Политический образ «чужого» в современном Рунете

The Political Image of the “Alien” on Contemporary Russian Web Resources

Политический образ «чужого» в современном Рунете

Four-year student:

Anton V. Prokhorushkin

Scientific supervisor:

prof. Mark Y. Urnov

Consultant:

Yaroslav A. Bakhmetjev

Supervisor of English:

as.prof. Natalya G. Uglova

Moscow – 2014

In the last few years the problem of inter-ethnic conflicts has become more topical in Russia. Cases of murders involving ethnic minorities give rise to social outbursts, which nowadays grow more mass and aggressive. The latest large clashes (on the Manezhnaya square, in the village Sagra, Pugachev and Biryulevo) were accompanied with large-scale bashing and nationalistic marches. These marches have become extremely mass and spontaneous of late. In many respects this has happened due to the fact that just recently the participants of these pogroms have the opportunity to mobilize all its forces with the help of the Internet and social networks.

The Internet is a powerful way to mobilize forces indeed. A lot of big rallies in large cities were organized via calls for action in social networks.

The Internet and social networks, in particular, constitute quite a powerful force capable of not only mobilizing the masses but also framing social disposition towards ethnic minorities and inspiring stereotypic images in the net. One of the causes is that credibility for information posted on the Internet has been increasing lately. The research held in 2012 demonstrated that 40% of population tend to trust the Internet as it is, in their opinion, less prone to government control[1].

In the research I intend to determine how the negative image of the ‘alien’ is being created once it turns up in the web space. I also propose to ascertain the impact of the image formed in the virtual space on the way Internet users perceive ‘aliens’ in the real life.

All the above corroborates the novelty and relevance of my research and justifies the need to examine the issue duly.

The research problem is the formation of a peculiar vicious circle of xenophobia in the contemporary Russian society: the perception of other cultures by the people living in Russia is formed on the basis of the most resonant public actions. This image is transforming in the virtual space, while the generated image itself affects further perception of other cultures. Hence the negative attitude to the virtual image expands the gap between the two cultures in the real world even more. Therefore, the chance for establishing a contact and mutual understanding between cultures gradually diminishes.

The object of the research is informational web resources as well as different communities popular in Russian social networks.

The subject of the paper is the informational and entertainment content in popular Russian social networks as well as articles devoted to inter-ethnic relations in information resources on the web.

The research question is: what is the political image of the ‘alien’, which has been formed in the Runet?

The main goal of the research is to reconstruct the image of the ‘alien’ in the contemporary Runet and evaluate its impact on modern political processes in Russia.

The researcher’s tasks:

· Devise the concept of the ‘alien’ and contrive an appropriate treatment which would be instrumental.

· Reconstruct the image of the ‘alien’ in the contemporary Runet trace its evolution.

· Compare the recreated image with the real objects of aggression.

The methodology of the research is based on social constructionism.

· constructed notions (such as nationalist values, stereotypes, ideas, ideologemes and myths);

· the implementation of constructs into reality.

The work of P. Berger and T. Luckmann “The Social Construction of Reality” will help me to understand how the image of an ‘alien’ is constructed and how this image is digested in the minds of Internet users.

1. The methods:

· Traditional methods of text analysis and data interpretation

· Content analysis

· Discourse analysis

To evaluate the effectiveness of the image-formation in the Runet the author is going to utilize different methods including the estimation of ‘likes’ and ‘reposts’ of relevant publications, monitoring the comments relating to the posts, analysis of statistics in the Internet communities where the content of the kind is published, etc.

The hypothesis: the political image of the ‘alien’ in the Russian-speaking Internet is based on negative stereotypes about some non-titular ethnic groups. This ready image leads to negative effects as the attitude towards other cultures is built on the foundation of the already established stereotypes, not the real values of these cultures. Eventually, because of the Internet the cleavage between countries is deepening.

It is reasonable to appeal to the work of the political science luminary Carl Schmitt “The Concept of the Political” in the first place. One of the key statements of his work is “specific political differentiation between friend and enemy may be a rationale to political actions and motives”[2]. Schmitt’s contrast of “friend and foe” is more ample than the contrast of “native and alien”. The ‘alien’ can become foe only in case there’s a real opportunity for antagonism. But “the political is enclosed not in the struggle itself, but in the behaviour delimited by the real opportunity of conduct, in the serene understanding of the determined situation and in the task to distinguish between a ‘friend’ and an ‘enemy’.”[3].

Leo Strauss provided a critique against C. Schmitt claiming that “a good citizen is not in the least wishing to possess foes, he is rather longing to defeat them”[4]. Therefore people are not apt to hazard, they are rather willing to dispose of it.

G. Simmel is another author who pays attention to the concept of an ‘alien’ in such works as “the Philosophy of Money”, “The Sociological Significance of the Stranger”. According to his theory, “the ‘alien’ is estranged from existing social groups. Therefore as Simmel puts it, the key attribute for the ‘alien’ is unity of proximity and isolation with respect to a social group”[5].

