Public lecure

Press release — 23 November 2012

Evgeniya Bakalova will present a study about

“Heterogeneous Representations of “Democracy” in Russian Online Debates”

on 29 November 2012 at the Institute of Government and Politics,  Lossi 36, room 305, starting at 14:15.

The Russian opposition is widely criticized for a lack of programmatic views, of a common framework of action, and finally and most importantly – for the absence of a common conceptual understanding of its goals. It is no secret that the protest movement is highly heterogeneous and unites liberal-, social-democrats, libertarians, leftists, nationalists, anarchists as well as those indifferent to politics by the common demand for free and fair elections. However, the question arises whether the representatives of the protest movement possess a somewhat common understanding of “democracy”. How do various active online-users critical of the regime conceptualize democracy and how their views correspond with the official conceptualizations

Online political debates provide material for a nuanced analysis of the specific meanings users attach to democracy and allow to look at the possibilities for the development of an alternative public discourse.

Evgeniya is a doctoral student at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and currently affiliated with the Institute of Government and Politics and CEURUS as a DoRa exchange student.

Her study presents a pilot-run analysis of the comments which appeared on the website of the oppositional news outlet Gazeta.ru in the inter-election period (December 2011 – March 2012).