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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 unpleasant comments using the “same words” and called for his supporters to do it.
Gregory Asmolov
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
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Latest posts by Gregory Asmolov
6 March 2012
Russia: 11 Areas of Election-Related ICT Innovation
Сrisis can be a fruitful time for innovation. In Russia, post-election protests have given birth to dozens of new web platforms and mobile applications. Gregory Asmolov summarises some of the key areas of innovation.
28 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.
7 December 2011
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.
4 December 2011
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 Twitter to continue distributing information. Some of the activities [ru] are taking place in Vkontakte social network. ”Golos” tried to collect reports about falsification with GoogleDocs, but it was also shut down. Anton Nossik from LiveJournal compares [ru] the attack to the Soviet efforts to block foreign radio broadcasting. Despite the attack, RuNet is full of reports and videos about voting violations.
2 December 2011
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 camera.
24 October 2011
Russia: President's Visit to Journalism Department Under Attack of Social Media
The New York Times explores the role of social media in exposing staged nature of Dmitry Medvedev's visit to the Moscow State Univerisity. The Twitter hashtag #журфак (shortened for Journalism department) as well as many posts on LiveJournal and Facebook made the controversy a trending topic and forced the president's spokesperson to announce Medvedev will visit the department again.
17 October 2011
Russia: Networked Volunteers Save Lives of Missing Children
In September 2010, 4-year-old Liza and her aunt went missing in the forest and were found dead. Liza's volunteer rescuers decided to establish a network called "Liza Alert" whose members would engage immediately once a child was lost.
Russia: the First Twitter Account Officially Registered as Media Outlet
Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecoms and Communications (RosKomNadzor) officially registered [ru] Twitter account of a microblogger Denis Plenin (@Dplenin) as the first mass media outlet on the platform.
Russia: Facebook Bots Massively Vote for Putin
Russian online magazine “Slon” exposes [ru] significant increase in activity of Facebook fake accounts who vote for Putin in online opinion polls. The bots are active not only on Facebook but also on online media websites that allow to use Facebook profiles for voting.
we are def getting there .