Edmund Husserl, whose ideas are reflected in his famous works “Cartesian Meditations” and “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man”, defined ‘the other’. He compared the concept of 'the different' with the concept of ‘myself’ and interrelates them. “‘The other’ is the reflection of my own self, not a literal reflection but as a perception by analogy”[6].

Finally, Alfred Schütz devoted an essay to the study of the concept of an ‘alien’ which had the same name. This essay was integrated into his works as “The meaningful construction of the social world”. In his works the term ‘alien’ is used to “define an adult individual pertaining to our times and our civilization which wants to be accepted or at least tolerated by the group”[7].

This is not a complete list of theorists in this field. The author intends to use the works of other researchers further in the paper.

The second basic part of the paper is going to be devoted to the investigation of how the image of an ‘alien’ is formed in the Runet. The study will be based on the analysis of informational and entertaining content in various social networks since it is the place where active communication and information exchange between users are held, which will allow to reconstruct the image of the ‘alien’.

Apart from examining the communities in social networks the core place in this study will be given to the Alexandra Lotkova’s case. In May of 2012 the student of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics started shooting in metro which resulted in 2 people wounded. This is a graphic example of how the image of the ‘alien’ formed in the Internet affects further perception of other cultures.

On the 26^th of May 2012 in the course of a conflict in metro between two groups of young people, Alexandra Lotkova used a traumatic gun and wounded 2 young men from the other company. After nearly a year after the accident, several days before the verdict to Lotkova in March of 2013 there was Internet and television campaign held exaggerating the image of the ‘alien’ applied to the 2 men injured in the conflict.

Right after the first broadcast of the REN-TV, the video appeared in the Runet. On the YouTube channel the video was viewed by 950,809 people. But it is important to note that this video was titled “Putin’s regime takes a stand for blacks in Russia”[8] with a comment to the video: “Putin’s policemen accused a young woman of Slavic appearance of an assault against churkas despite the video”. The nationality of the victims was pointed out both in social networks: memes, demotivators and ordinary photos. Everywhere the victims of the conflict were depicted as Caucasians. In the comments the stress was frequently made on the name of one victim – Ibragim Kurbanov. Interestingly, none of the victims were of the Caucasian nationality. Ivan Beloussov was Russian and Ibragim Kurbanov was the Tajik who was born and brought up in Moscow.

At first, the image of the ‘alien’ was based solely on the name of Ibragim Kurbanov who resembled a man from the Caucuses in the photo[9]. Besides, the story of Rasul Mirzaev[10], who was condemned to 2 years on probation, was widely published in social networks and compared with the case of Lotkova who faced 3 years in jail.

Along with this massive PR-campaign it became clear that the victims were not of Caucasian decent. Therefore the new candidates to become ‘alien’ were people who held the trial were non-Russians and thus were automatically alleged to have concocted the case against the Russian girl Lotkova. Publications claimed that Diana Haifovna Gainulina conducted the investigation, the victims’ lawyer was Ravil Dzhagfarovich Vafin and the prosecutor’s surname was Radzhabova.

There was even a picket organised to support Lotkova which failed to gather many people, though. The most likely explanation would be the fact that during the PR-campaign the image of the ‘alien’ was gradually dissipating as the public became aware that the victims were not Caucasians. Nevertheless we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of the event. The very fact that the image of the ‘alien’ which was formed in the Internet, eventually took thousands to the streets, testifies for the existence of a real problem. If the participants of the conflict were indeed those who conventionally appear as ‘aliens’, namely Caucasians, Asians or working immigrants, the activity of the masses could spill over from the virtual space to the real one. If so the consequences would then be much more adverse.

As the result of the work the author expects to prove the hypothesis with coherent evidence both on the theoretical and practical levels and come up with some practical implications of this study that policymakers may consider.

[1] Фомичева А., Кособокова Т., Яковлева Ю., Петров И. Доверие к телевидению упало до исторического минимума // РБК daily. 2012. 24 июля. URL: http://www.rbcdaily.ru/media/562949984385714

[2]

[3] Schmitt C. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition. Chicago, Il: University Of Chicago Press, 2007. 162 p.

[4] (http://www.hse.ru/pubs/lib/data/access/ticket/1392163457d258cbb39c7a41c2f12134b608de5d54/11_3_03.pdf)

[5] Гусев А.Н. Категория социальной дистанции в творчестве Г. Зиммеля // Социологические исследования. 2009. № 4. С. 123-130.

[6] Husserl E. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. L.: Springer, 1977. 176 p.

[7] Schütz A. Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1967. 255 p.

[8] Putin’s regime takes a stand for blacks in Russia // Youtube. 2012. 10 June. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6OTYR5FvMw

[9] The photo of Ibragim Kurbanov // URL: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/sinn_fein_front/41042306/364835/364835_original.jpg

[10] A picture of Merzaev and Lotkova // URL: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/P9WxGn4Qtj0/hqdefault.jpg

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