Internet & Democracy Blog

By Karina Alexanyan

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Russian bloggers gave more attention to Obama’s trip to Moscow than Russian TV, but not much more. According to “Yandex blogs”, Obama’s visit to Moscow was not among the day’s top 3 blog topics, which instead include Google’s new operating system, juvenile justice in Russia and a subway machinist who fell off the train.

Obama’s visit appears at #11 in the “additional topics” column, which also contains references to the G8 summit in Italy, a Beer and Kvas festival, Newsweek’s list of top 10 books in the world, and the visit by Patriarch Cyril to the Ukraine.

A search among the posts of the top four bloggers in Russia found virtually no mention of Obama’s visit, although Live Journal blogger “drugoi”, whose photoblog is the most popular on RuNet, has a brief post on the superiority of White House press photography over that of the Kremlin.

A quick review of Russian blog posts that do mention Obama’s visit, about 550 posts over the last few days, finds a wide variety.

Many mention the visit in passing, as part of list of other relevant news events of the week (Michael Jackson’s funeral, the subway death, etc).

There is also a fair amount of political analysis, with varying degrees of detail, summarizing the key topics of discussion and main agreements. These contain opinions that range from a quite positive outlook on Russian/American relations, (similar to this news clip from Channel 1) to a less optimistic take on the productivity of the visit. Below is a snippet of loose translations:

– the real reason for Obama’s visit was to discuss Iran and the danger of the increasing accessibility of nuclear technology…

– The first visit of Obama to Moscow showed who is who in contemporary Russian-American relations. There is no rivalry between the Kremlin and the White house. Moscow is today a junior partner to Washington – albeit not a very reliable one. However, this doesn’t change the essence of the relationship. Its enough to review the main points of yesterdays meeting…

– I feel like Obama’s visit to Moscow is falling apart before my eyes…Even a month ago insiders circles there was much more optimism about the political results of this visit. Today – there isn’t. The focus on arms control and nonproliferation as the main reason doesn’t justify the trip. There is and should be forward movement on this, but too many big issues have been neglected…. (Ex, the fact that Hillary Clinton wasn’t there, the inadequacy of Obama’s visit with the opposition, etc.)

– I especially liked it when the emperor of the global empire explained…to the ex-emperor of the non global empire that ‘the time of empire and imperial politics has passed.’ That American’s are a people without complexes – that’s for sure. I wonder, what was Putin thinking at that moment? Something like: and when are you going to free your colonies?

Other posts are mainly humorous or tongue in cheek:

“During Obama’s visit to Moscow, not one fly was harmed…” (A reference to Obama killing a fly during a recent CNBC interview)

– Another wrote, “It’s a funny thing, as I hear about Obama’s visit to Moscow, I catch myself wanting to get a ticket or a pass to his show…”

– Finally, Russian blogger Merenzon suggests that the phonetic spelling of Medvedev’s name “(dih-MEE’-tree med-VYEH’-dyev),” which appeared in a AP article about Obama’s visit, be printed up on T-shirts.

Not a bad idea, given that most US commentators still get tripped up over Medve…dev…ev’s name.

Photo credit: Telegraph/EPA

While US media outlets have led daily news coverage with President Obama’s visit to Russia, including several days of special reports by the NewsHour and front page, above the fold articles in the New York Times, Russian media, and especially Russian TV, have almost completely ignored Obama’s visit. For example, Obama’s speech to the graduating class at the New Economic School was not covered at all on Russian TV, while President (oops, Prime Minister) Putin’s motorcycle antics received roughly the same amount of airtime as the US President’s visit.

Photo: REUTERS/РИА-Новости, Алексей Дружинин

This is not completely surprising, since the Kremlin has long viewed national TV outlets as critical to its efforts to influence public opinion, in particular about Putin, while ignoring thorny topics like the war in Chechnya. The high point of the independence of the Russian media may have been the critical coverage of the first Chechen war, which many argue forced President Yeltsin to end the war in order to have a chance to win re-election against a resurgent Communist Party. Putin quickly moved to reverse privatization of national media outlets after entering the national political stage in 1999, though, starting with Boris Berezovskii’s ORT and then Vladimir Gusinskii’s NTV. The state used charges of tax evasion to force both oligarchs into exile and placed their television stations under state control.

