In recent ten years, new media technologies have changed a significant number of cultural practices on the global and local scales. This course, studying Russian new media culture of the 2000s, aims to analyze specific features of the cultural forms and processes, connected with the wide-spread digital technologies. Focused on the phenomenon of the "Ru.net" (the conventional name for the Russian Internet segment) it interprets transformations of the social life and culture in Russia under the influence of the new means of communication.

Themes and subjects:

• Historiography of the Russian new media culture

• Recent developments in new media technologies and web 2.0 culture

• Communication on the Ru.net. "Netiquette"; rules of the online social behavior

• Representations of the self: constructing a virtual person

• New media communities: social and cultural features

• Russian social nets: Cases of V kontakte and Odnoklassniki

• Russian blogosphere. Case of the "Lifejournal.com culture"

• Twitter, microblogging and instant messengers

• State and civil society on the Net

• Activism, political and civic movements on the Ru.net

• New media and linguistic culture: Transformations of the Russian language

• Phenomenon of the new media literature: "Neterature"

• New media art and music

• Consumption and entertaining culture 2.0

The course is organized in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute's Russian and East European Master's School.