Careful What You Say

Abstract

This paper outlines the practices of state control over Internet content in Russia, explaining their grounding in the information culture and media environment of the country. Building on existing data on freedom of the press and online censorship, the present work provides a socio-cultural context expanding the understanding of Kremlin’s influence on the Web. To this end, three relevant planes of power relations are explored. The first one involves censorship and self-censorship routines embedded in Russian information traditions. The second pertains to the state-controlled traditional media, where news goes through a political filter and Internet gets framed in a particular restricted manner. The third domain is that of legislative frameworks and their selective application. The paper suggests that the tools used to control objectionable materials on the Russian Web are not Internet-specific. Rather, they should be seen as an extension of the censorship mechanisms used in traditional media.

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“…The historical evolution of the press and mass media in Russia has followed a different path in comparison to the West. Most importantly, the media in Russia has always served as an instrument of political propaganda, going back to the country's first newspaper in the 18th century, Vedomosti (Ognyanova, 2010). Under the Soviet Union, information was considered a dangerous commodity to be feared and controlled, rather than a right and a public good.…”