Eurasia 2.0: Russian Geopolitics in the Age of New Media

Abstract

Fifteen papers develop a geopolitical perspective on political and social affairs in post-Soviet Russia, concentrating on the phenomenon of digital geopolitics. Papers discuss Russian digital lifestyle media and the construction of global selves; crossing borders/road movies in Russia--the question of the road to nowhere and destinations in recent Russian cinema; digital storytelling on YouTube--the geopolitical factor in Russian vernacular regional identities; uses of Eurasia--the Kremlin, the Eurasian Union, and the Izborsky Club; digital geopolitics encapsulated--Geidar Dzhemal between Islamism, occult fascism, and Eurasianism; Russia as an alternative model--geopolitical representations and Russia's public diplomacy--the case of Rossotrudnichestvo; Vladimir Putin's third term and Russia as a great power; future empire--state-sponsored Eurasian identity promotion among Russian youth; Russian geopolitical discourse--pseudomorphosis, phantom pains, and simulacra; digital conservatism--framing patriotism in the era of global journalism; the invisible battlefield in the Belarusian media space--the question of fighting "russkii mir" from within; constructing the enemy-other in social media--Facebook as a particular "battlefield" during the Ukrainian crisis; the imagined geolinguistics of Ukraine; Euromaidan and the geopolitical struggle for influence on Ukraine via new media; and the "Russian world" concept in online debate during the Ukrainian crisis. Suslov is Marie Curie Postdoctoral Researcher in the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University. Bassin is Baltic Sea Professor of the History of Ideas in the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Sodertorn University. Index.