Freedom and Control
The Internet in Belarus and the Idea of Samizdat
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The Internet in Belarus was long considered a place free of censorship. Islands of political and cultural counter-public formed. But, with the help of new legal stipulations, the government is trying to control the Internet more closely. Some bloggers understand their journalistic function as an act of resistance and explicitly cast themselves in the tradition of samizdat. Other bloggers are pro-regime. A pluralism that is seldom seen in the Belarusian mass and print media reigns in the blogsphere.
(Osteuropa 11/2010, pp. 209–222)