All you ever wanted to know about Russia’s ‘internet sovereignty’ bill

In February 2019, the mainstream media sounded alarm as news of Russia debating an internet ‘kill-switch’ and considering a digital sovereignty strategy spread like wildfire. Can Russia really disconnect from the global internet? And what would that mean for Russian internet users and their digital freedoms, already under threat? I spoke to a number of media outlets about the nuances of the new bill, its feasibility, and what it could mean for the RuNet:

• My comment to Newsweek: “There is as yet no clarity on how much ‘disconnecting’ the Russian internet would cost and who would foot the bill.”
• My chat with RFE/RL: Hurdles Ahead As Russia Surges On With ‘Sovereign Internet’ Plan
• My brief interviews with BBC Newshour (from 38:00) and BBC Radio 4 Today Programme (from 54:45).
• Finally, I did a deep dive into the expectations, implications, and technicalities of the digital sovereignty bill with Masha Lipman for PONARS Eurasia’s Point & Counterpoint project: “Under the guise of defending the country against external foes, the ‘sovereignty’ bill at the same time aims to further neutralize those it sees as internal threats.”

If you are a journalist seeking input on this topic or other Russian internet-related issues, please get in touch!

 

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The trouble with Telegram

If you’re a Russia-watcher, or even Russia-curious, you have likely heard of the Telegram messenger—perhaps you even have a Telegram account. Created in 2013 by internet entrepreneur Pavel Durov, the founder of Russia’s most-popular social network, VKontakte (VK), Telegram has gained a cult following and a loyal fan base in Russia and beyond. As of March 2018, Telegram had over 200 million active monthly users. What makes this messenger service so newsworthy and attractive? And what is its current status in Russia? Is there more to what happens on Telegram than mere encrypted chatting and daily doses of political gossip?

To explain why Telegram is so central to the Russian online experience, I wrote an explainer for PONARS Eurasia’s Point & Counterpoint project.

Shrouded in its self-made mythology of security and privacy, Telegram offers a level playing-field to all kinds of actors in Russia, creating a portable private-public sphere where anyone can be anonymous and yet be the darling of thousands of users hungry for every new disclosure and morsel of opinion.

Read the whole piece on the peculiar role of Telegram in Russia’s networked public sphere on the PONARS website.

 

Memes in Russia can get you into (criminal) trouble

For RTÉ Brainstorm, a project featuring popular writing on academic research, I wrote about the prosecution of Russian internet users for irreverent memes and dark humour on social media. Some of the recent cases I discuss have resulted in criminal sentences and jail terms.

Markin and Motuznaya’s cases are not unique in Russia, but they are a symptom of an escalating crackdown on free speech online. Social media content is regularly deleted or blocked on the grounds of religious or ethnic intolerance, and users are regularly sanctioned for sharing or even liking content deemed to contain calls to “extremism” or mass disorder. Russia’s Supreme Court estimates that convictions under the extremism charge have more than tripled between 2012 and 2017, and human rights organisations note a large number of these are for online activity.

Read my critique of the Russian approach to policing social media in its entirety on the RTÉ Brainstorm site.

 

Ukraine’s Euromaidan, Urban Murals and Instagram’s Networked Publics

If you’re into urban media, street art and protests, read my new article, ‘Urban Murals and the Post-Protest Imagery of Networked Publics: The Remediated Aftermath of Ukraine’s Euromaidan on Instagram’, out now in WiderScreen journal.

In modern hyper-mediated urban environments, public art becomes an inseparable part of the multiplicity of meanings generated by citizens with regards to their city, their country and each other. What meanings can public art convey after a protest in a mediated city? And how do social media users capture and reflect on these visual artefacts? This article focuses on the urban murals that appeared in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital in the post-Euromaidan period (spring 2014 – present day). The creation of murals began as a spontaneous urban practice, but post-protest, morphed into a concerted effort to populate blank walls of decaying apartment blocks around cities with meaningful art, reflecting on the turbulent political, social and cultural changes in the country. The article considers how this mediated public art form resonates with the networked post-protest publics through the affordances of Instagram and explores the different kinds of meanings networked publics in and around the post-protest city can produce. It focuses on how the mediation of the murals on Instagram might reflect or frame the meanings embedded in the murals themselves and how these themes might fit into the broader metaphorical narrative of rebirth and regeneration in the post-Euromaidan city of Kyiv.

While you’re at it, read the whole special issue of WiderScreen on ‘City Imaginings and Urban Everyday Life’, it’s pretty great.

Telegram Ban and Internet Freedom in Russia

I did an in-depth interview with Slate‘s Future Tense about the banning of Telegram messenger in Russia and the ensuing chaos after state censors blocked millions of IP-addresses in an attempt to prevent Telegram’s circumvention of the ban, severely damaging the RuNet’s health in the process. I discuss the messenger’s role in Russians’ online lives and the broader implications of the Kremlin’s crackdown on encrypted communications:

This decision banning Telegram is also threatening other similar platforms that protect communications with end-to-end encryption. We’re talking about Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and potentially any other encrypted communication services. All of those could also be banned in Russia using the same principles. Telegram sets a precedent here.

