(Un)Changing Attitudes Towards Social Media in Russia

By: Margaret Poda

October 9, 2012

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, visited Russia. Though he was only in Moscow for a few days, people all over the country, including here in St. Petersburg, paid attention to the social media billionaire’s visit, whether they liked it or not.

TV stations widely proclaimed Zuckerberg’s entrance as they played, and replayed, his itinerary for the trip. First, he met with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, then he spoke to Moscow University students, and finally, he appeared on a late night talk show, not unlike the Tonight Show. Sometimes it is hard to notice as a foreigner, but watching TV with my host family has certainly alerted me to the variations and distortions that exist in the Russia media.

Television is the most widely available news source in Russia; however, TV only shows the official version of the news, as dictated by the Kremlin or other pro-government groups. In 1999, the past and present president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, put the brakes on the privatization of television and other national media sources. It has been widely speculated since then that Putin realized the political power of television and quickly harnessed it to extend his personal agenda.

Today, all federal TV stations in Russia are “under the direct control of the State or state-owned enterprises, such as Gazprom,” and according to a number of sources, “the State censors certain topics or publications.” As of 2010, approximately 80 percent of the Russian population stated that TV was their main news source, and thus they only saw the official, highly optimistic, and single minded painting of the world. This is changing gradually as more of the population gains access to the Internet; however, most Internet users reside in urban areas, and people far from these centers still depend mainly on television.

Newspapers and magazines here are less controlled than television, but they have their own biases. Regarding Zuckerberg’s much publicized visit, I concentrated my reading efforts on articles from two different newspapers. The first was published in RBK-Daily, a so-called business newspaper that addresses the lower-middle class and has news, ranging from world issues to basically anything. In this article, it was obvious from the outset that the author was disappointed in Zuckerberg’s visit. Headlined, “International Man of Mystery,” the article itself concentrates little on the overarching importance of the visit, and more on the fact that Zuckerberg was late to his meeting with the university students and that he simply stated that he reads “a lot” when asked what was the last book he read.

Published by Независимая, the second article was slightly more informative than the first, but it was mainly characterized by its paranoia. The author shows obvious fear that the CEO of a major Western social media company was entangling itself with the government. There is nothing like the Great Firewall of China in Russia, and it even appears that there is a considerable amount of Internet freedom, yet people still fear the possibility of future control or government abuse of this resource.

Historically in Russia, publicly posting the kind of information commonly provided by Facebook users would be akin to (social) suicide. In the Soviet Union, there was a culture of fear and secrecy and, at times, citizens had very little trust in the people who might now be considered friends on a social networking site like Facebook. I heard a statistic in my "Russian Civilization" class stating that approximately one in six citizens of the USSR was a government informant. The government depended on informants placed throughout society to denounce others for breaking the rules of Soviet society. These KGB informants “serve[d] the fundamental purpose ... of inhibiting people from speaking freely to one another; from speaking out; from sharing and germinating thoughts." Facebook and other social media sites, like Twitter, urge people to speak freely to one another, speak out against their governments, share their ideas and thoughts with people all around the world, and bring everyone closer together.

Though the Soviet Union ended almost a generation ago, people still fear future government involvement in their personal lives. As this fear lingers, social media sites like Facebook suffer in Russia. In the past, simply having a Bible in your home was dangerous. Now, the Federal Security Service could easily access a Facebook account and discover a person’s favorite books, their political and religious affiliations, their friends and family, etc. The potentially dangerous information contained in a social media site is practically limitless.

It seems to me that many young people here do not fear posting their lives to the world, though many are suspicious. They optimistically believe that the government involvement in their personal lives died with communism. Some people who trust the Internet, like my conversation partner Anya, do not want a Facebook account. Her reasoning? BKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, is not as obviously involved with the Russian government. However, the more I read the news or follow blogs here, the more I begin to think that the government has not completely stepped out of people’s lives, merely backed up a little. Perhaps I am becoming paranoid. It is entirely possible, but as one of my professors here states, “To survive in Russia, you must be a conspiracy theorist.”

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