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© USIP 2010 • All rights reserved.

“Russian bloggers link 

both to those they agree with 

and those they criticize.”

December 20, 2010 

Mapping the Russian Blogosphere

Summary

•	 Analysis of more than 11,000 Russian-language blogs reveals an active political blogosphere 

comprising internationally linking bloggers; Russian media-focused bloggers; nationalists; 

members of the democratic opposition; bloggers focused on business, economics, and 

finance; and social and environmental activists. 

•	 Russian bloggers tend to be less politically polarized than their counterparts in the American 

blogosphere, and they prefer to blog about political issues from a nonpartisan position.

•	 Future research should focus on the offline outcomes of online political blogging, the effect of 

blogging platforms on polarization, the responses of the Russian government, and mapping 

the effects of newer social networking platforms. 

Introduction

Researchers have analyzed more than 11,000 blogs to provide a detailed, quantitative picture of 

how politics is discussed in the Russian blogosphere. In an October 2010 event titled Mapping 

the Russian Blogosphere and hosted by USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology and 

Peacebuilding, Bruce Etling and Karina Alexanyan of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society 

and John Kelly of Morningside Analytics presented this research. Their report, “Public Discourse in 

the Russian Blogosphere: Mapping RuNet Politics and Mobilization,” is the third in a series, following similar analyses of the Persian and Arabic-language blogospheres. A panel of Russia experts 

and bloggers responded to the research. 

Mapping Blogospheres 

To create a three-dimensional visualization of the Russian blogosphere, researchers used social 

network analysis, automated content analysis, and human coding. They analyzed how Russian 

bloggers link to one another and to other online media in order to understand how social media 

moves information in societies, Kelly said. This link analysis helps characterize the Russian blogosphere based on the tendency of individuals to link more frequently to things that interest them 

and to people with whom they share attributes or social relations.1

The researchers began with a sample of almost 5 million Russian blogs, which they then 

narrowed to the “discussion core”: 11,792 of the most active blogs dealing with politics, culture 

and public affairs. Over 70 percent of these types of blogs are based in Moscow and St. Petersburg, 

though researchers speculated that bloggers may become more decentralized as Internet penetration expands to rural areas. 

Anand Varghese

E-mail: avarghese1@usip.org

Phone: 202.429.7179

peaceBrieF72
© USIP 2010 • All rights reserved.

Mapping the Russian Blogosphere

page 2 • PB 72 • December 20, 2010

Clustering around Platforms, Not Ideology

In link analysis visualizations, blogs that link to each other are represented as clusters. The more 

often blogs link back and forth, the more pronounced these clusters become. Large clusters 

represent large groups of bloggers who are paying attention to and referencing each other’s 

content. In the American political blogosphere, clusters are sharply delineated along ideological 

lines: liberal bloggers link to other liberals and conservative bloggers to conservatives. With few 

bloggers crossing the digital aisle, the American political blogosphere is divided into two large 

ideological clusters. 

In contrast, Russian bloggers link both to those they agree with and those they criticize. Kelly 

noted that Russian nationalists link about 25 percent of the time to the democratic opposition, 

and 30 percent of the time the democratic opposition links to the nationalists. (Only 15 percent 

of U.S. bloggers link to opposing viewpoints.) Instead, the Russian blogosphere clusters more 

tightly around specific blogging platforms like LiveJournal, the most popular blogging site among 

Russian political bloggers. Both technical and social factors explain this trend. Unlike blogging 

sites like Wordpress and Blogger, which are popular in the United States, LiveJournal combines the 

traditional blogging capabilities of those platforms with the social networking capabilities of sites 

like Facebook. Users can blog in long-form prose while also friending fellow bloggers, sending 

private messages, and interacting socially online. These social functions promote greater linking, 

and therefore greater clustering, between bloggers using LiveJournal, regardless of their political 

persuasions. 

Russian bloggers also prefer to blog about political issues without declaring ideological affiliations. However, conflict flashpoints like the South Ossetian war in 2008 appear to change this 

dynamic. Using content analysis to examine discourse around the war, researchers noted an 

increased “rally around the flag” effect, in which mainstream media were far less critical of the 

government. The blogosphere largely followed this trend, adopting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 

frame around the incident: that the war was not just an interstate conflict, but a personal one 

between Putin and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. They found that a majority of Russian 

bloggers (55 percent) used partisan frames. Of those, only 16 percent were anti-Russian. The rest 

were anti-Georgian, at times using xenophobic language and referring to Georgians as “gryzuny” 

(rodents). 

Types of Russian Political Bloggers

Content in the Russian blogosphere varies widely, but what does this mapping reveal about Russian political bloggers and how politics are discussed online? The report finds political discourse in 

the Russian blogosphere divided between six main types, though researchers acknowledged that 

their labels were open to interpretation and refinement:

•	 Internationally linking public discourse: Russian-language bloggers (including expatriates) 

who frequently link to English-language and foreign news sources. They tend to be slightly 

more liberal and oppositional.

•	 Russian media-focused public discourse: Russia-based bloggers who link to domestic news 

sources. This type contains the most prominent “A-list” Russian bloggers from across the 

political spectrum.

•	 Nationalist: Nationalist discourse ranging from violent anti-immigrant rhetoric to less 

extreme discussions of Soviet history and Russian culture. 
© USIP 2010 • All rights reserved.

Mapping the Russian Blogosphere

page 3 • PB 72 • December 20, 2010

•	 Democratic opposition: Bloggers from the democratic opposition movement, who use blogs 

as a form of political mobilization. 

•	 Business, economics, and finance: Politically neutral discussion of local financial issues. When 

politics is discussed, it tends to be oppositional. 

•	 Social and environmental activism: Bloggers covering diverse social and environmental 

issues, including architectural preservation, ecosystem preservation, and charitable causes. 

