Internet and Civic Activism: New Opportunities of Action

The rapid development of modern information technologies is the main trend of world development in recent years. A key role in this process belongs to the Internet, which has evolved from the process of information exchange in particular communicative space. This communicative space is widely used not only by ordinary users of the Internet, but also the various political actors. The number of Internet users is rapidly grown in Russia. Along with this diversity of Russia's political citizen's participation in the Internet space is increased. Using the Internet, a person receives, distributes and provides information as well as creates the community "of interest". New communicative space is built with the help of IT-technology, with its channels and transmitters, with its own characteristics and problems. Network organizations based on the Internet began widespread in social and political life. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding rapidly developing in Russia. As a result, the Internet has become not only a tool for social and political activity, but also autonomous environment for this activity. Social and political campaign organized only on the Internet becoming more common. The paper includes not only the analysis of contemporary Russian Internet reality, but also the results of the author's study of Internet activism in Russia by polling experts (conducted in 2015).