Features of online action in Russian blogosphere: a case study research of an ad hoc movement in St. Petersburg

Tiedotusopin pro gradu -tutkielma: Tampereen yliopisto, yhteiskuntatieteellinen tiedekunta, tiedotusopin laitos, 2010.The goal of this study is to examine the special features of Russian blogging and to continue the academic discussion on Russian online action. Earlier research on Russian online communities has focused on studying the online action inside civil society organisations and established movements. With this study I wish to expand the discussion to cover the online action of spontaneous online communities acting outside the established civil society. The methodology applied to this research is case study research. Since the research data consist of one LiveJournal community blog, the approach of the study is a single-case design. The purpose of a single-case study is to make generalizations based on the results of analysis conducted on one case only. In this research the aim is to identify the features of online action that are typical for ad hoc movements in Russia. The focus is on one LiveJournal blog, which was formed after the closure of the European University at St. Petersburg in 2008. Students of the university created the LiveJournal community blog in order to get publicity for the incident. The data consist of the posts in the blog and are approached from three different perspectives. The first entity of analysis concentrates on studying the LiveJournal blog as a social medium and analyses the media features of the case study blog. The second approach studies the communal features of the blog. Herein, the analysis is combined with the theories on social organisation around media. The third entity concentrates on examining the features characteristics for blogging in Russia. The analysis is reflected to the theories of Russian civic action. The method used to analyse the research data is directed qualitative document analysis, together with features of quantitative content analysis. The study confirmed some findings of previous researches, but also revealed new features of Russian online action. The LiveJournal community was more open and better connected with other actors in the internet than actors in established organisations in general. The bloggers were young, educated and urban, which illustrate the elitist nature of the Russian internet. The analysis also revealed how some of the Soviet forms of civic action are common for online action still in contemporary Russia. This finding affirms the idea that some Russians still rely on the informal networks in their social action, a feature common for Soviet society