Full Description
This volume offers an in-depth investigation of the role of new media in the political, social and cultural life in the region of Europe-Asia. By focusing on new media, which is understood primarily as internet-enabled networked social practice, the book puts forward a political and cultural redefinition of the region which is determined by the recognition of the diversity of new media uses in the countries included in the study. This book focuses on the period prior to the advent of 'world internet revolutions', and it registers the region at its pivotal moment—at the time of its entry into the post-broadcast era. Does the Internet aid democratisation or it conditioned by socio-political norms? Has the Internet changed politics or has it had to fit existing political structures? Has the use of digital technologies revolutionized election campaigns? How is hyperlinked society different from society prior to the advent of the web? How do ordinary people actually use the Internet. These and other pressing questions - crucial to understanding the post-socialist world - are investigated in the current volume.
This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.
Contents
1. Introduction Part One: Civic Activism and Citizen Media 2. Mundane Citizenship: New Media and Civil Society in Bulgaria 3. The Role of Social Networking Sites in Civic Activism in Russia and Finland 4. From Blogging Central Asia to Citizen Media: A Practitioners' Perspective on the Evolution of the neweurasia Blog Project Part Two: Political Mediation 5. Blog Medvedev: Aiming for Public Consent 6. Blogging for the Sake of the President: The Online Diaries of Russian Governors 7. Political Challengers or Political Outcasts?: Comparing Online Communication for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the British Liberal Democrats 8. Mediating the New Europe-Asia: Branding the Pot-Socialist via the Internet Part Three: From Nation to the Individual: Past and Present 9. Contesting Bulgaria's Past Through New Media: Latin, Cyrillic and Politics 10. Ukrainian Nation Branding Off-line and Online: Verka Serduchka at the Eurovision Song Contest 11. Blogging the Other: Construction of National Identities in the Blogosphere Part Four: Consumption, Production and New Media 12. Learning How to Shoot Fish on the Internet: New Media in the Russian Margins as Facilitating Immediate and Parochial Social Needs 13. Co-opting Transmedia Consumers: User Content as Entertainment or 'Free Labour'? The Cases of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro 2033 14. Spatial Imagining and Ideology of Digital Commemoration (Russian Online Gaming) 15. Rebranding Russia's Capital City on Selected Social Media
