiseksi. Tätä kampanjaa kutsumme ”Runetin valtaukseksi”.

News consumption repertoires among Finnish adolescents : Moderate digital traditionalists, minimalist social media stumblers, and frequent omnivores

Abstract Young people are perceived as heavy consumers of social media and less avid consumers of news. That notion, however, deserves nuance: Many factors, such as the national context, media system, trust in news, intentionally or incidentally encountering news from different sources, and interest in politics, influence how young people consume news. This study explores news consumption among Finnish adolescents through a representative survey of 15–19-year-olds. We seek to answer two research questions: What are the news repertoires of Finnish adolescents? And what factors predict different news repertoires? Latent profile analysis reveals three distinct news repertoires: 1) moderate dig…

Social Network Sites and Political Governance in Russia

The occupation of Runet? : The tightening state regulation of the Russian-language section of the internet

In this chapter, we scrutinise the Russian state’s regulation for political purposes of the Russian-language section of the internet or ‘Runet’, as it is often dubbed in Russia. We will focus on those regulative actions which came into force during and after the protest wave in Russia in 2011–2013. Internet and social media played an important role in the mobilisation of these protests that challenged the legitimacy of the ruling elite. We argue that the protests marked a watershed moment in the Russian government’s information policy, which had previously mainly functioned through the control of the federal Russian TV channels. After the protests, the Kremlin mounted a campaign to regulate…

Up with ecology, down with economy? : The consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation in the global public sphere

Building on theories of valuation and evaluation, we develop an analytical framework that outlines six elements of the process of consolidation of an idea in the public sphere. We then use the framework to analyse the process of consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation between 1997 and 2013, focusing on the interplay between ecological and economic evaluations. Our content analysis of 1274 articles in leading newspapers in five countries around the globe shows that (1) ecological arguments increase over time, (2) economic arguments decrease over time, (3) the visibility of environmental nongovernmental organizations as carriers of ecological ideas increases over time, (4) the …

Digital Activism in Russia: The Evolution and Forms of Online Participation in an Authoritarian State

AbstractThis chapter describes how digitalization has affected activism in Russia by tracing the evolution, particularity, and the most visible forms of online activism in the context of the increasingly authoritarian Russian state. It discusses online activism in relation to “connective action” and illustrates it with two examples of contentious political activism: the anti-corruption campaign led by Alexei Navalny and the struggle to protect online communication from state surveillance by the Telegram messenger service. In addition, the chapter presents examples of Russian activism, which do not directly challenge the Kremlin.

The social significance of the Facebook Like button

In this paper we study social aspects of using the Like button for purposes of impression management, identity construction, and maintenance of social ties online. On the theoretical level our investigation combines Goffman’s notion of face-work with concepts of social network analysis, shedding light on what we dub ‘nano-level’ interaction and sociality on social networking sites. Our data come from a 2013 classroom survey in which 26 Finnish university students were asked about their motives for and ways of using the Like button. Our results show that though the Like button was designed to allow users to express their positive evaluations of the contents of Facebook posts, comments, and p…

Justifying Civic Activism in Russia and Finland

ABSTRACTIn this article, we present a novel way of researching civil society in a comparative perspective and illustrate it through a detailed analysis of public disputes concerning urban building construction projects in St. Petersburg and Helsinki in 2008–2009. In our illustration, we use justification theory, a line of thought developed by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot in the early 1990s, but until now little used in comparative civil society research. Moreover, we use a variant of Public Justification Analysis, a new method for analysing media data. Our focus is on moral justifications, that is, on arguments which are presented against or in favour of the proposed projects and whic…

Oikeuttamisverkostot : miten analysoida julkisissa keskusteluissa esitettyjen oikeutusten keskinäisiä suhteita

Luc Boltanskin ja Laurent Thévenot'n vuonna 1991 kehittämä teoria toiminnan moraalisesta oikeuttamisesta on yksi keskeisistä Pierre Bourdieun jälkeisen "pragmatistisen" sosiologian saavutuksista. Tässä artikkelissa esitetään Boltanskin ja Thévenot'n oikeuttamisteoriaan sekä Eeva Luhtakallion ja Tuomas Ylä-Anttilan kehittämään julkisen oikeuttamisen analyysiin (JOA) perustuva metodi, joka havainnollistaa ja visualisoi moraalisen oikeuttamisen kategorioiden verkostoitumista. Artikkelissa metodia havainnollistetaan New York Timesin ilmastokeskustelua koskevan aineiston avulla, mutta sitä voidaan soveltaa kaikkiin julkisia kiistoja koskeviin tekstiaineistoihin. Se voidaan mieltää diskurssiverko…

Social media in civic and political activism in Russia