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Abstract: Although Soviet era glasnost did not generate authentic media freedom, it did allow for pluralism. The internet is creating similar conditions in Russia today. The anti-electoral fraud rallies that took place at the end of 2011 demonstrate that the internet can mobilize large protest movements. Accordingly, in order to prevent future protests, the Putin administration has two choices: accommodate greater engagement of the public in decision-making or seek to control the internet, including through the use of nationalist appeals and diversionary warfare.
Does the Soviet experience with glasnost teach us that even if Russians don't have media freedom, media dissonance can lead to social upheaval? The diversification of media voices via the rise of the internet in Russia may not be media "freedom" as we know it in the West, but it can still signal change as it amplifies divisions in society. Western analysts, scholars, and arguably even the Soviets themselves missed the significance of that dissonance in accelerating political change almost three decades ago during the glasnost period. Today, there is evidence that Russia stands on the threshold of political upheaval again, with the online sphere broadening and amplifying a type of "Glasnost 2.0" effect. Not only is there a diversifi- cation of media voices and evidence of fracture within the central message as there was in the late 1980s, but now there is the augmentation of this dissonance via online social networks. This has the potential to broaden, deepen and, perhaps most significantly, accelerate change in Russia.
Currently, analysts look more toward other countries rather than to the Soviet past to consider the possibility for change in Russia. Do the events of the Arab Spring signal a step-change in the ability of online communication to challenge authoritarian regimes, particularly in the way that social action linked to digital communication can travel across country lines? This is a question that has galvanized the attention of post-Soviet analysts, citizens, and leaders alike as Russia experienced wide-scale street demonstrations less than a year after the collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt. What is significant and useful about the Arab Spring vis-à-vis the Russian case is understanding how media dissonance functions in non-free states. In particular, a closer reading of the elements of glasnost...