Mediating (Semi-)Authoritarianism: The Power of the Internet in the post-Soviet World

每当最近在地球仪的非民主政权中出现抗议活动时，大众媒体都会迅速谈论Twitter革命或Facebook起义。与此同时，在学术期刊上，围绕互联网传播如何影响非民主政治展开了一场激烈的辩论。然而，虽然对这个问题的随笔式处理已经普遍存在，但关于这个主题的强有力的研究机构只是在出现。最重要的是，在这些文献中，基于案例的跨国研究仍然令人惊讶地稀缺。这种明显缺乏比较研究的情况非常令人遗憾，因为它大大限制了研究人员在他们调查的具体国家背景之外声称其研究结果有效性的能力。为了弥补这一差距，本项目将比较后苏联世界三个（半）独裁政权之间的互联网媒介传播现象（及其后果）。因此，本项目的中心研究问题可以表述如下：在过去十年中，互联网媒介传播的迅速崛起如何改变了后苏联世界的政治传播、政治和政体？为解决这一问题，该项目分为五个分项目。每一个子项目都将研究与以下理论关键概念之一相关的交际变化：（1）政治表征，（2）政治新闻的解码，（3）受众的新闻素养，（4）政治丑闻，（5）威权审议。使用这些概念是高度创新的，因为大多数以前的研究都集中在选举活动或抗议等政治关键事件上。相比之下，本文所提出的五个概念涉及到独裁统治的日常调解形式，这些形式对当代（半）独裁政权的长期稳定至关重要。在实证数据收集方面，该项目将集中在三个国家：俄罗斯、乌克兰和白俄罗斯。之所以选择这些国家，是因为它们涵盖了自共产主义垮台以来在后苏联地区出现的所有政治制度类型（各种情况）。此外，尽管这些国家对欧洲联盟的能源和军事安全至关重要，但迄今为止几乎没有对它们进行研究。因此，特别是在白俄罗斯和乌克兰，该项目将不得不描绘出基本上是新的领域。迄今为止，还没有关于这两个国家的主要研究成果发表在主要的传播学或政治学期刊上。填补这一空白，该项目将为最近关于媒体研究去西方化和政治媒介化的激烈辩论做出引人注目的理论贡献。此外，它还将创造大量的知识，德国和欧洲的政策制定者将对此产生极大的兴趣。

Whenever protest arose recently in non-democratic regimes across the globe, mass media were quick to speak of Twitter Revolutions or Facebook uprisings. In parallel, in academic journals, a vibrant debate has evolved around how internet-mediated communication affects non-democratic politics. However, while essayistic treatment of this question has been pervasive, a strong body of research on the topic is only in the emerging. Most importantly, in this literature, there is still a surprising scarcity of case-based, cross-national research. This striking lack of comparative research is highly unfortunate because it significantly limits the ability of researchers to claim validity for their findings beyond the specific national context they investigate. To address this gap, this project will compare phenomena of internet-mediated communication (and their consequences) across three (semi-)authoritarian regimes in the post-Soviet world.The project s central research question can thus be formulated as follows: how has the rapid rise of internet-mediated communication in the past decade changed political communication, politics, and polities across the post-Soviet world? To address this question, the project is divided in five subprojects. Each subproject will investigate communicative change in relation to one of the following theoretical key concepts: (1) political representation, (2) decoding of political news; (3) news literacies of audiences; (4) political scandal, and (5) authoritarian deliberation. Working with these concepts is highly innovative because most previous research has focused on political key events like election campaigns or protest. By contrast, the five concepts suggested here concern forms of everyday mediation of authoritarian rule that are pivotal to the long-term stability of contemporary (semi-)authoritarian regimes.In terms of empirical data collection, the project will focus on three countries: Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. These countries were selected because they cover the full range of political regime types that have emerged in the post-Soviet region since the fall of Communism (diverse cases). Moreover, despite the central relevance of these countries to the energy and military security of the European Union, they have been scarcely researched to date. Particularly with regard to Belarus and Ukraine, the project will therefore have to chart out largely new terrain. To date, no major study addressing the central research question with regard to these two countries has been published in major communications or political science journals.Filling in this gap, the project will make highly visible theoretical contributions to the recently vibrant debates on de-westernizing media studies and the mediatization of politics. Moreover, it will create a wealth of knowledge that will find great interest among German and European policy makers.