VK Roulette: How the Russian Government Responds to Viral Internet Events

Abstract

This thesis evaluates whether the Russian government sincerely responds to viral internet events. Sincere responsiveness refers to whether the government creates new policy proposals, fires top officials, or frees those falsely accused of wrongdoing. I found little in the literature regarding the link between viral internet events and sincere responsiveness. Past studies also did not interrogate the difference between sincere and insincere responsiveness. Finally, most studies into authoritarian responsiveness focused on China and not other authoritarian regimes. I ask two research questions: 1) Does the Russian government sincerely respond to viral events? And, 2) if the government responds sincerely to some viral internet events, why does the government sincerely respond to certain events and not others? I compiled a list of 45 viral events based on lists from top Russian search engines, social media platforms, and blog posts to interrogate these questions. I used a binomial regression model to identify the key determinants of sincere responsiveness. I then examined two case studies which demonstrate how the key determinants impact sincere responsiveness and one case study which demonstrates insincere government responsiveness. I found that the Russian government responded sincerely to most viral events in the dataset and issued at least a superficial statement to all viral events in the dataset. The government was more likely to respond sincerely to viral internet events concerning public services or security than viral internet events concerning elections. The government also was more likely to respond sincerely to viral events which had offline citizen mobilization after events went viral. Online popularity levels, a viral event occurring before an election, agreement in online sentiment, and online sentiment challenging regime legitimacy all failed to impact sincere responsiveness. These findings support a growing literature which argues that authoritarian regimes respond sincerely more to non-sensitive issues, like public services and security, than sensitive issues, like elections. These findings make a new contribution by showing that actual mobilization, instead of threats of mobilization, motivate government sincere responsiveness. This thesis shows that the internet brings citizen complaints to authoritarian leaders’ attention and leads to sincere responsiveness to non-sensitive issues. However, the internet is less likely to coerce sincere responsiveness to issues considered sensitive to the regime’s legitimacy, like election complaints. Policymakers should use these findings to protect protesters in authoritarian regimes, help identify internet trolls which authoritarian regimes use to confuse citizens, and offer financial incentives to tech companies to circumvent censorship measures.