Related Papers
Surveillance & Society
Citizen-Led Justice in Post-Communist Russia: From Comrades’ Courts to Dotcomrade Vigilantism
2018 •
Rashid Gabdulhakov
This paper aims to provide a theoretical conceptualization of digital vigilantism in its manifestation in the Russian Federation where cases do not emerge spontaneously, but are institutionalized, highly organized, and systematic. Given the significant historical context of collective justice under Communism, the current manifestation of digital vigilantism in Russia raises questions about whether it is an example of re-packaged history backed with collective memory or a natural outspread of conventional practices to social networks. This paper reviews historical practices of citizen-led justice in the Soviet state and compares these practices with digital vigilantism that takes place in contemporary post-Communist Russia. The paper argues that despite new affordances that digital media and social networks brought about in the sphere of citizen-led justice, the role of the state in manifesting this justice in the Russian Federation remains significant. At the same time, with technological advances, certain key features of these practices, such as participants, their motives, capacity, targets, and audience engagement have undergone a significant evolution.
Media and Communication
Media Control and Citizen-Critical Publics in Russia: Are Some “Pigs” More Equal Than Others?
Rashid Gabdulhakov
Amid the intensification of state control over the digital domain in Russia, what types of online activism are tolerated or even endorsed by the government and why? While entities such as the Anti-Corruption Foundation exposing the state are silenced through various tactics such as content blocking and removal, labelling the foundation a “foreign agent,” and deeming it “extremist,” other formations of citizens using digital media to expose “offences” performed by fellow citizens are operating freely. This article focuses on a vigilante group targeting “unscrupulous” merchants (often ethnic minorities and labour migrants) for the alleged sale of expired produce—the Hrushi Protiv. Supported by the government, Hrushi Protiv participants survey grocery chain stores and open-air markets for expired produce, a practice that often escalates into violence, while the process is filmed and edited to be uploaded to YouTube. These videos constitute unique media products that entertain the audie...
Violence and Trolling on Social Media
1 Mediated Visibility as Making Vitriol Meaningful
Rashid Gabdulhakov
Mediated Visibility as Making Vitriol Meaningful
2020 •
Rashid Gabdulhakov
When engaged in vitriol through digital media, users harm their peers not only through the caustic nature of their words, but also by the way in which they can make their targets visible to public scrutiny. Social platforms and mobile devices enable individuals to author commentary about their targets, but also compel other types of actors to join in (or to contest, appropriate or derail) malicious exchanges. By focusing on highly visible yet comparatively mundane forms of denunciation in China, Russia and the United Kingdom, this chapter considers how vitriol can be manifest as a form of civic engagement. These cases provide insight about a more prevalent form of vigilantism that may be located at the margins of what is considered acceptable in their respective social contexts.
Introducing Vigilant Audiences
2020 •
Rashid Gabdulhakov
This ground-breaking collec� on of essays examines the scope and consequences of digital vigilan� sm — a phenomenon emerging on a global scale, which sees digital audiences using social pla� orms to shape social and poli� cal life. Longstanding forms of moral scru� ny and jus� ce seeking are disseminated through our contemporary media landscape, and researchers are increasingly recognising the signifi cance of societal impacts eff ected by digital media.
Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research.
Heroes or Hooligans? Media Portrayal of StopXam (Stop a Douchebag) Vigilantes in Russia
2020 •
Rashid Gabdulhakov
Several state-supported digital vigilante groups emerged in Russia at the downturn of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi (Ours), when its former commissars formed issue-specific movements to counter perceived legal and moral offences through exposure of targets on social media. One of such groups is StopXam (Stop a Douchebag), specializing in road-traffic and parking violations. StopXam participants confront the drivers and retaliate by placing stickers that read "I spit on everyone I drive where I want" on the targets' windshields. The retaliation is often accompanied by verbal and physical fighting; the process is filmed, edited, and shared on YouTube, receiving millions of views. While digital media made such practices possible, traditional broadcasters maintain significance in rendering meaning to the phenomenon of vigilantism and in framing vigilantes, their targets, police, and other actors. As the existing literature on digital vigilantism is predominantly focused on digital media affordances, this article aims to address this gap through a qualitative analysis of traditional media coverage of StopXam. Media analysis highlights intriguing nuances of traditional media as a powerful actor and discourse setter in the digital age.
Media and Communication
In the Bullseye of Vigilantes: Mediated Vulnerabilities of Kyrgyz Labour Migrants in Russia
Rashid Gabdulhakov
Hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz labour migrants seek opportunities in Russia where they fall target to retaliation of vigilante citizens who find offence in the presence of alien labourers in their homeland. Vigilantism also takes place within this migrant ‘community’ where male Kyrgyz labour migrants engage in retaliation on female migrants over perceived offences such as dating non-Kyrgyz men. On several occasions between 2011 and 2016 videos featuring honour beating of female labour migrants by fellow countrymen shook the internet. The selected case illustrates vulnerabilities experienced by migrants due to xenophobia and hostility of the host state, as well as additional layers of vulnerabilities linked to gendered biases that ‘travel’ across borders along with compatriots in migration. The study argues that offline structures, norms, biases, violence, and stigma not only reincarnate online, where they culminate in vigilante acts, but consequently, they re-enter the offline disc...
SSRN Electronic Journal
International Labour Migration in the Context of the Eurasian Economic Union: Issues and Challenges of Kyrgyz Migrants in Russia
2017 •
Lira Sagynbekova
Global Media and China
Online scrutiny of people with nice cars: A comparative analysis of Chinese, Russian, and Anglo-American outrage
2020 •
Rashid Gabdulhakov
Europe-Asia Studies
Russia’s Vigilante YouTube Stars. Digital Entrepreneurship and Heroic Masculinity in the Service of Flexible Authoritarianism
2022 •
Anna Schwenck
Combating illegal parking and drinking in public is the raison d’ tre of Russia’s best-known law-and-order youth initiatives, StopKham and Lev Protiv. These initiatives enforce and promote neotraditional morals amongst young people by challenging alleged offenders on camera and uploading the entertaining, humorous and often violent video clips to YouTube. I argue that their practices encapsulate flexible authoritarianism, in which the regime incentivises citizens to take initiative while expanding repressive measures against dissenters. Not only do these enterprises reflect the regime’s goals back at itself, they also popularise a new ideal of heroic masculinity that fuses patriotism with entrepreneurialism.
