Youth in the CIS and New Media

Budapest, July16/ 2007 Evgeny Morozov, Director of New Media/Transitions Online New ways to engage youth online: the case of CIS

More good news than bad news Good news : the youth is already engaged Bad news : nobody has much control over direction of that engagement Good news : that includes state actors

Users of the Russian-language Internet

The Role of LiveJournal and LJ communities

Case-study: Novgorod affair

Conclusions/recommendations

Overview

Intro

LiveJournal is the platform of choice for most content-sharing

Most web-sites—activist or not—have to package their content accordingly

Strong communities; some are extremist, some are noble

Some start seeking new ways to do outreach (YouTube, RuTube, etc)‏

Russian-language blogosphere

Age distribution of bloggers

(Russian-Language) LiveJournal in numbers

Source: Живой Журнал в Цифрах, Весна 2007

Country distribution

The Long Tail of the Russian-language blogosphere

Most discussed news

Occupation of Russian-lang bloggers

1. DailyKos

2. BoingBoing

3. LiveJournal

4. Michelle Malkin

5. Porn

6. Sports

green —one-way links

blue —reciprocal links

Communities are the key to LiveJournal

No perceived owner, more eager to contribute

Emerge bottom-up

Easy sign-up

Topics very diverse

Obvious venues to turn to when searching for smth/asking for smth

Perfect for disseminating info

Ideal for activism

Case-study: the Novgorod affair

Legal/Social Issues raised ==should young people be left alone without supervision even for a short time? ==should those suspected of crimes which don't threaten society be locked up before trial? ==is it enough to have one underage witness to start a criminal case? ==is it acceptable to influence the state and especially the prosecutor's office through the Internet? ==is the existing system for the protection of system adequate? ==is the current nature between the prosecutors office, the court, and the defense adequate? ==is the overall criminal situation in Novgorod too bad?

Hyperlocality matters

Engagement with immediate local communities resonate better

“ It can happen to anyone”

Less political, more social

Less attention of MSM to such problems

Eventually, from local to national to global citizenship

Motivation: better incentives

Need to better understand motivation

A lot of such projects succeed because of people's self-branding aspirations, not money

Many of them think traffic, not always $

Pay less, get more

Project design should take note of that

10 small projects better than 1 big

More microfinance

More VC-like outlook

Methodology: teach project management+expose to diverse case-studies

Better community involvement, Digg (public evaluation/feedback) for projects

That way, also less politicized

Work with existing communities

LiveJournal is a social network with a blogging platform, not vice versa

Stand-alone projects often fail as they can't compete

Easier to channel existing comms than create new ones

LJ Communities succeed as they have no owner—closest we get to “commons”

Break the isolation

Diminish the power of opinion-makers

More translations

Better connections within the CIS blogosphere: conferences, events, joint projects

Connect the segregated groups—common resources with discussions

Crowdsource activism

Why do we talk about movements?

“ YouTube” for activist badges?

Widgets for LiveJournal—easier ways to innovate?

Creating value from existing communities

More educational resources that bloggers can cite (consumer rights, etc)‏

Bloggers understand the value of “embedding”/push for archives

More ways to promote mash-up culture

Email: morozove@tol.org

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