Giving attention to conduct in the social media: Discursive
mechanisms of attention structures in mediating governance-at-adistance in today’s Russia
Abstract
Some of the recent legal and political interventions implemented in Russia aim at regulating the
spheres of the life of the individual, such as sexuality, freedom of speech and information
movement. These interventions indicate that the governance in Russia is undergoing systematic
transformations requiring the theoretical and analytical attention of the scholarly community. This
paper examines the range and the reach of the aforementioned transformations into the everyday
communication and practices of individuals. By analysing the discursive mechanisms through
which the actors give attention to the practices of censorship at the computer-mediated site
‘Woman.ru’, the article demonstrates how governance operates at a distance across the technologies
of omnipresent surveillance and strategic conduct.
Keywords
Computer-mediated communication, attention structures, mediated discourse analysis,
multimodality, transnational governmentality, conduct, discipline