Today, all Russian television stations are under direct control of the Kremlin or state-controlled enterprises, such as Gazprom. Television is the only mass media that has nationwide reach and is an important tool used to maintain the popularity of the administration. In a paper in the British Journal of Political Science, Steven White, Sarah Oates and Ian McAllister also showed that the 1999 parliamentary elections, and the 2000 presidential election in which Putin became president, were won in large part through the partisan use of state television. This helps explain why the Kremlin has taken control over national television stations through direct and indirect means. This control includes, according to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, weekly meetings between Kremlin officials and television producers from major networks where pro-government talking points are distributed, expected news topics discussed and approaches to news stories suggested. One can guess how that meeting went this week.

While one could argue that coverage of Obama’s visit could have benefited the Kremlin, by showing them as an equal player with the US, others argue that it was more important for Russia to maintain the illusion that the US is a threat. As Mark Ournov told the Telegraph, “Anti-Americanism is the basis of a system that has been created to justify a return to authoritarianism.”

President Obama has landed in Russia for his first visit to the country as President–let’s hope it doesn’t end like the last one as US Senator, when he was detained with Senator Lieberman at a regional airport after a nuclear missile inspection. That was later called a ‘misunderstanding’ by the Russians; apparently, there are a lot of them according to responses on the New York Times Russian language blog, where Russians were asked to explain what Americans do not understand about Russia. Money quote:

Well, Americans will never be able to understand us, because you are stuck in the cocoon of your mass media, which always depicts Russians as the enemies of America.

Also according to the Times, Russian TV outlets, whose content is heavily influenced by the Kremlin, have backed off criticism of the US during the summit, partly by keeping anti-US agitators like Mikhail Leontyev off the airwaves. Still, according to Levada Center polling data, only 36 percent of Russians view the United States positively, while 50 percent view it negatively, a reversal from opinion of the US in the 1990s after the break up of the Soviet Union.

While this meeting is largely about restarting nuclear disarmament talks, it is clearly also meant to move forward Hillary Clinton’s initially bumbled ‘reset’ of the US- Russian relationship, which many argue is at its worst since the Cold War thanks to lingering tensions over last summer’s conflict between Russia and Georgia. Although Obama has been generally quiet about democracy and human rights issues in Russia, he does plan to meet with human rights and civil society representatives during his trip, as well as opposition politician and former chess champion Gary Kasparov. Obama also granted an interview to the often Kremlin-critical Novaya Gazeta, which has had four of its journalists assassinated in roughly as many years, including Anna Politovskaya. While most of the questions posed by Novaya Gazeta dealt mostly with the economic crisis and whether the US was to blame (a common claim by Putin), here is part of what President Obama said about whether the ‘reset’ in US-Russian relations would also include issues of human rights and freedom, in particular resolving the Politovskaya murder:

I also think that Americans and Russians share an interest in strengthening the rule of law, democracy and human rights. To quote my inaugural speech: ‘To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.’ Later, speaking in Cairo, I said: ‘I have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights.’ These ideas are shared by your President and your people. I agree with President Medvedev when he says that ‘some freedom is better than no freedom.’ I therefore see no reason why the ‘reset’ in relations cannot include the common desire to strengthen democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Not (or not only) through sharing information on censorship tactics. Instead, as a mapping of the .ir domain by the firm Lumeta found, “one router in the .ir domain that passes the most traffic is physically located in Russia. Iran is apparently outsourcing a significant portion of its routed infrastructure.” This implies that Russia could also cut off that information, through that ‘choke point,’ if it wanted. According to Information Week, Lumeta also found that only about 10% of US-based traffic into Iran is blocked.

Lumeta also has a map of the Internet in the Middle East.

Which you can compare to our map and study of the Arabic blogosphere.

Hat Tip: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH)

By Dmitry Epstein, Karina Alexanyan and Bruce Etling

The Public Opinion Foundation (or Фонд Общественное Мнение in Russian) recently released a new report from their quarterly series Internet in Russia (started in 2002) which places discussions of the booming Russian language internet in context and allows for both domestic and international comparisons. A few key themes emerge from the report. One is the significant disparity between Moscow and the rest of Russia. Another is the impact of socio-economic factors – age, education and income – on internet use in Russia and around the world.

