Online discourse of the “second wave” of Moscow observers

Abstract

The article is based on the results of the initiative study of references in Russian social media about the “second wave” of social activists observing Russian elections. First wave was revealed during the Presidential elections in March 2012. And the second wave happened in September 2013, when the acting mayor S. Sobianin fought for the post with A. Navalny, strong representative of the Russian opposition.The study is based on the content analysis methodology. Sample of posts in social media contains 3777 records from 127 different sites and was collected with the help of Wobot online system and coded manually.The results of the survey proof that social media play an important role in the political process of the modern Russia. Two main topics discussed include, first, dissemination of information (news) about the observers and monitoring the electoral process, and second, the calls to act (i.e. to become an observer).Discourse on different resources differs significantly. If Twitter is mainly distributed news stories, VKontakte was used more actively for the involvement of Internet users in the observation process. Live Journal concentrates on the opposition discussion. Analysis of reposts shows that communications in social networks were strongly dependent from the opinion leaders and did not imply active publications by “ordinary” users.