Russian Anti-corruption Protests: How Russian Twitter Sees It?

Abstract

This article explores the map of political preferences of Russian Twitter users in the wake of March 2017 anti-corruption protests. So far there is little research on the political aspects of Twitter in Russia and our paper seeks to fill this gap in the scholarship. It is based on content analysis of over 45,000 tweets published during a week after March 26 events. According to the project preliminary results, political attitudes of Russians remain fairly moderate, though evidence points to some polarization among the politically involved. The research also reveals a variety of value patterns shared by politically active users and investigates corresponding clusters of users that are taking shape in the ongoing online discussion and networking. The article concludes with an interpretation of how these clusters might relate to menu of political participation during current electoral cycle in Russia.