The report (PDF in Russian), co-sponsored with the Russian search engine giant Yandex, is based on a massive nationwide survey of 42,000 respondents and 8000 face to face interviews, conducted in the first quarter of 2009. The report provides data and charts on internet penetration in Russia nationwide, as well as breakdowns by region, places of access and various socio- economic factors. The data is presented in numerous charts and graphs, including growth and changes since the reports began in 2002.

Russia Compared to the Rest of the World
Russia’s current internet penetration of 33% can be compared to Brazil’s (which is at around 29%), most of Europe (around 60%) and the US (70%). At the same time, internet penetration in Moscow is currently at European levels. As a comparison, in the US, internet penetration was at 35% in 1998 (remember the internet euphoria of 1998?) and reached 60% in 2004.

From another angle – Russia’s 33% internet penetration adds up to almost 38 million internet users – more than all of England’s internet users, yet far less than the US’s 200 million internet users (which is more than the entire population of Russia) and China’s 298 million. Moscow alone has 5.4 million internet users.

Another issue to consider is what constitutes a “user”. According to this report, anyone who has used the internet in the last six months qualifies. How would you define an internet “user” – at least once a week? Once a day? Weekly users in Russia number around 30 million or 27%, and daily users shrink to 20 million, or 18%. Again, in Moscow the figure is drastically different – 92% of Moscow’s users go online at least once a week, and 80% – over 4 million people – are online every day.

Moscow vs. the Regions
The disparity between Moscow and the “rest of Russia” becomes clearer when one looks at the regional data. Moscow has 8% of the country’s population, 14% of its average internet users and 25% of Russia’s daily internet users! The Central region, which includes Moscow, has 28% of the population and 32% of the internet users – almost 12 million people in all. The Northwest region, which includes St. Petersburg, has 10% of the population and 13% of the internet users- almost 5 million people in all (while an impressive 50% of those in St. Petersburg are online, demonstrating the importance of the urban-rural divide when looking at the regional data.) In the remaining 5 regions, the percent of internet users is generally slightly less than the percentage of the total population. The Volga region, for example, has 22% of the national population, but only 19% of its internet users – which is still over 7 million people.

Internet Users by Russian Region (Source: FOM Report)

These numbers highlight the danger of extrapolating from Moscow to “all of Russia.” Moscow holds a central position as the nucleus of political and economic power in Russia, but it certainly does not represent the country as a whole.

Internet Growth Impressive
While a national internet penetration of about one third may not seem very impressive – the rate of growth has been steady and exponential, especially in the areas outside Moscow. So, for example, during the seven years between 2002 and 2009, the percentage of internet users in Moscow more than doubled from 27% to 60%. During that same period, in most of the rest of the country, the pace of growth was even faster, with the percentage of internet users increasing almost six fold– from around 5% to around 30%. As a comparison, in the US during that same time period – 2002 to 2009, internet penetration increased only 10%. The US was experiencing Russian type growth during the heady 1990’s. In addition, the place of internet access has shifted dramatically, with far more people (almost 80%) going online at home, rather than at work or other locations (friend’s, internet cafes, school etc – the categories, are, of course, not mutually exclusive). In 2002, only 32% went online at home, while the number of people going online at work dropped from 41% in 2002 to 34% in 2009. This could be attributed to improvements to the quality of internet connections at home, and the increase in personal land lines, or other forms of access.

Who’s Online (and Who’s Not)
Socio-economic demographics – gender, age, education and income – contribute to the sense of an “internet boom.” In Russia, as elsewhere in the world, the higher the income and education, the higher the rate of internet access & use. The percentage of internet users with advanced degrees (about 17% of the total population) is significantly above average – about 65%. For roughly 70% of the population, those with a secondary education and a high school diploma, internet penetration is at or below the national average – from 33% to 24%. And of the remaining 12%, only 5% are internet users. In other words, for the relatively elite, it may seem that virtually everyone they know is online. For others, the internet may appear as a “luxury item” or even something that has no significant relevance to daily life.

