Social media, mobilisation and protest slogans in Moscow and beyond

Article published in the «Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media» — 2012 —No 7 — p. 213-225.The claim that the internet, and social media in particular, have changed the face of civic action, has at least two components that need to be distinguished. One claim is that social media have made it easier to mobilise people; the other is that they create more publicity for the movements. These claims are of course interrelated: internet users who learn about a protest movement through social media, i.e. from personal acquaintances or through other trusted sources, are more likely to join it than those who only see official media representations of the movement, which will probably be negative, selective, or indeed non-existent. Conversely, those who are already taking active part in a movement may feel emboldened by the very fact of having relatively free online media at their disposal, allowing them to reach large numbers of people beyond those physically present.