21st Century Statecraft

Frederick Roth / October 22, 2010

A recent event at the United States Institute of Peace featured a discussion on the effects of social media, particularly in the Russian blogosphere. The project was carried out by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet andSociety, and consisted of an analysis of over 11,000 Russian language blogs to understand how and by whom politics is discussed. The study was also designed to look for evidence of social mobilization caused by the blogosphere.

Other studies by the USIP have found that new media—for example blogs, Twitter, and YouTube—have had mixed effects on political organization, and this fact is reflected in the Berkman Center’s project. (more…)