I was born in Moscow, lived most of my life in Jerusalem, spent 3 years in Washington DC (where I did MA at GW). But now I live in London and my major role is doctoral student at PhD program in New media, Innovation and Literacy at the London School of Economics media department. The topic of my research is development of online political institutions and ICT based models of governance in crisis situations.
I also worked as a consultant on information technology, new media, and social media projects for The World Bank, American Councils for International Education, and Internews, and was a research assistant at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Previously I worked as a journalist for major Russian daily newspapers Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta, and served as news editor and analyst for Israeli TV.
Alexey Sidorenko and I were founders of Help Map, the crowdsourcing platform, which was used to coordinate assistance to victims of wildfires in Russia in 2010 and won a Russian National Internet Award for best project in the “State and Society” category.
My Russian blog (since 2002): http://pustovek.livejournal.com/
You can reach me through Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/asmolov
Latest posts by Gregory Asmolov from September, 2010
Russia: Intellectual Property Rights as NGO Prosecution Tool?
Rebecca MacKinnon calls for revising software copyright policy following the story in Irkutsk, where local authorities used the excuse of struggling against illegal software to confiscate local NGO's computers. Irkutsk case represents a wider problem of using intellectual property protection as a justification for prosecution of human rights activists all...
Russia: Bloggers Clash With the Ruling Party
The Russian Internet community's response to the wildfires was accompanied with a high level of hostility and direct clashes between netizens and pro-government activists. Gregory Asmolov analyzes the conflict and suggests a strong linkage between the degree of online cooperation and the way online sources presented the role of the government in the wildfires disaster.
Russia: President Exposes Governor Using Twitter During a Meeting
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asked [ENG] governor Belyh [RUS] to stop twittering during an official meeting of the presidential commission for modernization and technological development. According to Russian media [RUS], the fact that Belyh is using Twitter during discussion was reported to the president by his economical aid Arkady Dvorkovich...
LiveJournal Bloggers Killed During Terror Attack in the West Bank
A family of Russian-language Livejournal bloggers [RUS], Talya and Izhak Mass were killed during terror attack in the West Bank [ENG].
Russia: Three Scenarios of Internet Development
Alexey Sidorenko suggests [RUS] three scenarios for how Russian Internet will look like in 2020. The first option is liberalization of the information space, the second is the increase of filtering and censorship, and the third is a preservation of the current ambivalent status quo.