And if that were the case, then that really narrows down the space for private and secure communications. If you aren’t sure that your communications are encrypted, or whether the encryption keys have been shared, that basically means there is very little space for privacy and security for Russian users on the internet. That’s ultimately the danger: It’s not just one platform, it’s the whole principle of encrypted communication that’s under threat.

Read the whole interview here!

 

 

New article on public networked discourses in the Ukraine-Russia conflict

My new article ‘Public Networked Discourses in the Ukraine-Russia Conflict: ‘Patriotic Hackers’ and Digital Populism’ for Irish Studies in International Affairs has been published online and is now available on JSTOR. This article is based on a paper I presented at the annual conference of the International Affairs Standing Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, titled ‘Retreat from Globalisation? Brexit, Trump and the New Populism’, which took place at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin on 31 May 2017.

The study explores the self-presentation and online discursive practices of grassroots hacker collectives on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict within a larger geopolitical climate of a contested globalisation agenda and a growing fear of cyber warfare. Both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian hacker groups engage in DDoS attacks, malware distribution and leaking stolen information from the opposing side. They also use social media to enter the broader political discourse around the conflict. The article analyses the Twitter posts of both collectives to reveal key modes of online practices and key discursive themes in the context of the conflict, such as political activism, information warfare, hacker ethics and patriotism. The study elucidates how these groups use their social media presence to construct a ‘patriotic hacker’ identity for themselves, to delegitimise their opponents and ultimately, to connect to the broader populist discourse, where issues of patriotism, sovereignty and nationhood are contested.

Read the whole article here.

 

 

BBC Radio 4 Doc on Protests

I recently contributed to Long Road to Change, a great BBC Radio 4 documentary on the history of protests questioning the role of technology and other factors in how dissent might bring about change. Check out the whole piece, featuring many thoughtful voices, on the BBC website here.

Visible Protests in the Hybrid Media Era: Social Media, Live Streaming and Witnessing

I’ve got a new blog post up on the FuJoMedia website, where I reflect on this Sunday’s anti-corruption protests in Russia and consider the risks and benefits of live streaming and networked social media for protest visibility.

How do protestors make themselves visible? One could argue that the whole point of a protest – a public, uncomfortable act of dissent often exemplified by occupying space and blocking streets – is to capture people’s (and governments’) attention to the point where they cannot look away. The difficulty, of course, comes when protest events and actions are mediated by mainstream news outlets who decide which frame to apply to the protests and which parts and angles of them to make visible – or invisible – to their audience. Not an ideal setup.

But in the hybrid media system, where according to Chadwick, old and new media co-exist and entangle with technologies and actors using them, visibility becomes a more complex concept. The mainstream media no longer hold a monopoly over visibility, as connected mobile devices and social media platforms afford citizens the power to capture, share and consume their own versions of what they see and experience during a protest.

Read more at the link.

 

New Ranking Digital Rights Index Is Out

The Ranking Digital Rights Project has published their 2017 Corporate Accountability Index, which evaluates 22 of the world’s most powerful telecommunications, internet, and mobile companies on their public commitments and disclosed policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy.

This year’s report finds that company disclosure remains inadequate across the board, and users are given little information to make choices about their security and privacy and have little control over what happens to their data. Further, most companies seem to disclose even less information about their freedom of expression policies and practices than about privacy-related ones.

I am proud to have contributed to the research for the Index and to have been a part of an important effort to increase accountability and transparency of corporations who control a large chunk of the world’s “privately owned” digital public spaces and networks.

Read a summary of the 2017 Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index, see the report data and infographics, or download the complete report.

Two Recent Stories on Ukraine: YanukovychLeaks and Fact-Checking Crimea

Linking to two recent stories I did for Global Voices on the developments in Ukraine:

Ukrainian Journalists Take Regime’s Corruption Public With YanukovychLeaks: Journalists deep dive for drowned documents left behind by ousted President Yanukovych at his lavish estate, and create a public online database of regime corruption.

How journalists in #Ukraine fished out documents from a lake #Yanukovychleaks http://t.co/u0hDN72srJ pic.twitter.com/I7O2dEKNDh

— GIJN (@gijn) February 25, 2014

Ukraine’s Activists Debunk Russian Myths on Crimea: As tensions escalate with Ukraine accusing Russia of invading its autonomous southern region Crimea, Ukrainian activists are busy debunking false news in Russian media by sifting fact from propaganda online.

Russian TV shows cars queuing to "flee East Ukraine to Russia," is ACTUALLY average day on Polish border town Shegini pic.twitter.com/LwtTcxM2jY

— Laura Mills (@lauraphylmills) March 2, 2014

Follow more Global Voices coverage of Ukraine, Russia and Euromaidan protests.