№ 1 - 2002
Ovchinnikov B.V.
Virtual Expectations: Condition and Prospects of Political Runet

Runet’s political segment is investigated and an attempt is made to evaluate grounds for the widely spread views of the Internet as a generator of inevitable changes in the social and political spheres. Relying on his analysis of a wide range of sources, the author sets forth the conclusion that theoretically, the Internet (as a social milieu) undoubtedly has the potentiality to play an appreciable role in political life. The new technologies bring unparalleled possibilities of prompt spread of information, of interactivity and participation of the masses in the net life (not only as readers, but also as authors). Moreover, the high quality of the Internet audience makes the audience gratifying milieu for new ideas to be received and spread. At the same time, as the investigation has demonstrated, there are no grounds at the moment either to assert any political influence of Russian Web users as a definite social group, or even just to affirm the existence of at least any significant interest for politics on their part at all. Most of them confine themselves to visiting news resources with relative regularity, and as for the consumption of considerable amounts of on-line political information, for that matter, it is worth evaluating just as proof of one of the Web’s communicative potentialities, but not as a form of political participation.