In terms of internet use, Russia has achieved the gender equality much touted in Soviet times – the split between male and female users is roughly at 50%. This is especially interesting compared to users globally, where men are usually a significantly higher number of users, especially in the Middle East. In some areas, there are more male users than females, in others, the females outnumber the men. The average Russian blogger for instance, is female. This may be connected to the fact that women slightly outnumber men in Russia.

“Working woman are actively involved in all aspects of working and social life of the country!”

The breakdown of internet users by age reflects the usual assumptions – the younger age group (18-24) which accounts for only 14% of the population, has the highest internet penetration at 67%. In Moscow, as elsewhere, internet penetration decreases with age, but to a much lesser degree than in other parts of Russia. It is also interesting that while in the early part of this decade most users gained access to the Internet at work, now the vast majority (almost 80%) prefer to access the Internet at home.

Finally, as a sobering counterbalance to all this, it seems, from the report, that most of the people who are offline do not have any plans to change their status in the near future – in other words, less than 3% of those who are not online plan to start using the internet anytime soon. Maybe they have something else – like an economic crisis – on their minds?

(Hat Tip: Veronica Khokhlova, Global Voices Russia Editor)

The Moscow Times reports that prosecutors in the northern Russian port region of Arkhangelsk have opened a criminal case against a student for “inciting ethnic hatred through pictures and comments posted on the Internet,” which could lead to a two-year prison sentence if convicted. MT continues:

The student posted pictures “humiliating Africans and Jews as ethnic groups,” as well as comments inciting ethnic and national hatred and “accessories resembling Nazi ones” on the Vkontakte.ru social network, the Investigative Committee said on its web site on Wednesday.

The Russian Internet is generally a surprisingly open space when compared to broadcast media (particularly TV), and Russia has rarely prosecuted bloggers for online speech, especially when compared to countries like Iran and China that go to great lengths to limit speech they disagree with. Those cases where bloggers have been charged usually revolve around extremist or racist commentary. The Independent reported recently that the Kremlin is now concerned with Russian nationalist groups it has long tolerated (and even encouraged), but that are now seen as a threat to national security. According to The Independent, Russia’s large migrant population, mostly from neighboring former Soviet states, are increasingly being made scape goats for rising poverty and unemployment caused by the economic crisis and diminished oil revenues.

Following up December’s CSIS report and in anticipation of the National Research Council report due out tomorrow, the New York Times has the skinny on cyber-warfare in the 21st century.

As Estonia learned the hard way, democracies (and their infrastructures) are increasingly the target of nationalist hackers,  digital pirates, and government spooks (from China, Russia, the USA?). The alarming possibility that all these groups have or could be in cahoots is scaring the pants off the Pentagon, which is considering developing an alternate strategic command simply for cyber-related conflicts.

Up until now, most of the discussion has focused on defense, the so-called “fortress” method: secure and separate networks for critical infrastructure, virus protection and a cyber-czar to coordinate federal response. As this article illuminates, however, the Pentagon is preparing to bolster those defensive capabilities with offensive cyber-weapons. Hacking the hackers, the article suggests, is the newest form of deterrence.

But here, I think, the Cold War metaphor breaks down. Mutually assured destruction might be a functional way to deter a world war by superpowers, but will it really stop what amount to de-localized (possibly independent) digital guerrillas? There’s a certain asymmetry in favor of the hackers. You don’t have to enrich uranium in defiance of world opinion to hack Wall Street or the U.S. power grid.

In fact, you need to do surprisingly little. With millions of potentially anonymous actors, the problem is multiplied. As in the 1983 film War Games, no one knows whether you’re dealing with a real threat or just a clever punk in a Chinese basement. It’s a warzone as dangerous as it is hazy.

Looks like President Medvedev has decided the Kremlin.ru site just wasn’t pulling in the kind of traffic he expected to his blog. So today he starting a new blog on the popular LiveJournal blogging platform, which is a sort of social network/blogging hybrid. LiveJournal hosts a number of the most popular blogs in Russia including Rustem Adagamov and Anton Nossik (who just happens to help run SUP–see below). The NY Times even has a Russian language blog, which occasionally translates and invites comments on Russia-related articles that appear in the English version of the Times. You can also follow the (actually contested) Sochi mayoral race through opposition candidate Boris Nemtsov’s campaign blog.

