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

最近，每当全球各地的非民主政权出现抗议活动时，大众媒体就会迅速谈论“Twitter革命”或“Facebook起义”。与此同时，在学术期刊上，围绕互联网媒介传播如何影响非民主政治展开了一场激烈的辩论。然而，虽然对这个问题的散文式处理已经普遍存在，但对这个主题的强有力的研究才刚刚出现。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匮乏。这种比较研究的显著缺乏是非常不幸的，因为它极大地限制了研究人员在他们调查的特定国家背景之外宣称其发现的有效性的能力。为了解决这一差距，本项目将比较后苏联世界三个（半）专制政权中互联网媒介传播的现象（及其后果）。因此，该项目的中心研究问题可以概括如下：在过去十年中，互联网媒介传播的迅速崛起如何改变了整个后苏联世界的政治传播、政治和政治？为了解决这个问题，项目被分成五个子项目。每个子项目将研究与以下理论关键概念之一相关的交际变化：(1)政治代表；(2)政治新闻的解码；（三）受众的新闻素养；(4)政治丑闻；(5)专制审议。使用这些概念是非常创新的，因为之前的大多数研究都集中在竞选或抗议等政治关键事件上。相比之下，这里提出的五个概念涉及专制统治的日常调解形式，这些形式对当代（半）专制政权的长期稳定至关重要。在实证数据收集方面，该项目将重点关注三个国家：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具有核心意义，但迄今为止几乎没有对它们进行过研究。因此，特别是关于白俄罗斯和乌克兰，该项目将不得不在很大程度上开辟新的领域。迄今为止，在主要的通讯或政治科学期刊上还没有发表关于这两个国家的中心研究问题的重大研究。填补这一空白，该项目将为最近关于去西化媒体研究和政治媒介化的激烈辩论做出非常明显的理论贡献。此外，它将创造大量知识，这将引起德国和欧洲决策者的极大兴趣。

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.