What impact has the rise of digital media had on political communication? How do the language and political cultures of a nation give rhetorical shape to the “networked public spheres” those media make possible? How do authoritarian regimes, accustomed to controlling the flow of information and channels of communication, contend with new communication technologies that, by design, promote open, decentralized, and transnational discussion and debate?
This webinar offers an overview of the Russian internet’s impact on political communication in Russia, and the strategies adopted by Vladimir Putin and associates not only to secure, legitimate, and codify their authority. Gorham contends that the concurrent evolution of the “Runet” and the Putin regime has been awkward and tense throughout their histories, but surprisingly interdependent as well. Despite Putin’s famously dismissive attitude toward the internet as “50 percent pornography” and “a specialty project of the CIA,” Gorham documents how the Russian leader, his political team, and a motley array of web-savvy sympathizers have been consistently fixated on the medium throughout his now decades-long presidency, deeply invested in its development, and keenly aware of its ability to shape public opinion, both home and abroad.