Svetlana Chuikina

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’  ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ycRi1OIe","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Castells, 2007)","plainCitation":"(Castells, 2007)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":218,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/NJ5HJC2G"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/NJ5HJC2G"],"itemData":{"id":218,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"International journal of communication","ISSN":"1932-8036","issue":"1","journalAbbreviation":"International journal of communication","page":"29","title":"Communication, power and counter-power in the network society","volume":"1","author":[{"family":"Castells","given":"Manuel"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2007"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Castells, 2007), ‘convergence’ ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"NRRHcpS2","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Jenkins, 2014)","plainCitation":"(Jenkins, 2014)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":217,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/9CUVUE7U"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/9CUVUE7U"],"itemData":{"id":217,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"Cultural Studies","ISSN":"0950-2386","issue":"2","journalAbbreviation":"Cultural Studies","note":"publisher: Taylor & Francis","page":"267-297","title":"Rethinking ‘rethinking convergence/culture’","volume":"28","author":[{"family":"Jenkins","given":"Henry"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2014"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Jenkins, 2013), and ‘affective’  ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"cmYimNlW","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Carpentier, 2011)","plainCitation":"(Carpentier, 2011)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":216,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/D62MXF68"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/D62MXF68"],"itemData":{"id":216,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"CM Komunikacija i mediji","ISSN":"2466-541X","issue":"21","journalAbbreviation":"CM Komunikacija i mediji","note":"publisher: Fakultet političkih nauka Univerziteta u Beogradu","page":"13-36","title":"The concept of participation. If they have access and interact, do they really participate?","volume":"6","author":[{"family":"Carpentier","given":"Nico"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (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  ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"SmC9dOvT","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bennett & Segerberg, 2012)","plainCitation":"(Bennett & Segerberg, 2012)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":79,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/ABNFN2R8"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/ABNFN2R8"],"itemData":{"id":79,"type":"article-journal","abstract":"From the Arab Spring and los indignados in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street (and beyond), large-scale, sustained protests are using digital media in ways that go beyond sending and receiving messages. Some of these action formations contain relatively small roles for formal brick and mortar organizations. Others involve well-established advocacy organizations, in hybrid relations with other organizations, using technologies that enable personalized public engagement. Both stand in contrast to the more familiar organizationally managed and brokered action conventionally associated with social movement and issue advocacy. This article examines the organizational dynamics that emerge when communication becomes a prominent part of organizational structure. It argues that understanding such variations in large-scale action networks requires distinguishing between at least two logics that may be in play: The familiar logic of collective action associated with high levels of organizational resources and the formation of collective identities, and the less familiar logic of connective action based on personalized content sharing across media networks. In the former, introducing digital media do not change the core dynamics of the action. In the case of the latter, they do. Building on these distinctions, the article presents three ideal types of large-scale action networks that are becoming prominent in the contentious politics of the contemporary era.","container-title":"Information, Communication & Society","DOI":"10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661","ISSN":"1369-118X","issue":"5","note":"publisher: Routledge\n_eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661","page":"739-768","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","title":"The Logic of Connective Action","volume":"15","author":[{"family":"Bennett","given":"W. Lance"},{"family":"Segerberg","given":"Alexandra"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2012",6,1]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (2012), to more recent and perhaps more nuanced views on digitalised audiences, which bring “audience agency” to the forefront  ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"zcz2G5iz","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Livingstone, 2019; Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020)","plainCitation":"(Livingstone, 2019; Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":4,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/MM5KPAI3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/MM5KPAI3"],"itemData":{"id":4,"type":"article-journal","abstract":"This article critically examines how fears of audience gullibility, ignorance, and exploitation impede media studies’ response to the pressing challenges posed by the growing power of social media platforms and their innovative datafication practices. I revisit the history of audience research to show how empirical findings contested the pejorative conception of the audience problematically yet persistently imagined by theorists of media power during the twentieth century. As media studies joins other disciplines in responding to the growing datafication of society, I propose that the circuit of culture model can help theorize media (including platform and algorithmic) power by opening up the hermeneutic and action space between production and consumption. In this way, critical scholarship might more effectively analyze such metaprocesses as mediatization and datafication precisely by recognizing rather than erasing audiences’ relation to both the everyday lifeworld and the public world of citizen action, regulatory intervention, and the wider society.","container-title":"Television & New Media","DOI":"10.1177/1527476418811118","ISSN":"1527-4764","issue":"2","journalAbbreviation":"Television & New Media","language":"en","note":"publisher: SAGE Publications","page":"170-183","source":"SAGE Journals","title":"Audiences in an Age of Datafication: Critical Questions for Media Research","title-short":"Audiences in an Age of Datafication","volume":"20","author":[{"family":"Livingstone","given":"Sonia"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2019",2,1]]}}},{"id":49,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/NJZES9ZH"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/Tj1NQ1VB/items/NJZES9ZH"],"itemData":{"id":49,"type":"article-journal","abstract":"This article develops a conceptualization of audience agency in the face of datafication. We consider how people, as audiences and users of media and technologies, face transforming communicative conditions, and how these conditions challenge the power potentials of audiences in processes of communication—that is, their communicative agency. To develop our conceptualization, we unpack the concept of audiences’ communicative agency by examining its foundations in communication scholarship, in reception theory and sociology, arguing that agency is understood as interpretative and relational, and applied to make important normative assessments. We further draw on emerging scholarship on encounters with data in the everyday to discuss how audience agency is now challenged by datafication, arguing that communicative agency is increasingly prospective in a datafied age. Thereby, we provide a theoretical conceptualization for further analysis of audiences in transforming communicative conditions.","container-title":"Communication Theory","ISSN":"1050-3293","language":"en","source":"epubs.surrey.ac.uk","title":"Audiences’ Communicative Agency in a Datafied Age: Interpretative, Relational and Increasingly Prospective","title-short":"Audiences’ Communicative Agency in a Datafied Age","URL":"http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa018","author":[{"family":"Ytre-Arne","given":"Brita"},{"family":"Das","given":"Ranjana"}],"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2021",6,10]]},"issued":{"date-parts":[["2020",8,24]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (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.

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.