Characteristics and roles of the Russian blogosphere-2000

Résumé du document

At the time when the world became attracted to the new technologies, and especially to the Internet, Russia did not consider it immediately. But the introduction of Microsoft 95, which included the Cyrillic encoding, was the predominant element for Russian to equip themselves with computers at home, or in the offices. Foremost, the first users of Internet were qualified as "elite", because they had the financial means to the access, and sufficient knowledge to use it. As they were rather intelligent, they started using the Internet for serious purposes. In this way, Internet could live a little revolution with the apparition of web pages in Russian, country which was rather laid aside up to then.

The widespread of the Internet access in Russia took some time before being generalized. In 2005, 8.3% of the population were Internet users. But from 2002 to 2010, this rate increased by sixfold, reaching 35% of the population. The two capitals, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, were first concerned, but the spread to other regions is in the pipeline. The president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Poutin, conveyed a dynamic image of himself and its country from 2000, having already some Internet knowledge (during the G-20, he surprised everybody proposing to contact each other by e-mail).

Even if the television is still considered as the best means to get information and to hold the society together, it is mainly the non-user of Internet who think it so: almost 80% of the Internet users prefer Internet to find an information, whereas 2% of the non-user find it useless. Internet allows its users to discuss among Russian citizens, to share their opinions.

Extraits

[...] Different categories of users The economic situation of Russian citizens does not allow a relative wide spread of the using of blogs, even if it is significantly increasing. Indeed, the possession of computers at home is not widely spread. Moreover, the Internet access is not possible in all the Russian territory. These two reflections explain the fact that a large part of blogs are held by urban people, and by adults (who can blog in their office). Blogs can be divided into two groups : those which are topical, often tightly tied to the community, and those which are rather personal, centred on an individual person. [...]

[...] It is not uncommon to find communities of people who belong to some political parties. And since the middle of the 2000's, RuNet is the witness of a fight between those clusters. - Political discussions by clusters in the blogosphere Six main clusters are politically active in the Russian blogosphere. Their members may belong to offline political movements, as the Nationalists or the Democratic-Opposition, but this is not always the case. Moreover, and obviously, a cluster pro-governmental exists in the Russian blogosphere. [...]

[...] That explains the fact that they use the padonki language. The padonki (from podonki that means geeks language is a stylistic strategy of writing. It is characterized by new words or expressions, that were formerly used in some web pages, and by a new spelling of the words. Some English words are adapted to the Russian language for instance. This jargon can be found obscene for some people, who sometimes cannot even understand it. But it is often used as a funny and ironic way to write. [...]

[...] - The A-list of blogs The A-list of blogs represents only of the Russian blogosphere. The A-list is characterized by a high average of age of its members. The majority of these bloggers are professional adults. It is made up by some serious topical blogs, often tied to the news and current affairs. Those of blogs are also the most popular blogs. It is often some journalists who are the authors. Thus, their role is very similar to the newspapers' one, that is informing the public, and making it react. [...]

[...] The need of technical and IT knowledge is not required to blog, it is easy enough to be kept updated. The blog plays an important role in the broadcasting of information, but also in interactions between users and thus in the community-building. We are now going to describe the creation of the blogosphere phenomenon, to see its structureand characteristics. Finally, we will define its and roles, through its actors, and the specificities of the private and public spheres. Actors of the Russian Blogosphere The Russian blogosphere represent of the worldwide blogosphere (made up by 111 millions of blogs). [...]