Russian Internet in 2008

Russian Internet media "Zagolovki.ru" ("Headlines") - a web source that daily gathers and thematically sorts articles from various Russian newspapers and magazines emphasizing those with especially smart and funny headings, have summarized what the year 2008 meant for Russian Internet. Here is, according to them, a list of remarkable events that happened:

1. The parliament, the Internal Affairs Ministry, and the Public Chamber (an institution that was created by Putin that represents "cultural elite" of Russia - the members are directly and indirectly assigned by Putin but have no real power) announced their plans of legal regulations

 for the Internet. They plan to regulate the Internet through the mass-media law. According to it all media that have more than one thousand consumers should be officially

 registered. The officials say not only news web sites should get registered but also blogs, online diaries, forums, chats, and dating sites.

2. The new Russian president Dmitry Medvedev addressed in one of his speeches the problem of Russian segment of the Internet. He said that it should be cultivated. In the same speech Medvedev noted that government should not interfere in what was going on the Internet unless it violated Russian laws...

3. During a parliamentary discussion on rising crimes against immigrants in Russia, an Internal Affairs Ministry official emphasized that the best way to prevent the crimes was to intensify governmental control over the Internet. During the very session a legislation was presented that would allow closing web sites that would be accused in publishing "extremist content".

4. In a short time after that a web site www.ingushetia.ru that informed about news from a rebellion region of Russia Ingushetia in a way that opposed Ingushetia's official information, was closed. The method of IP-address filtering was used. In three months the owner of the web site Magomed Evloev was "accidentally" shot to death in a police car in which he was put by police officers without any clear reason. 

5. One blogger was determined guilty for criticising militia in his blog comment. Another blogger - a member of an opposition movement - is still on trial.

6.  The Minister of Internal Affairs came out with a legislative initiative to qualify Internet as a mass media.

7. Criminal case was open against Internet users who on the pages of their blogs falsely informed that the president of Tatarstan (region of Russia) died.

8. The registration on the most popular Russian social network odnoklassniki.ru (classmates) became paid.

Russia fights financial crisis... with censure

If you live in America or in Europe and are used to watching television every day, you probably think that nobody in the world now knows for sure how to deal with the current economic crisis. But you would think differently if you lived in Russia.

First of all if you watch television or read mainstream newspapers in Russia, you must know that the economic crisis has affected all countries in the world except for one (guess which one) "because its officials have taken all necessary actions to prevent it".

And second, Russian officials took measures to make sure people believed that.

According to an article on the web page of Russian newspaper "Kommersant" the Russian "General Prosecutor's Office joined the fight against the financial crisis. It issued an instruction for its attorneys in different regions of the country 'to prevent the information attacks on banks'". Inspection of different media outlets started yesterday in different regions of Russia. The attorneys are examining media reports for signs of "fomentation of financial crisis" and "destabilization of the situation in the region".

Web site URA.ru became the first target for the officials after writing about banks. During an interrogation its editor was asked how the web site got its information about banks.

The General Prosecutor Office's spokesman explained that they "don't censor", but just "verify the accuracy of information".

The newspaper mentions that the first person who spoke about "information attacks" that can "destabilize the social situation" was Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Equal opportunities online

I was currently reading about PEN (Public Electronic System) Project in Santa Monica, CA. It was in 1989. Santa Monica was known for its politically active citizens. The citizens donated to create this system and to built public terminals where various people could access PEN. And their efforts had its fruits. The system was actively used by homeless citizens. They created their own group that could promote their interests in the community. 

As a result of this the group was given a building in the center of the city where they could clean and story their things, learn and look for a job.

Thanks to this system these homeless people were treated equally.

It reminded me on what we were currently discussing in Paul Levinson's class at Fordham. We were talking about what Sarah Pailin said about bloggers. That they were "kids in their pajamas"... Professor Levinson thought it was a remarkable thing to say: Because on the internet no matter who you are, no matter how you are dressed or if you are homeless or not. Everybody is treated equally, everybody has an opportunity to express himself.

