Article
Ten Years of Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media: Statements on the Field
Issue 20 celebrates ten years of Digital Icons. As an integral part of this celebratory issue we want to paint a broad picture of the changes Runet underwent in the last decade. In order to achieve this goal, we asked leading scholars in the field—among them most of the authors of Digital Icons 1—for short statements: Did Runet change in the past ten years, and if so, how? Has this change affected the academic or professional field in which you work? Did the field itself change? Have your methods and theories of study evolved? Based on the answers we received from Olena Goroshko, Tatjana Hofmann, Ekaterina Lapina-Kratasyuk, Sudha Rajagopalan, Ellen Rutten, Robert A. Saunders, Henrike Schmidt, Elena Trubina and Vera Zvereva, we compiled a panorama of ten years of Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media.
The article considers the phenomenon of nostalgia for the late Soviet times. The author presents the results of his observations over the nostalgia segment of the Russian blogosphere. The article is based on the concepts of the past, collective memory and nostalgia, which have been worked out by M. Halbwachs, D. Lowenthal and S. Boym.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which new media technologies have shaped language and communication in contemporary Russia. It traces the development of the Russian-language internet (Runet) from late-Soviet cybernetics to the advent of Twitter and explores the evolution of web-based communication practices, showing how they have both shaped and been shaped by social, political, linguistic and literary realities. Throughout the volume, leading Runet scholars draw attention to features and trends that are characteristic of global new media, as well as those that are more specific to Russian media culture.
This paper provides a conceptual framework for analyzing parallel (or subversive) media activities in Russia that enable Russian media consumers to act independently from official institutionalized sets of rules and constantly violate both traditional rules (based on great state pressure on content) and the globalized capitalist media economy based on commercial interests. These alternative sets of activities can be interpreted either like an entire parallel public sphere where alternative debate is articulated, or like separate parallel activities recompensing supply and demand failures. Two hypotheses are posed by author. The first states that accessibility of media production in general in Russia is a key element of a contemporary social contract. The second hypothesis relates parallel media practices with certain acts of political activism among narrow groups of the population that could not find places for self-expression in the institutionalized media field and use alternative media outlets (especially blogs and another new media) that ultimately constitute the parallel public sphere.
The development of local media products gives citizens a chance to struggle for the city. In some cases, it means literally to appropriate urban space and to maintain control over it within the game (“Ingress the Game”). In other cases, it refers to attempts to produce a legitimate language of urban descriptions within the district blog (“Local blogs”). We distinguish different media formats containing the specific organization of citizens’ participation in urban life and analyze their initial goals and failures. Reflecting upon some of the ways how everyday life practices, an imaginary dimension of the city and technical issues of communication are linked together, we conclude that new media are as a simulator of more complex social interactions. The “Local blogs” project provides the communication platform that lacks the mechanism of self-presentation and has too many alternatives in field of social networks. Meantime the foolproof gameplay of Ingress integrated with other services and networks tends to overcome the simplified idea of competition and appropriation for constructing more advanced urban descriptions of a consolidated game community.
The article investigates the problem of ethics in the media. On the one hand, social networking affects business ethics and employees behavior at work. On the other hand, the idea of ethic finds its reflection in the layout of most web-site, created for different purposes, even during elections. Much attention is given in the United States, where ethics has become one of the most significant priorities.
The article is devoted to the problem of communicative features of the constructive structure of the font identity in the city branding sphere. This problem is considered in the framework of the nonlinearity of visual communication based on typology, comparative and structural analysis of the font identity of the world's cities. The article analyzes the brand identity of the city of Murmansk (2015) with the use of qualitative research methods: an expert interview with the designer of Murmansk identity.
This paper explores, mainly from a legal perspective, the extent to which the Russian regulations of traditional TV and online audiovisual media policies have been consistent with the Council of Europe (hereinafter CoE) standards. The study compares between the CoE and Russian approaches to specific aspects of audiovisual regulation including licensing, media ownership, public service media, digitalization, and national production. The paper first studies the CoE perspective through examining its conventional provisions related to audiovisual media, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as well as the CoE non-binding documents. The paper then considers Russian national legislation governing audiovisual media and the Russian general jurisdiction courts’ practice on broadcast licensing. The paper suggests that the Russian audiovisual regulations are insufficiently compatible with the CoE standards and more in line with the Soviet regulatory traditions.
Systems Thinking in Museums explores systems thinking and the practical implication of it using real-life museum examples to illuminate various entry points and stages of implementation and their challenges and opportunities. Its premise is that museums can be better off when they operate as open, dynamic, and learning systems as a whole as opposed to closed, stagnant, and status quo systems that are compartmentalized and hierarchical. This book also suggests ways to incorporate systems thinking based on reflective questions and steps with hopes to encourage museum professionals to employ systems thinking in their own museum. Few books explore theory in practice in meaningful and applicable ways; this book offers to unravel complex theories as applied in everyday practice through examples from national and international museums.