Global alternative public on Instagram: SNA-based case study of blogs about migration in Russian language

The article examines the foreign Russian-language blogosphere on Instagram through the lenses of the public sphere theory. The study revealed active cooperation of bloggers living in different countries during coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in March-April 2020. More than 4,000 Russian-speaking Instagram users commenting on posts became members of the networked publics because of this cooperation, the audience coverage of the most popular bloggers exceeded the threshold of one hundred thousand subscribers. Bloggers who initiated contributory publications on the situation with COVID-19 in their countries were points of crystallization of public discussions for people with migration experience, who are often excluded from the national public spheres of both their home countries and countries of residence. By inviting their subscribers to get acquainted with the situation in different countries, bloggers have formed a global arena that arises at the intersection of online public groups that have developed around bloggers. The main mechanism for creating such an arena is the cooperation of bloggers aimed at their own promotion and helping other bloggers in opposing the algorithms of the online platform. Collaboration in the form of a one-time publication of posts on the same topic, united by a unique hashtag and including direct links to bloggers from other countries, leads to the emergence of online ad hoc, or situational, global media in Russian. In the arena constituted by ad hoc media, Russian-speaking migrants living in different countries could discuss the measures that states were taking to defeat the pandemic. At the same time, this global networked public remains a “weak public” that has not transformed into a participatory counter-public sphere.

Institutional solutions for sectarian conflicts in the Middle East in the context of imperial legacy

The article focuses on the nature of sectarian conflicts in the Middle East as well as ways to resolve this and possible transformations. We assume that the rising level of ethnic confrontation stems from the disruption of governance regimes established during the Ottoman Empire. Hence, the research question states as follows: are there any ways to use the imperial practices of ethnocultural diversity management as the institutional framework for the resolution of current sectarian conflicts? By applying a structural functional approach, we identify the political space of the late Ottoman Empire, its main elements and constellation. We show that the process of statebuilding in the Middle East resulted in the decay of social ties between local communities and the increase of ethnic violence. These claims are confirmed by comparative analysis of a number of conflicts. It is found that the institutional framework for conflict resolution in Arab states should be based on political devolution and powerdividing agreements. This allows to reset inactive imperial practices in order to mitigate violence and enhance legitimacy. We point out that among the various reforms designed to achieve harmonization of formal and informal political institutions are federalization, non-territorial autonomy, consociationalism and local governance.

Correlation analysis of voting results in the Russian federal and regional elections of 2011–2018

Correlation coefficients between the results of political parties in the 2016 State Duma elections in the Russian Federation as a whole and in 26 regions, as well as in the elections of regional parliaments of 35 subjects of the Russian Federation in 2012–2015 were calculated. For the 2016 State Duma elections, data was used at all levels – regions, single-member electoral districts, TEC and PEC. It is noted that the “United Russia” correlations with all major parties are generally negative. A fairly high level of correlation is observed between the liberal parties. The main focus is on correlations between parliamentary opposition parties and parties with similar names. The correlation coefficients between the results of parties and candidates in the State Duma elections of 2011 and 2016 and the Presidential elections of 2012 and 2018 were also calculated, showing the stability of the geographical distribution of the electorate of the main parties. Regional differences in the nature of correlations between the main political parties are noted. It is assumed that correlations between parties reflect not so much their ideological closeness as the social closeness of their electorate. In this regard, it is noted that a positive correlation between the results of ideologically distant parties (“Yabloko” and the Communist party or “Yabloko” and “Rodina”) is associated with their reliance on the urban electorate and, perhaps, its most educated part. The reasons for voting for spoiler parties and the role of these parties in reducing the results of the main participants in the elections are discussed.

The Basics of Bayesian Approach to Quantitative Analysis (at the Example of Euroscepticism)

This article attempts to identify the main assumptions, prerequisites and techniques of the methods developed by some modern statisticians on the basis of T. Bayes' theorem for the purposes of social variables interactions assessment. The author underlined several advantages of the given approach as compared to more traditional quantitative methods and highlighted key research areas subject to evaluation by Bayesian estimates. First of all, this approach is compatible with game and decision theory, event analysis, hidden Markov chains, prediction using neural networks and other predictive algorithms of artificial intelligence. The Bayesian approach differs significantly from traditional statistical methods (first of all, it is focused on finding the most probable, rather than the only true value of the feature coupling coefficient), hence a graphical interpretation was provided for such basic concepts and techniques as probabilistic inference, maximum likelihood estimation and Bayesian confidence network. The described tools were used to test the hypothesis about the impact of life quality decrease on rise in Euroscepticism of EU citizens. ANOVA and correlation analysis of 27 thousand people’s responses to Eurobarometer questions addressed in November-December 2019 attributed strong likelihood to this assumption. Moreover, Bayesian approach allowed for a probabilistic conclusion that this hypothesis is more plausible than the link between Euroscepticism and respondents’ current financial situation (explanatory power of comparison to the past is relatively greater).