Isn't it a big deal for a human society? Isn't it promissing?

Blogging clearance

I was going to post information about another conference about communication today. But then I realized that my blog was getting to boring and incoherent... And now I'm going to clear this up.

I'm still very uncertain about what I want this blog to be. Even now, at the moment when I'm writing this post, I doubt whether this post fits here well or not... I'd like to remove this ambiguity that makes me feel uncomfortable with almost every post I make here.

I started this blog with an intention to gather the information that might be useful for my academic work and to practice my English vocabulary getting myself ready for my future studies.

But after a while I found it much more interesting to write here down my own thoughts and observations, which, though not very often, appear in my head.

So, I created a separate blog to rework all the material I find on the internet. Pretty regularly I post there summaries of all interesting articles about communications and media. In the sidebar "baskets" I also bring together the concepts, organizations, books, journals, persons, and web pages I am interested in.

So be it.

This blog will be my personal diary of opinions about different events pertaining to my field of study in the world and in Russia.
And the blog "Everything useful" will serve as my public notebook of articles, links, organizations, and conferences dedicated to communications and media.

And by the way, here I also have one more blog about the impressions I have of studying in America))

International Association for Development of the Information Society

Here is one more conference to be added to my calender.

The International Association for Development of the Information Society organizes a conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age and on WWW/Internet on October 13th-15th 2008 in Freibug, Germany at Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet.

There is a list of all conferences organized by the Association on its web page. Besides, it has a digital library of all IADIS press publications, including conference proceeding and the IADIS Journal publications by 11723 authors with all materials avaliable online in PDF format.

I'll be happy if you find those links somehow useful.
I presonally don't know how to cope with all the information pertaining to my field of interest that I find online every day...

An enjoyable web page

I can't keep myself from posting a link to one commercial web site. Couldn't literally pull myself out of it.

It's a very well done page of a marketing company that delivers digital media consulting to businesses and organizations. The page shows all the fascinating abilities of modern internet technology for entertaining presentation of information and advertisement on the web. Their sophisticated use of videos is especially impressing. But only if you have a good internet connection and don't have to restart your browser every 5 minutes...

TPRC annual conference on communications, information, and Internet policy and its online resources

I guess one of the best ways not only to study the history of any academic discipline but also to follow its current tendencies and development is to monitor the conferences. At least it seems true for communications. And at least for somebody who is still out of the real academic life, like me.

Thus, last week my continuous internet searching brought a solid fruit. A blog about law, technology, and society (medisonian.net) brought me to a home page of Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (an annual conference on communications, information, and Internet policy) and its wonderful archives with programs for the last 13 conferences (beginning with the 1994) and free PDF format papers for the last 5 (from 2002) (can be found on the archive-search page).

The nearest, 36th research conference is taking place on the 26th through 28th September 2008 at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia and has the following themes announced:

1. Network Competition, Policy and Management
2. Next Generation and all-IP Networks: Policy, Regulatory, Architectural and Societal Issues
3. Spectrum Management and Wireless Futures: Anywhere, Anytime Communications and its Implications
4. Societal Issues: Universality and Affordable Access; ICTs for Development and Growth
5. The Transformation and Future of Media in an Age of User- and Community-Produced Creativity
6. The Transformation and Future of Intellectual Property and Digital Rights
7. Privacy, Security, Identity and Trust
8. Internet Governance and Institutional Strategies for Information Policy

Who knows, maybe I'll be able to use the Student Paper Contest opportunity next year when I'm going to have a full time student status... I'd be so happy to try to write something that meets its standarts, let alone to attend the conference to see what this kind of conferences looks like in an American reality...

Meanwhile, I'm thankful to the organizers of the conference for the opportunity to explore its informative web page and study its plentiful content, and have a subject to write about on my blog today and an event to add to the calender I put at the bottom of this blog page :)