Gregory Asmolov

Gregory Asmolov
King's College London | KCL · Department of Digital Humanities

PhD

About

30
Publications
7,447
Reads
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382
Citations
Introduction
Gregory is a scholar in the fields of digital entrepreneurship and crisis communication. He is particularly interested in how digital entrepreneurship can contribute to social resilience and address various types of crisis, and in critical analysis of the digitally mediated participation of digital crowds. His publications have explored the role of crowdsourcing not only in new forms of participation, but also in new forms of platform-based governance.
Additional affiliations
September 2011 - May 2017
London School of Economics and Political Science
Position
  • PhD Student

Publications

Publications (30)
Article
Full-text available
Crowdsourcing can be analyzed not only as a mechanism for empowerment, but also as operating a form of control over volunteers. This article applies Foucault's notion of governmentality to examine relations between traditional governmental institutions and users of crowdsourcing platforms in Russia. Through a comparative analysis of two emergency v...
Article
Full-text available
This paper argues that one of the major purposes of a disinformation campaign is to sustain a discursive conflict between users of social networks. By examining the phenomenon of “unfriending,” the paper describes how disinformation campaigns sabotage horizontal connections between individuals on either side of a conflict and strengthen a state’s c...
Article
Full-text available
Much attention has been dedicated to how digital platforms change the nature of modern conflict. However, less has been paid to how the changes in the nature of warfare affect everyday lives. This article examines how digital mediation allows a convergence of the domestic environment and the battlefield by offering new ways for participation in war...
Article
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The participatory affordances of digital media allow a broad spectrum of new forms of participation in conflicts that go beyond the information domain (Boichak in Battlefront volunteers: mapping and deconstructing civilian resilience networks in Ukraine. #SMSociety’17, July 28–30, 2017). This article explores the factors that shape forms of digital...
Article
Full-text available
A broad literature on Internet regulation relies on imaginaries of the Internet as a socio-political technology. Deep mediatization of everyday life, however, increases the role of the Internet as a critical system for crisis response and mitigating global catastrophic risks. This article offers a theoretical contribution to exploring the role of r...
Article
This research examines the concept of "disconnective action" during crises, positing it as a necessary counterpart to "connective action" (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). While digital media is typically lauded for fostering connectivity during socio-political controversies, it also presents affordances for disconnectivity, such as unfriending, unfollo...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter examines what happens to platforms and networks that spontaneously emerge in the context of a specific crisis once the crisis is over, and whether these can play a role in the case of a new crisis. It considers whether the same digital tools can play a role in responding to different emergencies (e.g., natural disasters, political prot...
Chapter
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Article
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Recent political conflicts in Eastern Europe, including the armed conflicts in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Belarus have demonstrated that the scope of digitally mediated participation in war-related activities goes far beyond the information domain. In this context, a rapidly emerging sociomaterial practice is the use of crowdfunding platforms t...
Chapter
Full-text available
Herein, an interdisciplinary group of scholars analyze the possible technological impacts on civil society’s development, drawing upon the “Horizon Scanning” methodology. The overarching aim of this collection is to broaden the spectrum of the social and technical imaginare. One specific objective is to analyze how technological advancements may in...
Chapter
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The history of Runet is not just a chronological account of the major events in the Russian Internet space. We take a historical approach in order to identify the boundaries of Runet as an object of investigation. This chapter offers a framework for the examination of Runet as a constantly changing socio-technical object. Due to the participatory n...
Chapter
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The paper discusses the ambivalent role of participatory maps as an object of human activity and a mediator that enables new forms of activity. Relying on the analysis of several case studies it argues, that maps fail when we see a gap between mapping as activity and mapping enabled activities.
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter suggests that the Russian Internet has two different, though interrelated, faces. The first face is that of Runet in everyday life. The second is that of Runet in crisis situations. To explore the “crisis face” of Runet this chapter addresses a variety of crisis situations including terror attacks, natural disasters, political protests...
Article
Full-text available
В данной статье предпринимается попытка рассмотреть природу Интернета как принципиально незавершаемой генеративной сети, порождающей непредсказуемые эффекты в поведении сложных систем. С опорой на историко-эволюционный подход (А.Г. Асмолов) и концепцию генеративных систем (Дж. Зиттрейн) обосновывается гипотеза, согласно которой Интернет выступает к...
Article
Full-text available
This essay, examines a new set of propaganda strategies emerging on social networks in Ukraine and Russia. It offers a conceptual journey from understanding how traditional propaganda has been "rewired" for the digital age to examining its methodologies and impact today. This new phenomenon of "participatory propaganda" seeks not only to persuade u...
Article
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By exploring the changes among online elites who have constructed the Internet, this article traces the unique history of the Russian Internet (RuNet). Illustrating how changes in online elites can be associated with changes in the socio-political role of the online space in general, it concludes that, although the Internet is of global nature, its...
Thesis
This thesis examines the role of digital platforms in emergency response contexts and the constitution of relationships between platform users and disaster situations. The conceptual framework is derived from a reading of the Vygotskian notion of tool-mediated, object-oriented activity, which is juxtaposed with the Foucauldian notion of governance....
Article
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This article explores the role of digital platforms in the involvement of citizens in disaster response, relying on an analysis of metadata and of the structure of classification. It adopts the analytical apparatus of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Vygotsky, Leontiev, Engeström) and the notion of governmentality (Foucault) in order to conduct...
Article
Full-text available
This reflection on the report “Benchmarking Public Demand for Internet Freedom: Russia’s Appetite for Internet Control,” argues that protecting internet freedom is not possible without a shift in public opinion. Using Russian examples, Asmolov suggests that public opinion concerning internet regulation is a function of whether the online communicat...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper explores a number of challenges in the analysis of crowdsourcing platforms, relying on major theoretical approaches. In order to address these challenges, it suggests applying cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to the analysis of crowdsourcing projects. Accordingly, it suggests that crowdsourcing projects can be analyzed as tools...
Chapter
Full-text available
Analyzing the role of sensors, the chapter explores how information communication technologies (ICTs) are used by state actors to strengthen governance. While ICTs contribute to implementation and enforcement of political decisions, they also play a role in construction of symbolic statehood. Case studies demonstrate the role of web cameras in Russ...
Chapter
The chapter explores the role of ICT for emergency response in areas of limited statehood. It addresses whether ICT can make the crowd not only a resource for emergency response but also an actor in that response, capable of developing alternative modes of governance. Relying on the analysis of two case studies of natural disasters in Russia, the c...
Article
The future of foreign reporting is affected by more than the economic crisis gripping the Western news industry, though that too is important. We argue that overseas bureaus and foreign correspondents are tied to a particular morphology of global governance, one rooted in a system of nation-states. The nation-state is the product of a particular in...
Article
Full-text available
The blogs as the platform for a virtual personality construction are considered in the article on the assumption of the positions of Lev S. Vygotsky's cultural-historical approach. Internet journalism practices are considered as the example for the pro-cesses of virtual "I" formation. The authors affirm that the appearance of consecu-tive and stabl...

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