Electronic and traditional public participation in modern public policy

Around the World, public policy is experiencing the growth of eparticipation – ICT-based ways of interaction on public matters between state and general public. These may include online-consultations or participatory decision-making. Despite the scholars’ effort to extensively study the phenomena, we still know little of e-participation. This review article seeks to compile what do we know of e-participation at the moment and how does it compare to traditional ways of public participation. It was showed that both traditional and digital participation are contradictory. The former is often resisted by bureaucracy and does not enjoy much of people’s attention. The latter offers some solutions but brings new challenges. We further conclude the need for continuous studies of e-participation, offering the venues for the academic community

Political identity and social media ethics in nowadays America

The article analyzes the ethics of social networks and its relationship with political identity. Two dimensions of the ethics of social networks are identified – the ethics of users and the ethics of platform owners. Using the example of political communication and the actions of social networks during the US protests in 2020, the transition from a procedural ethics based on ensuring freedom of speech and the equivalence of all types of identity to an ethics of protecting oppressed classes and groups is considered. The trends of different ethical assessments and reactions of users and owners of social networks in the same situations in the same political context, arbitrary denial of equal access to political communication to users and politicians due to disapproval of their political identity are revealed. Such ethics are not universal, are applied selectively and can damage the democratic foundations of any society, especially in the context of the growing unlimited power of the owners of communication platforms.

Frontier zones of public policy

Referring to the traditional interpretations of “public policy”, the author substantiates the need for analytical correction of its content on the basis of identifying universal parameters of publicity, reflecting a special format of open (public) relations between the state and society. In this context, there are three social spaces of the public sphere, each of which determines the possibilities of implementing the course of citizens' participation in the management and strengthening the social orientation of government policy. The features of the implementation of such a variant of state public policy in modern Russia are briefly outlined.

The issues and outlook of the network approach to policy analysis: development of the theory and methods or the frustrated search for the ‘golden calf’?

The paper is devoted to the critical reconstruction of the policy network theory in contemporary political science. The number of issues that are still lacking in consensus among researchers are found in Russian policy network studies: the broad understanding of the terminology, limitations to theoretical and methodological grounds in application to Russian area of research, dominance of theoretical articles rather than empirical studies. The authors develop the definition that resolves the opaque understanding of the policy network term in Russian language. They define it as the formats of predominantly horizontal collaboration involving public bodies, private business entities, NGOs and/or uninstitutionalized citizens’ communities that participate in public governance procedures. The limitations of the policy network methodology that is caused by the crisis trends in positivist approach are also argued in the paper. The results of the meta-analysis of the policy network studies (N=37) are represented in the second part of the paper. The authors highlight three logics of the policy networks research: (1) the studies of the specific policy networks and focus on the concrete policies; (2) development of the methods of policy network analysis and their empirical tests; (3) focus on theoretical contribution to the policy network theory based on the empirical and comparative studies. Besides, the conceptualization of the approaches that may help the researchers to overcome theoretical and methodological limitations of the policy network theory is given.

Mathematical evaluations of development and use of western countries` military capacity (on the example of Germany)

We can face the fact that the factor of military power has been gaining increasing influence in the world politics. In this regard one of key tasks of international relations` studies is the exploration of armed forces` building of the countries in the dynamics. The creating a three-dimensional picture of these processes is difficult without the use of mathematical indicators, which show the key features and “narrow places” of the development and the usage of war machines’ potential of the key countries in the world arena. In this article the focal case of these studies with the usage of mathematical assessments is the Bundeswehr. The reason of the given choice is the changing German role and place in the Euro-Atlantic community and the world arena as the whole. Germany has been trying to become the status of full-fare world power. One of the inherent features of this process is the growing of the Bundeswehr`s potential that had begun in the second half of 2010-s and has had the perspective by the middle 2030-s. The article presents mathematical indicators that allow to show a more voluminous assessment of the progress of building the Bundeswehr's potential and German military budget (both in general and in terms of articles of spending and other specific indicators) in comparison with other largest NATO member states. The research paper also examines the indicators that make it possible to “highlight” the peculiarities of the Bundeswehr’s usage outside and inside the NATO zone of responsibility as well as issues the evolution of the foreign (allied) military presence on the territory of the FRG. The author tries to conclude the generalizations of German “war machine” development, basing on 11 mathematical indicators, 6 of which introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

«Third Space», «Echo-Cameras» and Online-Communities: Reproduction of Political Ideologies in Social Media

The study of the features of the reproduction of political ideologies in social networks and the formation of user communities united by adherence to some political ideas is an urgent problem of contemporary political science. Social media has become an agent for the development of new forms of political activity, providing unprecedented opportunities for transferring and exchanging information, broadcasting political ideas, and involving people in virtual and real communities. Today, social media have become not just a means of transmitting information and a form of entertainment, but a special global form of social political interaction, increasingly penetrating into the most diverse aspects of society. In political interactions, the online services of new media can be described as a “third space”, a development of Ray Oldenburg's concept, in which he singles out a part of the social space not related to housing (“first place”) and work (“second place”). Online communities on social networks have become a mixed form of institutionalized political and informal non-political interactions, as exemplified by ideologically based social media groups. The transformations caused by the rapid development of the Internet and “new social media” are giving rise to a fundamentally new reality of social interaction, which combines two contradictory trends. On the one hand, the Internet and social media have expanded people's access to information and significantly increased the field of social interaction and communication, thereby creating the basis for uniting users on various grounds, including political and ideological views. On the other hand, such changes led to a crisis of trust between the participants. Users belonging to different political ideologies form stable “echo chambers” in their Internet environment, rigidly filtering the information they receive, locking themselves in and reproducing the attributes of only their political ideology and not allowing outsiders there. In our opinion, this requires a study that provides for a close study of ideological “echo chambers”, which seems necessary for understanding the processes of political communication and ways of reproducing political and ideological views in the online sphere.