Digital Protest Activity in Provincial Cities of Modern Russia

Abstract

Digital protest in Russian provincial cities is funda-mentally different from such protest activity of met-ropolitan cities. The typical forms of digital political protest activity in metropolitan cities is oppositional political activity, while in the provincial cities the most popular topics on social networks are: solving hobbies-related issues, environmental issues, local socio-economic problems, such as the problems of defrauded equity holders etc. Despite the apparent interest in the elections, opposition parties and movements, residents of the Russian provincial cit-ies do not trust the major popular leaders of the political opposition in large cities and metropolitan areas. This testifies to the split of Russia into a country of metropolitan cities and a country of pro-vincial ones, different value systems of provincial and capital Russia, which may negatively affect the development of the political situation in the future.