“Digital traces” as an indication of the population’s interest in the border regions of Russia for cross-border contacts

“Digital traces” as an indication of the population’s interest in the border regions of Russia for cross-border contacts


Mikhaylova A.A.,

Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia, tikhonova.1989@mail.ru


elibrary_id: 905466 | ORCID: 0000-0002-6807-6074 | RESEARCHER_ID: P-6443-2015

Hvaley D.V.,

Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia, hvaley_gusev@mail.ru


elibrary_id: 1066615 | ORCID: 00-0001-9701-9442 | RESEARCHER_ID: AAS-6256-2020

Mikhaylov A.S.,

Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia, mikhailov.andrey@yahoo.com


elibrary_id: 711513 | ORCID: 0000-0002-5155-2628 | RESEARCHER_ID: 0B-8451-2015


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2022.03.12
Rubric: Russia Today

For citation:

Mikhaylova A.A., Hvaley D.V., Mikhaylov A.S. “Digital traces” as an indication of the population’s interest in the border regions of Russia for cross-border contacts. – Polis. Political Studies. 2022. No. 3. P. 157-175. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2022.03.12


The study is funded by the RSF project No. 21-77-00082 “Digital transformation of cross-border cooperation of Russian regions as a factor of national security”.


Abstract

In the context of the neighborhood policy, border territories act as natural contact zones, the population of which is most interested in the development of cross-border relations and the strengthening of trusted relations. In some regions, this is linked to a common historical and cultural past, in others – to incentives of a socio-economic nature, for example, relatively lower prices for certain categories of goods and/or services, developed cultural and leisure infrastructure, and the possibility of economic profits. Moreover, each of the areas of cooperation (industrial, tourism, cultural, environmental, innovation, etc.) has its own set of indicators for assessing the intensity of cross-border contacts, which gives only a fragmentary idea of the general interest of the population of border regions in cross-border cooperation. The purpose of this study is to assess the general level of interest of the population of the border regions of Russia in cross-border contacts by using computational social science. The resource Yandex Wordstat was employed as an information base on the ‘digital traces’ of users. The data coverage period is 2020-2021. The results of the analysis of 308 unique user requests in the context of 42 border regions of Russia revealed some asymmetry in the degree of their integration into the information space of neighboring states. It revealed that in most cases users from the border regions of the Russian Federation are more active than the country average in looking for information about the border regions and cities of neighboring states. The geographic directions for which the most and least interest in cross-border cooperation arise among the population of the Russian borderlands are presented. 

Keywords
digitalization, border region, borderland, neighborhood, cross-border cooperation, digital era, digital trace, computational social science.

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Content No. 3, 2022

See also:


Kosov Yu.V.,
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Shinkovsky M.Yu.,
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Turovsky R.F.,
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Palmowski T., Fedorov G.M.,
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Mamonov M.V.,
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