Twitter in the Russian hybrid media system: an echo chamber or an opinion crossroads?
S. S. Bodrunova, A. A. Litvinenko, A. V. Yakunin
School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St.Petersburg State University
I. S. Blekanov
Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Control Processes, St.Petersburg State University
With the growth of Internet penetration, media systems have been undergoing qualitative
shifts in shape, borders, and relations with outer society, including the political sphere. Recently,
a scholarly discourse describing current media systems as hybrid [Chadwick, 2013] has evolved.
Under hybridization of a media system, we mean: 1) transformation of offline media into
convergent media with multiplatform production and multichannel content delivery; 2) growth of
online-only media outlets and web 2.0 media. A hybrid media system has a visible segment of
convergent and web 2.0 media; trajectories of hybridization, though, may vary in conditions,
extent, and social implications. Among the latter, tech-based hybridization inevitably brings in
political outcomes, as hybridization creates new (or reshapes existing) political cleavages in
societies. Today, media hybridization research focuses on several aspects such as dependence of
national trajectories of hybridization upon socio-political context [Adam&Pfetsch, 2011] or
agenda spill-overs [Bodrunova&Litvinenko, 2013a]. But these studies are still poorly connected
to Internet studies where media are perceived mostly as communication platforms. In our
research, we treat Twitter as a part of a hybrid media system and as a communicative milieu.
In 1990s - early 2000s, many authors claimed that higher Internet penetration levels would
lead to democratization via bigger citizen involvement and horizontalization. This was believed
to be especially true for transitive democracies [Rohozinski 1999; Kuchins 2007]. With the rise
of Twitter since 2006, democratization potential of Internet, in theory, had to increase even
more: it meant a new level of openness in social networks [Miller 2010]. But optimism gave
place to demarcation of optimists and pessimists [Fuchs 2013]. Online audience and media
exposure studies have also provided significant criticism towards political efficacy of Twitter.
One of the critical lines discusses platform dependence of online audiences leading to audience
fragmentation and encapsulation of political discussion [Tewksbury, 2005]. The closed-up online
milieus are described as ‘public sphericules’ [Gitlin, 1998], ‘echo chambers’/‘enclaves’
[Sunstein, 2007], or ‘filter bubbles’ [Pariser, 2011]; they prevent communication platforms from
becoming ‘crossroads of opinions’.
Today, Russia is a nearly perfect object for research on political aspects of media
hybridization. First, Russia is a fundamentally fragmented society [Zubarevich 2011], formed of
post-industrial, industrial, rural, and migrant ‘Russias’, with the two latter dramatically
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underrepresented in media; this is expected to be replicated in communication. Second, Russia
has low online/offline media parallelism [Toepfl 2011]: there is a big number of online-only
media that, in early 2000s, have created alternative news arenas. Third, in mid 2000s, the first
closed-up online discussion milieu formed on Livejournal [Gorny, 2009]. Fourth, in 2010 and
2012, Russia became ‘world’s top1 socially networked country’ by user engagement and had a
peculiar SNS market dominated by Vkontakte (over 110 mln users) vs. Facebook (over 10 mln
users only). Thus, fragmented political modernization is complemented by an online-onlyoriented media hybridization trajectory; this is likely to produce closed-up online communicative
milieus.
Research on Russian Twitter has in this respect by far been scarce [Greene 2012; Kelly et
al., 2012]; there’s mixed evidence on ‘echo chamber’/‘crossroads’ nature of the Russian Twitter.
To test it, relations with migrants were chosen as a socially polarizing issue. The main case
study focused on ethnic bashings in Biryulyovo in October 2014. ‘Calm’ periods in Russia and
in Germany were also assessed for comparison.
We looked at four aspects: 1) network structure of the discussion (data collected by semisupervised hashtag-guided automated web crawling); 2) mediatization of the discussion (visual
assessment of the web graphs, evaluation input/output for media accounts, and semantic analysis
of tweets’ aggregated vocabulary); 3) representation and public sphere cleavages; 4) framing and
discourse features of the discussion (manual coding of over 1,000 tweets with pre-tests,
statistical analysis, interpretative reading).
Preliminary results
1. Contrary to expectations, the web graph on Biryulyovo showed no clear clusters of
closed-up discussion; neither were they in the ‘calm’ period of March 2014, while in
Germany we spotted at least three such clusters. This may be explained by ‘crossroads’
nature of the Russian Twitter or by the fact that the whole discussion is a big ‘echo
chamber’.
2. Mediatization of the discussion was extremely high, media outperforming all other
groups of accounts in Twitter by summarized input/output capacity (likes+comments).
This was cross-validated by semantic analysis of the vocabulary of the discussion.
3. As for the media accounts, Twitter seems to perform significantly better as an opinion
crossroads than the Russian Facebook. Hybrid pro-establishment and depoliticized
media are more active than their online-only anti-establishment counterparts; referencing
to media sources in tweets cross-validates this, as the discussion attracted content
equally distributed between hybrid and online-only/web 2.0 media. But as to
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representation of the conflict sides, there’s practically ‘0-representation’ of migrants
among the most active tweeters, while nationalist accounts dominate, turning the
discussion into one anti-migrant echo chamber. This is why, perhaps, the blame for the
situation in Biryulyovo was put to migrants and to Moscow and federal powers.
4. Preliminary results of frame analysis cross-validate the last claim, as the discourse is
heated. Violent topics were discussed 1,2 times more than non-violent ones, negative
emotional discourse dominated over rational commenting (but not over news and factual
tweets), 15% of tweets put blame on someone, 10% contained nationalist speech and
11% - hate speech.
Thus, in terms of mediated discussion, the media ‘junctions’ on Twitter in Russia can really
foster the ‘crossroads’ opinion formation, as hybrid media compete with online-only ones in
such a manner on Twitter only – and easily win the ground. But in terms of social representation
Twitter as a platform and tweeting as a social practice seems to be ‘belonging’ to the ‘second’
Russia [Zubarevich, 2011] and thus, by far, creates pro-nationalist consensus in the Twitter
discussion on Biryulyovo.
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