The profile of this type of blogger has grown recently in the wake of their activism during 

recent wildfires around Moscow. 

News and Information Sources

Link analysis reveals not only how Russian bloggers link to each other but also how they link to 

other parts of the Internet for information and content. Researchers explored the linkage patterns 

between Russian political bloggers, Web 2.0 tools, and websites of traditional news organizations. 

•	 Russian bloggers and Web 2.0 tools: As is the case of other blogospheres the researchers 

mapped, Web 2.0 tools like YouTube and Russian Wikipedia are the most linked-to sites by 

both political and nonpolitical bloggers. The democratic opposition is using YouTube to 

further its cause by linking to videos that criticize or satirize around contemporary issues 

like the abuse of power and corruption. 

•	 Russian bloggers and traditional media: Russian political bloggers link to conventional 

media sites, with significant differences in trends across the political spectrum. Democratic 

opposition bloggers have a greater number of traditional media sources at their disposal 

than nationalist bloggers. According to Kelly, “It is often said that the Russian government 

has been effective at closing down oppositional media sources, [but] we see that, in fact, for 

things that feed content to the democratic opposition, they still have media sources that 

are go-to media sources. But for the right wing, the nationalists, the ethno-nationalists, they 

don’t have media sources that feed them.” Overall, Russian bloggers demonstrated a “slight 

preference for independent, foreign, and even oppositional news sources.” 2

Directions for Future Research

Three Russia experts placed the Berkman Center/Morningside Analytics report within the broader 

context of Russian politics and suggested future research. Respondents included Ivan Sigal 

(Global Voices), Angela Stent (Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown 

University), and prominent Russian blogger Alexey Navalny. Their discussion was moderated by 

Sheldon Himelfarb (USIP) and centered on the following topics:

•	 The effects of blogging on the “real world”: The Russian blogosphere “has been a very important tool for people who question government policy to express their views and mobilize,” 

Stent said. Navalny confirmed that blogs have been “a shelter in the world of censorship.” 

As a campaigner against corruption, he found the blog a useful way to draw attention to 

issues that mainstream media may ignore. However, he hesitates to create more formal, 

offline political structures around this online discourse, citing the dangers of increased 

government crackdown. 

•	 Platforms and polarization: The tendency of Russian bloggers to cluster around platforms 

appears to suggest that a specific technology environment like LiveJournal can trump 

ideological polarization. Is this so? Or does platform-based clustering simply hide the 

degree of partisanship in the Russian blogosphere, which is only revealed upon closer 

inspection through content analysis during conflict flashpoints? The clustering phenom-
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About This Brief

This Peace Brief was written by 

Anand Varghese, senior program 

assistant to the Center of Innovation for Science, Technology and 

Peacebuilding. At a USIP public 

event held on October 19, 2010, 

researchers presented a mapping 

conducted by Harvard University’s 

Berkman Center for Internet and 

Society and Morningside Analytics. 

The event was part of USIP’s ongoing Blogs and Bullets initiative, 

which seeks to understand online 

discourse as a cause of conflict 

and a means for dialogue and has 

published two reports identifying 

the need for new analytical tools 

in this field. This Peace Brief 

summarizes the methodology and 

findings of the Berkman Center/

Morningside Analytics researchers 

and the panel discussion that 

followed.

enon also raises questions about the direction of cause and effect: does the functionality of 

the blogging platform impede ideological clustering, or does the bloggers’ lack of political 

polarization explain the clustering around LiveJournal? Sigal suggested that the apparent 

lack of polarization in online discourse could indicate its ineffectiveness in influencing Russian politics. Increased polarization in the blogosphere would thus be a sign of the growing 

prominence of online discourse in politics. 

•	 The reactions of the Russian government: Even though Russia’s political space is fairly closed, 

the government has made few moves to actively censor the Internet. Stent observed that 

Russian authorities are only beginning to understand the blogosphere and are hoping 

to shape it without destabilizing the current system. Sigal said authorities are looking to 

co-opt online discourse when it is beneficial to them, citing online citizen responses to 

the recent forest fires. Seeing the effectiveness of these efforts, Russian officials tried to 

cast them as part of a government emergency response program. Navalny suggested that 

authorities could shut down popular blogging platforms like LiveJournal, now owned by a 

Russian oligarch close to Putin, with negative long-term effects on the blogging community. Government clamp-downs could point to the effectiveness of the blogging community: 

“When there is effective political speech in Russia, then it gets shut down,” Sigal said.

•	 Mapping other social networking platforms: Is the rise of “micro-blogging” having an effect 

on the long-form blog? The Berkman Center and Morningside Analytics are conducting 

research into this layer of discourse in the Russian online ecosystem. Pending more detailed 

analysis, Kelly ventured that Twitter removes some of the “noise” from the blogosphere, relegating less serious commentary to microblogging. Overall, he finds that Twitter and blogs 

complement each other. “Twitter is mainly used by the tech and the nonpolitical bloggers,” 

he added. “However, when it is used by political bloggers, it’s used mainly by the democratic opposition and not the nationalists.” Audience members also pointed to the need for 

research on how social networking services like Facebook, where elite Russian bloggers 

from across the political spectrum interact, are setting the agenda for political discourse in 

the Russian blogosphere. 

Endnotes

1. Bruce Etling, Karina Alexanyan, John Kelly, Robert Faris, John Palfrey, and Urs Gasser. “Public 

Discourse in the Russian Blogosphere: Mapping RuNEt Politics and Mobilization.” The Berkman 

Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, October 19, 2010. Available at: http://cyber.

law.harvard.edu/publications/2010/Public_Discourse_Russian_Blogosphere

2. Ibid.

Mapping the Russian Blogosphere

page 4 • PB 72 • December 20, 2010