print

Change.org as a form of casual politics. Analysis of Russian-language petitions

Ivanenko E.A.,

Laboratory of Philosophical Anthropologyt, Samara, Russia, iv@webvertex.ru

elibrary_id: 696835 | ORCID: 0000-0003-2710-5163 |

DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2022.02.05

Rubric: Theme of the issue: In the beginning was the word, then came the digit

For citation:

Ivanenko E.A. Change.org as a form of casual politics. Analysis of Russian-language petitions. – Polis. Political Studies. 2022. No. 2. P. 52-67. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2022.02.05

Abstract

This article presents an empirical analysis of Change.org petitions as a typical tool of digital participation. The database of this study was collected from the Russian segment of the website Change.org between 2012 and 2020. A total of 27,259 petitions were processed, using the Content Downloader X1 software. Using the conceptual tools of the ‘philosophical anthropology of the victim’ as theoretical approach, this article considers the specifics of Change.org as a means of interaction between citizens and victimized objects of social reality, thus including the effect of e-petitions in the space of victim economic. The revealed similarities between categories of cultural victimology and the key themes of Change.org petitions suggest that e-petitions mark zones of the victim’s structure, understood as social asymmetries built on vulnerability and requiring a decentralized collective decision about justice. The horizontal structure of e-participation is discussed through the concepts of casual politics and slacktivism, while the new type of civic responsibility is defined through the concept of theater of solidarity. Random politics and slacktivism can be interpreted as ways of constructing a new collective identity, oriented towards vulnerability, guided by the moral imperatives of justice and implemented horizontally in the media. The discovery of vulnerability as a victim’s potential in certain areas of the socio-cultural space in Russia indicates that the specific structure of these areas and their greater orientation toward globalism are an important semantic dominant. The work done with the database allowed the authors to identify the petitions which had a high public resonance, collect their characteristics and obtain an overall view of the dynamics of digital activism in Russia over the years. In general, this study contributes to two areas of new knowledge – the theory of political digital participation and the philosophical anthropology of the victim. 

Keywords

e-petitions, Change.org, casual politics, slactivism, victim, victimized identity, activism 2.0, theater of solidarity, politics of pity, justice, victim economics.

 Full Text 

Bowman, S., & Willis, C. (2003). We media: how audiences are shaping the future of news and information. Reston, VA: The Media Center at the American Press Institute. https://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/download/we_media.pdf

Brunilla, K., & Rossi, L.-M. (2017). Identity Politics, the ethos of vulnerability, and education. Education Philosophy and Theory, 50(3), 287-298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017.1343115

Bruns, A. (2008). Distributed creativity: filesharing and produsage. In: S. Sonvilla-Weiss (Ed.), Mashup Cultures (pp. 24-37). Vienna: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0096-7_2

Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2018). The rise of victimhood culture: microaggressions, safe spaces, and the new culture wars. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chouliaraki, L. (2006). The spectatorship of suffering. London: Sage Publishing.

Ericson, R.V. (1996). Defining the journalism situation: a study of post-journalism. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 10(1), 211-219. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20019881

Georg, J., & Leidner, D. (2019). From clicktivism to hacktivism: understanding digital activism. Information and Organization, 29(3), 100249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2019.04.001

Hafer, C., & Sutton, R. (2016). Belief in a just world. In C. Sabbagh, & M. Schmitt (Ed.), Handbook of Social Justice Theory and Research (pp. 145-160). New York: Springer.

Holder, R. (2014). Satisfied? exploring victims’ justice judgements. RegNet Research Paper, 2014/28, 184-213. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2423140

Hoondert, M., Mutsaers, P., Arfman, W. (2018). Introduction: cultural practices of victimhood. In M. Hoondert, P. Mutsaers, W. Arfman (Ed.), Cultural Practices of Victimhood (pp. 1-16). London: Routledge.

Laverick, W. (2016). Global injustice and crime control. Abingdon: Routledge.

Lerner, M.J. (1980). The belief in a just world: a fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press.

Mendelsohn, B. (1976). Victimology and contemporary society’s trends. Victimology: An International Journal, 1(1), 8-28.

Milosevic, A. (2017). Remembering the present: dealing with the memories of terrorism in Europe. Journal of Terrorism Research, 8(2), 44-61. https://doi.org/10.15664/jtr.1269

Munt, R. S. (2016). Argumentum ad misericordiam: the cultural politics of victim media. Feminist Media Studies, 17(5), 866-883. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1259176

Peña-López, I. (2013). Casual Politics: From Slacktivism to Emergent Movements and Pattern Recognition. In Big Data: Challenges and Opportunities. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics (pp. 339-356). Barcelona: Huygens.

Pikone, I. (2011). Produsage as a form of self-publication. A qualitative study of casual news produsage. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 17(1), 99-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2011.552643

Re, del, E., & Shekhovat, S. (2018). Crime and victimhood in globalizes world order. Revisita di criminologia, XII(3), 55-69.

Robson, P.W.G. (2019). Developments in revenge, justice and rape in the Cinema. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 34, 69-88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-019-09614-7

Rubin, Z., & Peplau, L.A. (1975). Who believes in a just world? Journal of Social Issues, 31(3), 65-90. https://numerons.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/who-believes-in-a-just-world-harvard.pdf

Vasterman, P. (Ed.) (2018). From media hype to Twitter storm. News explosions and their impact on issues, crises, and public opinion. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Akhremenko, A.S., Stukal, D.K., & Petrov, A.P. (2020). Network vs message in protest diffusion on social media: theoretical and data analytics perspectives. Polis. Political Studies, 2, 73-91. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2020.02.06

Ivanenko, E.A. (2020). Hype: production and consumption of affect by the collective body. International philological journal MIRGOROD, 1, 254-1291. (In Russ.)

Koretskaya, M.A. (Ed.) (2017). The philosophical anthropology of victim: from archaic roots to contemporary contexts. Materials of the All-Russian conference with foreign participation. Samara. (In Russ.)

Radina, N.K., Krupnaya, D.A. (2019). Digital policy participation: efficiency of e-petitions of non-state digital platforms (based on the material of Change.org). Polis. Political Studies, 6, 113-127. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2019.06.09 

See also: