Networking Putinism: The Rhetoric of Power in the Age of New Media Technology

FAIN: FT-291330-23

Michael S. Gorham
University of Florida (Gainesville, FL 32611-0001)

Research and writing leading to a monograph on political authority and the struggle to develop, maintain, and monitor new media in Russia during the Vladimir Putin era.

Even a regime as authoritarian as Vladimir Putin’s relies heavily on media to establish and maintain its political authority. For a regime accustomed to using state-run television to shape its public image, however, the rise of the internet has posed an immediate threat. “Networking Putinism” tells the story of the awkward twenty-year relationship between political authority and new media in Putin’s Russia, and speaks more broadly to how authoritarian regimes harness digital technologies to solidify power.