Svetlana Chuikina | Karlstad University

Research

<a name="_GoBack"></a>Transmedia audiences: constructing Russian protest movements.

My research studies civil engagement and politicization of people in Russia, mainly young people, who became the largest representative group of the mass-protests which visibly intensified in the years following 2017. This wave of protests, largely became associated with oppositional politician Alexey Navalny and his team. Some years before the events surrounding his poisoning in 2020 he became a well-known in Russia in virtue of his Anti- Corruption Foundation (FBK)1. The poisoning (2020), return and arrest of Alexey Navalny to Russia in January 2021, opened a new and dramatic page for the protest movement itself and for Russian society in general. Currently, in the wake of the Russian army engaging in its war in Ukraine, some who do not support Putin’s politics have decided to leave the country. Many who have decided to stay are organising anti-war protests in Russian cities in spite of the danger of being arrested. 
 
 
Many studies on activism in the digital age state that people participate in politics by belonging to ‘networked’ (Castells, 2007), ‘convergence’(Jenkins, 2013), and ‘affective’ (Papacharis, 2015) publics and cultures, as such, to audiences emerging in the post-broadcast age. At the same time, the notion of audience itself, in studies on social movements in the digital age, could be said to have taken a secondary position, and been implied rather than a focal point.

A number of concepts have been introduced by scholars aiming to grasp the dynamic of digital audience participation in political action: from the earlier and more technologically oriented approaches, such as the concept of ‘the logic of connective action’ developed by Bennett and Segerberg (2012), to more recent and perhaps more nuanced views on digitalised audiences, which bring “audience agency” to the forefront (Livingstone, 2019; Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020). What needs to be taken into consideration and recognised in the Russian context, I will argue, is the ‘intermediate’ position of such audiences – between ‘activism’ and ‘mundanity’, between a public sphere and a private life.

Bringing together debates on social movement construction and audience study as one branch of discussion, and theory of affordance as another, this research aims to investigate social networking media practices embedded in the everyday life of young people in Russia, as submerged mobilizing structures. What is the significance of digital media, and transmedia platforms in particular, in linking everyday media use with political participation? 
 
This study combines three different theories on 1) mediatization (as a background concept) pointing out the general stage of fragmentation of the public sphere and entanglement  between everyday life media practices and politics; 2) medium theory which recognizes technological media environments and infrastructures as an extensive part of social reality, the transmedia component designated here as a crucial concept and characteristic of such environments;  and 3) affordance theory, the approach of which is to link technological aspects with social practices and imagination.

Bio

<h4>I am a Ph.D. candidate of the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University, Sweden. I study digital and datafied audiences in the time of ‘deep-mediatization’, when the ‘private’ and ‘public’ are increasingly intertwined. Bringing together debates on social movement construction, audience studies and affordance theory my research seeks to answer the question: How do digital and datafied tools bridge everyday media use and politics. 
 
Prior to my Ph.D. at Karlstad university, I was involved in the research project Information Inequality in a Global perspective at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at Stockholm University. I hold a master’s degree in Media and Communication studies from Södertörn University, Stockholm. My thesis was on mediatization of memory in Russian context with the title “Commemorative practices: from the broadcast of Victory Parade to Stalin in internet-mems ”. Before that I worked as a news correspondent, editor and producer for independent media in Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. My research interests include media theory, audience studies and a phenomenological approach to studying media spatialities and temporalities. I am a Ph.D representative of Geomedia research center. </h4>