Mediated resistance in post-Soviet communicative ecologies: the case of ‘Chinese industrial park’ in Belarus

ABSTRACT

The paper adopts a ‘communicative ecologies’ framework and problematizes it further by exploring a collective protest campaign in post-Soviet Belarus. This study explains how mediated civic protest communication is embedded in the socio-economic, political and cultural structures of a society. It focuses on a recent case involving civic resistance towards the construction of a so-called ‘Chinese industrial park’ near the capital of Belarus. The 5-year timespan (2012–2017) from the conception of this controversial project to its actual implementation is particularly suitable for exploring the complex interdependencies between traditional and new media in the framing of grassroots protest within semi-authoritarian post-Soviet settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Communicative ecologies
• civic
• resistance
• post-Soviet
• Belarus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Galina Miazhevich is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media, and Culture at Cardiff University, UK. Galina has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored several monographs. She organized a number of international academic events including the Gorbachev Lectures on Press Freedom held at Christ Church, University of Oxford in 2011. Galina currently leads an AHRC grant on media representations of alternative sexualities in Russia. Galina's research interests include media representations of Islam and multiculturalism in Europe; media and democracy in post-communist Europe; feminism, gender and media.

ORCID

Galina Miazhevich http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9233-7097

Notes

1. E.g. Parties are viewed with scepticism as advancing their own agenda and civil society is viewed as controlled by the state rather than being an ‘intermediary’ between the people and the state (Brel, 2015).

2. Solidarity, which is the ‘unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest’, forms the key concept of this study (English Oxford Living Dictionaries, n.d.).

3. Although I use the notions of protest, mobilization and resistance interchangeably, this protest was quite localized, never reaching a large-scale offline demonstration-type protest (despite the issue potentially affecting almost 2 million people).

4. Connective action focuses on the role of individuals in mobilizing their social media networks and the use of personalized action frames which encourage diverse publics’ identification with that action (Bennet & Segerberg, 2012).

5. It includes the slow and complex changes brought about by the transition to a market economy (e.g. the culture of profligacy), the emergence of diverse accessible interpretations of the world due to an increase of individualization and the localization of social life, as well as the proliferation of potentially conflicting subcultures. Furthermore, there is a widespread misunderstanding of the notion of democracy, its principles and procedures (Semetko & Krasnoboka, 2003) have translated into an overreliance on informal networks (Ledeneva, 1998), passivity and a narrow set of issues of public concern (Artsiomenka, 2015).

6. The Belarusian state media’s long-term framing of oppositional circles as ‘Western’ agents, elitists who are detached from the public, creates an ambivalent or negative attitude towards these groups and the media outlets related to them. For an example from this campaign, see Kitaiskii tekhnopark (2012).

7. In the relatively small country of Belarus the personal and collective costs of being involved in public resistance campaigns via social media are high. For instance, the ‘anonymity’ of online activists can be easily uncovered, and their identity and location traced. This was disclosed in a confidential interview with a prominent Belarusian independent political analyst in 2011.

8. Their popularity is confirmed by a poll in October 2017 (https://nn.by/?c=ar&i=200153).

9. Who previously ran for the presidency in 2010.

10. The forum at Onliner.by is a good example of this: https://forum.onliner.by/viewtopic.php?t=3749762&start=1100.

11. Two of the few affected groups with more substantial social capital included pensioners from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and former residents of the capital in full-time employment who had decided to move out to the ‘green belt’.

12. However, the choice of less disruptive actions might stem from the fear of intimidation (Borovoi, 2012) employed by the state on this and similar occasions in the past (BBC, 2017), rather than from a perception of the institutions as ‘legitimate powerholders’ (Milan & Hintz, 2013, p. 20). Intimidation in this case included detaining the GP’s key figures (Dmitrieva, 2012) and citizens’ accounts on forums that they had been summoned to report to the police (Onliner, 2012).

13. In this case, the campaigners include both those directly affected by the Park and those who expressed their online resistance out of solidarity with them. A further in-depth injury is needed to establish a more precise demographic of those involved.

14. Pod lezhachijkamen i voda ne techet (‘water does not run under a stone’).

15. This fact and inactive links to other relevant reports indirectly indicate the scope of online filtering. The only active link to this part of the programme is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcxm_Y7VVNg&app=desktop.

16. The presenter tried to probe several bureaucrats on the panel somewhat provocatively – ‘are you ready to sell your soul to the devil for money?’

17. E.g. recent residents’ complaints about the Park’s proximity to the building site (https://www.currenttime.tv/a/26982679.html) and official reporting about the Park’s successful construction (http://www.ctv.by/белорусско-китайский-индустриальный-парк).

18. The contradictory state coverage fragmented dissenters, who were left to discuss such issues as the changes in the Park’s remit and number of expected migrants in 2013 https://nn.by/?c=ar&i=113085&lang=ru linking to the official statements at http://naviny.by/rubrics/society/2012/12/13/ic_news_116_ and http://www.belta.by/ru/all_news/society/Tozik-sluxi-o-priezde-600-tys-kitajtsev-dlja-raboty-v-texnoparke-pod-Minskom---polnaja-chush_i_593878.html; http://www.economy.gov.by/ru/comments/kommentarij-k-brifingu-o-kitajsko-belorusskom-industrialnom-parke_i_0000001455.html and http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=113085&lang=ru]).

19. The channel followers are quite a unified community, as Marat announces the most popular (liked) comments in his consecutive video blog posts.