There was quite a dust up in the Russian blogosphere when LiveJournal was bought by SUP media, which also owns one of the most popular online newspapers in Russia, gazeta.ru, among other media holdings. SUP owner Alexander Mamut is seen as a Kremlin loyalist, which understandably concerned many Russian bloggers since SUP, it was thought, would have a different approach to privacy issues. Still, according to a 2007 Yandex study (pdf), LiveJournal remains the leading blog hosting service for ‘active’ Russian language blogs, although liveinternet.ru and mail.ru have had stronger growth.

Medvedev will apparently continue his video blog format. His first post includes reaction and further discussion of his widely publicized interview with Novaya Gazeta, which I wrote about last week, including the development of democracy and civil society in Russia. Comments on the new blog will remain moderated–so no swearing at the president, please. An example of one of the first comments on the new blog: “Democracy doesn’t need the hungry, democracy needs the starving.”

In a meeting with human rights activists, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said that competition among political forces should be restored in the country. He also argued for changes in the NGO registration law, which many civil society leaders argue was created as a legal means to shut down civil society groups the government disapproved of–including the Salvation Army.

These recent moves appear to be part of a deliberate policy shift to allow greater political openness as a means to respond to the economic crisis, which has led to the first widespread protests in Russia in years. Medvedev said in the meeting with civil society leaders:

It is clear that in times of crisis, we should think about strengthening mutual understanding and trust between the state and the civil society. Without this, we will not be able to overcome the crisis.

This is not the first time we have heard the idea that the economic crisis will require political changes; last February Medvedev aid Igor Yurgens said:

The social contract consisted of limiting of civil rights in exchange for economic well-being. At the current moment, economic well-being is shrinking. Correspondingly, civil rights should expand. It’s just simple logic.

If this liberalization continues, it will add credence to the theory that economic development and democracy go hand in hand. Of course, it could also mean that once the Russian economy recovers, that Russia could retract any of the political changes allowed now in order to sate Russians’ anger over the economic crisis.

Russia watchers are reading a lot into President Medvedev’s decision to give a rare and wide-ranging interview to Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper that has had four of its journalists assassinated in recent memory, including Anna Politovskaya. Many believe those journalists have been killed for their critical political coverage. The trial and eventual release of Politovskaya’s alleged killers was quite a bit of political theater (as both comedy and tragedy), which Keith Gessen described well in this New Yorker piece. Novaya Gazeta has also been critical of the Kremlin, although it’s worth noting that newspapers in Russia are allowed more latitude in their coverage than television. The Internet, it appears, remains a relatively free space relative to other Russian media, especially TV.

The Washington Post summarized the interview here, but they left out an important section: Medvedev’s view of control of the Internet in Russia. As I’ve written here before, the Russian president’s views on freedom of the Russian Internet are more liberal and open than one might expect. He confirmed those views again in the Novaya Gazeta article (in Russian), reminding us that he uses the Internet everyday (take that John McCain!), and that the Internet is “the best platform for discussion” that there is. He also called for expanded Internet access in Russia, but noted the steep costs for wiring such a large country. In terms of regulation of the Internet, Medvedev says that Russia needs to be smart about how they go about it; on the one hand ensuring its continued development, but at the same time preventing criminal elements from taking advantage of Internet technologies. The Internet, he concludes, is not any more dangerous than any other means (of communication), and is not “absolutely evil.”

When asked about the need for the “rehabilitation of democracy” in Russia, Medvedev demurred, noting that Russian democracy did not need rehabilitating, that many Russian view democracy and particularly the institutions created in the 1990s skeptically, in part due to economic upheavals at the time, and that “nowhere does democracy require rehabilitation.” I’ll have to disagree with that statement, since many have argued that democracy, including established democratic systems, require constant attention, care and feeding to ensure their survival. He concludes that democracy existed, exists and will exist in Russia, which the Post reminds us, is not dissimilar from the Soviet slogan that Lenin lived, lives, and will live. We’ll have to wait and see if the same holds for the Internet in Russia.