Russian LiveJournal

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Russian LiveJournal

• The national specifics in the development of a
  virtual community

Eugene Gorny Goldsmiths College, University of
London gorny_at_list.ru
Eugene
Internet Research 5.0 Sussex University 20
September 2004
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Definitions

• LJ
• Web site (Livejournal.com)
• Technology (blogging tool)
• Community of users.
• RLJ Russian LiveJournal Zhivoj Zhurnal, ZhZh
  (????? ??????, ??)
• Community of Russian users at Livejournal.com

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RLJ General Characteristics

• The largest virtual community of Russians from
  all over the world (70000)
• Russia is on the 4th place in LJ country list
  (following US, Canada and UK) those living
  abroad
• Russian in on the 2nd place in LJ language list
  (6-8)
• Russians contribute to LJs development avva
  (senior programmer) sema (Semagic) hundreds of
  volunteers and creators of LJ extensions and
  tools
• LJ is extremely popular in Russia awards of
  Russian professional Internet community (Ezhe)
  media coverage general public recognition

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State of Research LJ

• Scant media coverage
• No academic research
• Belongs to technologies / communities that are
• ignored, unknown or explicitly overlooked
• (Jeremy Hunsinger)

• Reputation (US)
• teenage bloggers, mostly female
• trivial content
• no influence

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State of Research RLJ

• Self-reflection
• Hot topic for media ( 130 articles)
• But no academic research
• Reasons
• Linguistic / cultural barrier (non-English blogs
  are excluded)
• Underdevelopment of Internet studies in Russia

• Reputation (Russia)
• The most fashionable address on the web
• Strong intellectual core
• Real public sphere
• Influence upon media and culture

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RLJ is considered by its users as

• Source of information and opinions (media)
• Social software for building personal networks
  and acquiring friends
• Organizational tool for flashmobs and grassroots'
  activism
• A place for open discussions (public sphere)
• Instrument of self-expression and cultural
  creativity (both individual and collective)
• Addictive entertainment (comparable with computer
  games and chats)

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LJ vs. RLJ
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Age distribution

• An average RLJ user is 6 years older than an
  average LJ user
• This gap was even higher on early stages (i.e.
  RLJ was founded by older users, now it is
  becoming younger)

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Personal / Public

• Avva
• The overwhelming majority of journals in
  LiveJournal are very personal and devoted mainly
  to events in the writers private life,
  descriptions of everyday activity and
  communication with acquaintances relatives,
  friends and classmates and fellow students. In
  Russian LJ, there were few such journals in the
  beginning most journals were used by their
  authors for discussions on cultural, political
  and professional topics with many people,
  including strangers.
• There is a very high level of connectedness and
  communicativeness of Russian LJ in comparison
  with American LJ. there remains a communicative
  core in RLJ consisting of several thousands of
  journals which are tightly interwoven with each
  other. There remains the common communication
  environment in which news spreads quickly and
  discussion about a certain political, literary or
  social issue can involve dozens of journals and
  hundreds of interested users. LiveJournal in
  general has never had such a high degree of
  fellowship and entwinement.

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Differences Summary

• Age Average age of RLJ users is higher than that
  of LJ users
• Demography School and university students
  dominate in LJ office workers and people of
  free professions in RLJ
• Genres Private diary dominates in LJ
  semi-private / semi-public journal in RLJ
• Readership a small number of real friends in LJ
  indefinite audience (including virtual friends
  and complete strangers) in RLJ
• Interconnection Isolated groups in LJ common
  communicative environment in RLJ celebrities
  with a large audience

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Explanation of differences

• Architecture of LJ
• Socioeconomic conditions
• Political situation
• Historical circumstances of community building
• Peculiarities of the Russian national character

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1. Architecture and features of LiveJournal

• Not specific for RLJ but some LJ features, in
  connection with other factors, account for a
  different use of the common technology.
• Community-building features
• single database for all entries
• uniform style for all pages
• identification of users within the site
• interweaving of individual blogs
• (cf. Blogger and Moveable Type individual
  blogs )
• Multi-language environment
• introduction of Unicode as a universal encoding
  (April 2002)
• localization (Russian interface May 2002)
• translation of terminology and auxiliary pages
  into Russian (100 members in lj_russian)

