Multidisciplinary research network on media and communications in Russia and beyond
The program of the conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’ (5-6 May 2021) includes a keynote lecture by Professor Payal Arora from Rotterdam Erasmus University and seven sessions where scholars from all continents will present their research.
If you want to participate in the conference as an attendee (without paper), please fill in the registration form latest during May 3, 2021.
In April Kirill Filimonov will present his research “Beyond the state as the “cold monster”: Russian alternative media and their hegemonic contestations”.
Online talk will be organized in Zoom April, 13 from 12:00 to 13:30 (GMT+3). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here until April, 12 noon: registration form.
In March Liudmila Sivetc and Mariëlle Wijermars will present their research “Leveraging public-private partnerships in effectuating online media control: The case of Russian Netoscope”.
Online talks will be organized in Zoom March, 9 from 12:00 to 13:30 (Finnish time). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here until March, 8 noon: registration form.
In February Ilkhom Khalimzoda from the University of Jyväskylä will present his research “Does diasporic media serve the democratic society or strengthen the division? A comparative analysis of the Russian-language media in Latvia and Finland”.
Research summary: Tensions in media landscapes are commonplace, especially in bordering countries that historically experience strained relations or simply favour different positions in international politics (Marcus, 2018). This paper focuses on two such cases, Latvia and Finland, both of which share a border with Russia and hold a different worldview than Russia does.
In January Vera Zvereva from the University of Jyväskylä will present her research ”Trolling as a Digital Literary Practice in the Russian Language Internet”.
This talk presents trolling as a form of literary activity. It describes a number of specific types of trolling on the Russian-language Internet in connection with digital literature and the literary practices of various groups of Internet users.
The research project ‘Sustainable journalism for the algorithmic future’ in partnership with the Aleksanteri Institute and Swedish School of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki invite the submission of papers to be presented at the online conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’
In December Kateryna Boyko from Uppsala University will present her research “Digital Tortuga: Civic Cultures of File-Sharing Practices in Russia and Ukraine”.
Research summary: P2P file-sharing has been in focus of many studies, often in the context of copyright and resistance to it. However, there is evidence that it is also conducive of civic, community and identity-oriented action far beyond the plethora of copyright issues. The online talk will present the outline of the PhD project on civic cultures of file-sharing practices in Ukraine and Russia. The study is anchored in media practice research paradigm and interested in conjunctions and interplays between civic practices and file-sharing practices, in how and under what conditions file-sharing can become embedded in the civic context. This project has an ethnographic approach and will explore empirical material accumulated mainly from in-depth interviews with users and observation of the two biggest torrent-trackers in Ukraine and Russia.
by Olga Dovbysh
Benjamin Peters is the Hazel Rogers Associated Professor and Chair of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa as well as affiliated faculty at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Taking critical, historical, and global approaches, he investigates media change over regimes of time, space, technology, and power.
In October 2019 Peters was a keynote speaker at the Annual Aleksanteri Conference, where he addressed some issues on the role of the political regime in the development and successful release of technologies. This speech was inspired by Peters’ recent book How Not To Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, published with MIT Press in 2016. For more, see benjaminpeters.org
How do regimes of power shape the process of technological development and implementation?
The phrase “regimes of power” frames a fundamental question behind my research agenda: why and how do apparently similar technologies take shape differently in different contexts? Namely, how can focusing on the complex cultural, political, and economic forces already at work in the world improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of technology? Media scholars have long been studying questions of media and technological influence over the vital variables of time, space, and matter; by adding the phrase “regime of power,” I aim to underscore that no study of media is without its own politics: the script to our mediated globe is acted out on a stage populated by explicit and implicit political actors, including the history of political economy, cultural production, media theory, and many others.
The Online talk in November will follow-up the themes of Freedom of Expression in Russia’s New Mediasphere. This volume, published last year by Routledge, assessed how the conditions for free speech are influenced by various factors. The volume focused on digital media and cross-media initiatives that bridge traditional and new media spheres. During the Online talk on Russian media, we’ll discuss the latest developments and how they resonate with the topics presented in volume.
Speakers: Dr Mariëlle Wijermars and Dr Jussi Lassila
Moderator: Dr Katja Lehtisaari
Online talks will be organized in Zoom November, 10 from 12:00 to 13:30 (Finnish time). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks , please leave your contact information here: registration form
Continue reading “Online talk on Russian media in November: Media Freedom in Russia today”
Russian Media Lab Network starts a new season in collaboration with Tampere Research Center for Russian and Chinese Media
This academic year RMLN initiative begins with a series of online talks on Russian media, organized in collaboration with Tampere Research Center for Russian and Chinese Media, Tampere University (TaRC).
Online talks will bring together a wide range of researchers to discuss current and emerging problems of the ever-changing field of media technologies, practices, and rules in Russia and its close neighbors. Understanding media broadly, the talks and discussion will address various topics from fake news to internet regulation, from digital cultures to artificial intelligence in media, and from journalistic freedom to propaganda.
Continue reading “Russian Media Lab Network starts a new season: Online talks on Russian media”
