Review by Choice Review
Though CMC (computer mediated communication) studies have proliferated in recent years, Russian and Slavic have remained curiously absent from CMC studies. Integrating current Russian CMC research, this study offers a critical account of how new media technologies have transformed Russian language and communication. The two introductory chapters provide a history of personal computing describing Soviet developmental practices and ideological influences; the second chapter traces the rise of Runet (Russian Internet), from the initial participation of a digital elite to a plurality to the gain in general popularity extending to the LiveJournal platform. This section is followed by a look at the linguistic and communicative characteristics of the Russian blogosphere, microblogging (mostly Twitter), and social networking (VKontakt). CMC has lexicographical and orthographical implications that are embodied in the rise and subsequent decline of Olbanian (Runet slang) coexisting with the pervasiveness of "computer mediated digraphia"--a phenomenon of Cyrillic and Latin orthography. Literary proliferation is traced in the final section from the narrow group of "setratura" (net-literature) computer programmers/authors to the democratized online environment. The last section concentrates on current and historical politics within the blogosphere and social networking platforms. --Rachel Augello Erb, Colorado State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