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2. Socioeconomic conditions

• 15 m Internet users in Russia (2004)
• 3,8 m use Internet on daily basis
• only 4-9 of Russian population use the internet
  (cf. 50-80 in US and Europe)
• low level of connectivity in schools and
  universities ( limited access for younger
  generation)
• most users (60) connect at work ( high of
  office workers among LJ users)

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3. Political situation

• Suppression of free speech in Putins Russia (the
  fight with oligarchs shutting down independent
  TV channels governments control of media)
• Internet is still a freedom zone
• LJ is outside Russia and beyond Russian
  jurisdiction ( RLJ is the only real public
  sphere D. Bykov)

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4. Historical circumstances of community building
and its evolution

• Early adopters not teenage students but mature
  professionals
• Shift in function from keeping in touch with
  friends to creative experiments and public
  discussions

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RLJ evolution 1. Conception - Early adopters

• LJ was first populated by members of the
  so-called Elite of the Russian Internet
  (winter-spring 2001)
• Not passive adoption but play, experiments,
  creativity differentiation of RLJ from LJ not
  only by language but also by functions
• Narrow circle reputation of an esoteric
  playground for creative and intellectual elite
• Popularization RLJ in the masses recruitment of
  new members examples for imitation

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Roman Leibov Founding Father of RLJPhoto by
Eugene Gorny
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RLJ evolution 2. Propaganda, recruitment -
Early majority

• Numerous publications in online and print media
  made RLJ the most popular address on the web
• Zhivoj zhurnal was included in the list of the
  fifty words that have become especially
  important (Afisha Magazine, Dec. 2002)
• Among RLJ members there are journalists, writers,
  philosophers, political commentators, artists,
  musicians, and other opinion makers who use their
  journals for creativity and discussion ( high
  reputation)

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RLJ evolution 3. Unification Early majority

• Tools of community unification Fifs friends
  page (Lenta Fifa) - a list of all
  Russian-language LJ users
• Fifs represent RLJ as a whole ( Russian
  supercommunity no analogues in LJ)
• All LJ posts in Russian can be read in one page
  ( importance of reading RLJ as collective
  media)
• Fifs page becomes a starting point for new RLJ
  members ( easy to find friends)

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RLJ evolution 4. Mass adoption
Differentiation Late majority

• The motive to join not revolution but
  conformity
• Quantitative growth qualitative decline
• New elites (secretaries, pornographers,
  nationalists) along with the old ones
• RLJ as a model for real-life events (festival
  Current Music, Zhivoj Zhurnal magazine)
• More diversity more options for building up
  ones own environment
• More writers readers RLJ as media public
  sphere
• On the whole, the creative potential has increased

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RLJ Growth
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5. Russian national character
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National, international and transnational in RLJ

• In what degree does RLJ serve as a tool of
  unification of the national culture, given that
  its users are geographically dispersed?
• How does participation in RLJ influence the
  national identity of the users?
• What is the correlation between the national and
  the international in RLJ?
• Is it feasible to speak of an emergent
  transnational culture on the basis of LiveJournal
  in which RLJ is a nationally specific segment?

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Findings

• Russian tend to communicate with other Russians,
  exceptions are few
• The linguistic homogeneity helps to maintain the
  cultural unity but separates Russians from the
  rest of LJ
• LJ serves for Russians abroad not as a means of
  integration into the worldwide context but rather
  as a means of isolation from the alien
  environment

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Adoption of innovation cultural differences

• Glocalization - the use of universal (global)
  means to achieve particular (local) ends.
• Cultural values determine the adoption of an
  innovation.
• Russian culture has largely influenced the ways
  of using LJ, sometimes in unpredictable ways in
  regard to its original concept and its normal
  use.

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Everett Rogers, Adoption of innovation When
horses were introduced into the Shoshoni culture
an Indian tribe in Nevada, the Indians knew
what to do with them. The Shoshonis had
previously experience with horses they had
stolen horses from settlers for food. So, when
Indians agents gave them horses for
transportation, they readily accepted them. But
they ate them.
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• In a sense, the Russians ate LiveJournal.

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Adoption vs. co-creation

• Adoption of innovation is not a passive process
  but a co-creation of innovation.
• In this sense, the Russians, instead of using the
  horses for work they were intended, set them free
  and let them go to a common land.

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