Latest posts by Gregory Asmolov from October, 2011
Russia: President's Visit to Journalism Department Under Attack of Social Media
The New York Times explores the role of social media in exposing staged nature of Dmitry Medvedev's visit to the Moscow State Univerisity. The Twitter hashtag #журфак (shortened for Journalism department) as well as many posts on LiveJournal and Facebook made the controversy a trending topic and forced the president's spokesperson...
Russia: Networked Volunteers Save Lives of Missing Children
In September 2010, 4-year-old Liza and her aunt went missing in the forest and were found dead. Liza's volunteer rescuers decided to establish a network called "Liza Alert" whose members would engage immediately once a child was lost.
Russia: the First Twitter Account Officially Registered as Media Outlet
Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecoms and Communications (RosKomNadzor) officially registered [ru] Twitter account of a microblogger Denis Plenin (@Dplenin) as the first mass media outlet on the platform.
Russia: Facebook Bots Massively Vote for Putin
Russian online magazine “Slon” exposes [ru] significant increase in activity of Facebook fake accounts who vote for Putin in online opinion polls. The bots are active not only on Facebook but also on online media websites that allow to use Facebook profiles for voting.
Russia: Investigative Journalists Expose Security Services Monitoring Internet
Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan, famous investigative journalists, describe [ru] software and methods used by Russian security services to monitor the Internet. Journalists argue that while Federal Security Service (FSB) can easily monitor Russian social networks (like Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and others), it has problems with monitoring foreign platforms (like Facebook and...
Russia: Putin Gets Twitter Hashtag for His Birthday
#CпасибоПутинуЗаЭто (“Thanks to Putin for This”) hashtag that resembles the Soviet “Thanks to the party for this” became a “Twitter sensation” according to the Wall Street Journal and a “Twitter storm,” according to The Moscow News. The campaign that was started [ru] by a pro-Kremlin blogger Vladimir Burmatov as a way...