![](https://cis.cnrs.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/couv-first-monday-05-2021.jpg)
Françoise Daucé, Francesca Musiani (eds.), 2021, Infrastructure-Embedded Control, Circumvention and Sovereignty in the Russian Internet, First Monday, 26(5), special issue, 3 May 2021. Full text in open access.
Abstract
Pursuing the autonomisation and “sovereignisation” of their national Internet (RuNet) since the early 2010s, authorities in the Russian Federation are establishing increasingly stricter regulations on Internet innovation and practices. Since 2018, the team of the ResisTIC (Criticism and circumvention of digital borders in Russia) project explores how different actors of the RuNet resist and adapt to the recent wave of authoritarian and centralizing regulations. One of the project’s primary objectives is to explore the extent to which control and circumvention strategies are embedded in, and conducted by means of the infrastructure of the RuNet. This special issue provides a detailed overview of the different strands of research undertaken by the ResisTIC project team at the crossroads of digital sovereignty, data and infrastructure. Articles by the project team are entwined with contributions by specialists based in Russia and worldwide.
Contents
Infrastructure-embedded control, circumvention and sovereignty in the Russian Internet: An introduction
Françoise Daucé, Francesca Musiani
Contextualizing sovereignty: A critical review of competing explanations of the Internet governance in the (so-called) Russian case
Polina Kolozaridi, Dmitry Muravyov
Control by infrastructure: Political ambitions meet technical implementations in RuNet
Ilona Stadnik
Controlling free expression “by infrastructure” in the Russian Internet: The consequences of RuNet sovereignization
Liudmila Sivetc
Mapping the routes of the Internet for geopolitics: The case of Eastern Ukraine
Kevin Limonier, Frédérick Douzet, Louis Pétiniaud, Loqman Salamatian, Kave Salamatian
The Telegram ban: How censorship “made in Russia” faces a global Internet
Ksenia Ermoshina, Francesca Musiani
Codes of conduct for algorithmic news recommendation: The Yandex.News controversy in Russia
Françoise Daucé, Benjamin Loveluck
‘In Google we trust’? The Internet giant as a subject of contention and appropriation for the Russian state and civil society
Olga Bronnikova, Anna Zaytseva
Social media and state repression: The case of VKontakte and the anti-garbage protest in Shies, in Far Northern Russia
Perrine Poupin
“Free libraries for the free people”: How mass-literature “shadow” libraries circumvent digital barriers and redefine legality in contemporary Russia
Bella Ostromooukhova