The Challenge of Digital Public Sphere in Belarus and Russia

A Self-Critical Public: Cumulation of Opinion on Belarusian Oppositional YouTube before the 2020 Protests

“…With the advent of social networks, the latter became facilitators of oppositional street actions, either linked to nationalism or otherwise. Such events included Livejournal-based protest flash mobs of 2006 (Shirokanova, 2015), the applauding flash mob of 2011 discussed in Vkontakte.ru and the following protest rallies (Lesnikova, 2011, p. 69;Shirokanova, 2015), or celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Belarusian Republic in 2018 discussed on Twitter and YouTube.…”

“…In between street rallies, platforms like VKontakte.ru and Facebook gave a shelter to activism and wider politicized discourse, mostly within the younger population strata overrepresented in Bynet. Many older-age Belarusians remained non-involved in political discussion beyond chatting in kitchens, and political agendas alternative to TV, as Shirokanova (2015) notes, remained nearly invisible for the majority of the population. Also, apolitical Odnoklassniki.ru quickly became very popular in Belarusian countryside, contributing to platformization of the society and depoliticization of online presence of Belarusians, even if cleverly used by the opposition for hidden network building (Herasimenka, 2019, p. 236).…”

“…Thus, public affairs newspapers are state-run for 93%, and TV channels are for 68% (Manaev, 2014, p. 210). They enjoy a major market share and preferential treatment, thus clearly defining public agendas (Shirokanova, 2015). In response, they face "natural" and "adequate" restrictions in news selection (Schimpfössl & Yablokov, 2014).…”

“…In such conditions, independent media cannot provide for substantial change, as they, with very rare exceptions, do not form wide enough publics around them. Non-systemic media actors choose between radicalization and formation of "parallel" (Kiriya, 2012) or "alternativeagenda" (Bodrunova & Litvinenko, 2015) discussion enclaves limited to their core interested audiences and lacking communication with the authorities (Shirokanova, 2015). Portals and whole platforms may become such closedup milieus, but we have only scarce data on whether their users feel and behave as publics and can insist on self-assembly and self-expression (Shirky, 2010).…”