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 December, 2011
Russia: Social Network In-Between Security Services and Free Market
As social networks in Russia like Vkontakte play an ever increasing role in communication between post-election protesters, so too grows the interest of the security services to limit them. This conflict leads to a hard choice: whether Vkontakte should respond to security service requests, or allow its users uncontrolled protest activity.
Russia: Kremlin Removes Re-Tweet From Presidential Account
RuNetizens were surprised to see president Medvededv re-tweet a message [ru] with cursing against bloggers. The re-tweet was removed, but Kremlin published an explanation that “illegal engagement with presidential account has been made” and that “those responsible will be punished.” Vedomosti reminded [ru] that recently Medveved had complained he couldn't respond to...
Russia: Election and the “Other Side of the Panopticon”
The protests of recent days in Moscow were triggered by the common feeling of many Russians that the parliamentary election results are not legitimate. Gregory Asmolov analyzes the role of the Internet in exposure of falsifications and the power change between state and citizens in the new information environment.
Russia: Massive DDoS Attacks Against Independent Websites on the Election Day
An unprecedented wave of DDoS attacks [ru] against independent websites on the election day in Russia: sites affected include thenewtimes.ru, echo.msk.ru, novayagazeta.ru, kommersant.ru, publicpost.ru, slon.ru, Bolshoy Gorod (bg.ru), golos.org, ikso.org, ridus.ru, zaks.ru (Saint Petersburg), pryaniki.org (Tula), crowdsourcing platform “Karta Narusheniy” and the LiveJournal platform. Many media organizations are using Facebook and...
Russia: Detained Member of Parliament Uses Live Mobile Broadcasting
Ilya Ponomarev, member of Russian Duma, who was detained by Novosibirsk police [ru] due to “illegal distribution” of his party newspaper conducted live broadcasting via his mobile phone from the police station and responded to text messages from viewers. Finally, he was released by a police officer in front of his mobile...
