1. Budapest, July16/ 2007 Evgeny Morozov, Director of New Media/Transitions Online New ways to engage youth online: the case of CIS

2. 3. More good news than bad news Good news : the youth is already engaged Bad news : nobody has much control over direction of that engagement Good news :that includes state actors 4.

• Users of the Russian-language Internet

• The Role of LiveJournal and LJ communities

• Case-study: Novgorod affair

• Conclusions/recommendations

Overview 5. Intro

LiveJournal is the platform of choice for most content-sharing

Most web-sitesactivist or nothave to package their content accordingly

Strong communities; some are extremist, some are noble

Some start seeking new ways to do outreach (YouTube, RuTube, etc)

6. Russian-language blogosphere 7. Age distribution of bloggers 8. (Russian-Language)LiveJournal in numbers

• Source: , 2007

9. Country distribution 10. The Long Tail of the Russian-language blogosphere 11. Most discussed news 12. Occupation of Russian-lang bloggers 13.

• 1. DailyKos

• 2.BoingBoing

• 3. LiveJournal

• 4. Michelle Malkin

• 5. Porn

• 6. Sports

• green one-way links

• blue reciprocal links

14. Communities are the key to LiveJournal

No perceived owner, more eager to contribute

Emerge bottom-up

Easy sign-up

Topics very diverse

Obvious venues to turn to when searching for smth/asking for smth

Perfect for disseminating info

Ideal for activism

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. Case-study: the Novgorod affair 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. Legal/Social Issues raised ==should young people be left alone without supervision even for a short time?==should those suspected of crimes which don't threaten society be locked up before trial?==is it enough to have one underage witness to start a criminal case?==is it acceptable to influence the state and especially the prosecutor's office through the Internet?==is the existing system for the protection ofsystem adequate?==is the current nature between the prosecutors office, the court, and the defense adequate?==is the overall criminal situation in Novgorod too bad? 57. Hyperlocality matters

Engagement with immediate local communitiesresonate better

It can happen to anyone

Less political, more social

Less attention of MSM to such problems

Eventually, from local to national to global citizenship

58. Motivation: better incentives

Need to better understand motivation

A lot of such projects succeed because of people's self-branding aspirations, not money

Many of them think traffic, not always $

Pay less, get more

Project design should take note of that

59. 10 small projects better than 1 big

More microfinance

More VC-like outlook

Methodology: teach project management+expose to diverse case-studies

Better community involvement, Digg (public evaluation/feedback) for projects

That way, also less politicized

60. Work with existing communities

LiveJournal is a social network with a blogging platform, not vice versa

Stand-alone projects often fail as they can't compete

Easier to channel existing comms than create new ones

LJ Communities succeed as they have no ownerclosest we get to commons

61. Break the isolation

Diminish the power of opinion-makers

More translations

Better connections within the CIS blogosphere: conferences, events, joint projects

Connect the segregated groupscommon resources with discussions

62. Crowdsource activism

Why do we talk about movements?

YouTube for activist badges?

Widgets for LiveJournaleasier ways to innovate?

Creating value from existing communities

More educational resources that bloggers can cite (consumer rights, etc)

Bloggers understand the value of embedding/push for archives

More ways to promote mash-up culture

63. Email: morozove@tol.org 64. disclaimer: I've done my best to attribute slides, graphs and screenshots used in this presentation. Nobody is perfect, and some of them may have slipped in unclaimed apologies to the original right holders. Let's hope that my frivolous use of your graphs or tables falls under fair use ;-)