Anti-Orange Discourses in Ukraine's Internet: Before the Orange Split

This article is based on the paper presented at the First Annual Danyliw Seminar in Contemporary Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, 29 Sept.–1 Oct. 2005. The author is grateful to Cathy Wanner, Sarah Phillips and Taras Kuzio for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Abstract

A feature of modern political life is the use of the Internet, a factor that emerged in Ukraine's ‘Orange Revolution’. Traditional studies of structurally organized political actors – institutionalized opposition – underestimate the important role of grass-roots components of political debate, in which the Internet has become a medium in which individuals have gained a public voice; its contents can be analysed as a significant supplement to official public sources of information, giving a wider perspective from the grass-roots domain. This is especially important in view of the gap between Ukrainian institutionalized opposition (which demonstrates a ‘situated’ solidarity) and grass-roots groups (which exhibit a readiness for public dialogue).

This article is based on the paper presented at the First Annual Danyliw Seminar in Contemporary Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, 29 Sept.–1 Oct. 2005. The author is grateful to Cathy Wanner, Sarah Phillips and Taras Kuzio for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

This article is based on the paper presented at the First Annual Danyliw Seminar in Contemporary Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, 29 Sept.–1 Oct. 2005. The author is grateful to Cathy Wanner, Sarah Phillips and Taras Kuzio for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

1. As an ‘anti-orange discourse’ I consider any discourse that involves criticism of President Viktor Yushchenko, his team, or the Ukrainian government after the 2004 election and their activity.

2. The website address is <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

3. For example, Radhika Gajjala, ‘The Sawnet Refusal: An Interrupted Cyberethnography’, doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1999; Lorri Kendall, ‘Recontextualizing “Cyberspace”: Methodological Considerations for On-line Research’, in Rob Kling (ed.), Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net (London: Academic Press, 1999), pp.40–59.

4. Nicolas Negroponte, Being Digital (London: Coronet, 1996).

5. Dina Iordanova, ‘Mediated Concerns: The New Europe in Hypertext’, in Laura Lengel (ed.), Culture and Technology in the New Europe: Civic Discourse in Transformation in Post-Communist Nations (Stamford, CT: Ablex, 2000), p.109.

6. See Margaret Mead, Culture and Commitment: The New Relationships between Generations in 1970s (New York: Anchor Books, 1970).

7. Iordanova, ‘Mediated Concerns’, p.127.

8. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).

9. Diarmaid Ferriter, ‘Suffer Little Children? The Historical Validity of Memoirs of Irish Childhood’, in Joseph Dunne and James Kelly (eds.), Childhood and its Discontents. The First Seamus Heaney Lectures (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2002), p.103.

10. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 42>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

11. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 42>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

12. Mark Poster, ‘CyberDemocracy: Internet and Public Sphere’, in David Porter (ed.), Internet Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), p.201.

13. Bruce McClelland, ‘Online Orality: The Internet, Folklore, and Culture in Russia’, in Lengel (ed.), Culture and Technology in the New Europe, p.183.

14. As the parliamentary election campaign of 2006 later showed, different political forces differentiated this group.

15. On 8 September 2005 Yulia Tymoshenko declared that it would be independent but still parallel to Yushchenko's bloc; five days later – independent, but separate from Yushchenko's bloc.

16. For more detailed information on extreme rhetoric, see Lyudmyla Pavlyuk, ‘Extreme Rhetoric in the 2004 Presidential Campaign: Images of Geopolitical and Regional Division’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol.47, Nos.3–4 (2005), pp.293–316.

17. Ibid., p.293.

18. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 145>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

19. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 145>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

20. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 42>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

21. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 63>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

22. These issues are still important ones for Ukraine, and the 2006 parliamentarian election and its aftermath only increased them.

23. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 83>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

24. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 215>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

25. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 215>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

26. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 111>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

27. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 105>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

28. At <http://www.anti-orange.com.ua/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t = 63>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

29. Yaroslav Hrytsak, ‘Re: Birth of Ukraine’. Neprikosnovennyi Zapas. Debaty o politike i kul'ture, 2005, No.38, available at <http://www.nz-online.ru/index.phtml?aid = 25011211>, accessed 14 Nov. 2006.

30. Olga Filippova, ‘Tracking Orange Revolution through Cyber-Ethnography: A View from Kharkiv’, paper presented at the Association for the Study of Nationalities annual convention, New York, 14–17 April 2005.

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Notes on contributors

Olga Filippova

Olga Filippova is associate professor of sociology at Kharkiv Humanitarian University ‘Ukrains'ka Narodna Akademia’. She has published articles in Ukrainian, Russian and English on a variety of topics pertaining to Ukrainian identity, and is currently exploring cyber-ethnographic analysis of Ukrainian society.