Regional Blogosphere as a Platform for Political and So- cial Discussions (on Bashkortostan Example)

Section: New Media

The author presents the results of the research of the blogosphere in one of Rus­sia regions — the Republic of Bashkortostan. The blogosphere in Russian regions of­ten remains the only platform for free expression of opinions and thoughts. Bashkor­tostan as the region with authoritarian traditions attracts a particular interest. The basis of the research is an analysis of 2500 blog posts produced by 25 the most popu­lar regional bloggers. The analysis is focused on the volume of content on politics and social issues as well as on bloggers’ personal attitude to these subjects. The au­thor also studies the dependence of bloggers’ popularity from their political and so­cial views. The author has revealed the extremely high level of heterogeneity of the regional blogosphere and the absence of correlation between bloggers’ involvement in political discourse and their popularity. The attitude toward the politics, especially in Russia, is mostly negative, but the positive coverage of social life is evident. In general the model of blogosphere in the republic fits the general model of mass media in the region. The differences between these models help to understand the possible trends of regional mass media development without the external limitations.