Russian Digital Dualism: Changing Society, Manipulative State

The article studies the effect of the Internet on Russian society in the 2000s, as well as the complex relations between the Internet, groups of digital activists and the manipulative state.
The Internet creates new spaces for politicians and proto-politicians to practice digital activism, develop relationships of trust and new identities. At the same time, it becomes an object for increasing neo-Nazi and Islamist mobilization, and subject to greater control by a government worried by the inability to dominate this sphere.
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Russian Digital Dualism: Changing Society, Manipulative State
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