Social networks pose challenge to Putin

Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is suddenly waking up to the fact that Russia’s media landscape is not the one he inherited in 2000.

While fears of a clampdown on liberal media outlets are growing, the speed and flexibility of social networking technology pose a more complex challenge to state control than traditional media. Since 2007, the number of Russian internet users has jumped from 22.8 million to 52.9 million, while the number of people using the popular blogging platform LiveJournal has risen from 1.3 million to 5.8 million. More than 13m Russians use Facebook. The shift is crucial to explaining the way Russian opposition sentiment spread following alleged vote rigging in the December parliamentary election.