Change.org as a form of casual politics. Analysis of Russian-language petitions

Change.org as a form of casual politics. Analysis of Russian-language petitions


Ivanenko E.A.,

Laboratory of Philosophical Anthropologyt, Samara, Russia, iv@webvertex.ru


elibrary_id: 696835 | ORCID: 0000-0003-2710-5163 |


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2022.02.05

For citation:

Ivanenko E.A. Change.org as a form of casual politics. Analysis of Russian-language petitions. – Polis. Political Studies. 2022. No. 2. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2022.02.05



Abstract

This article presents an empirical analysis of Change.org petitions as a typical tool of digital participation. The database of this study was collected from the Russian segment of the website Change.org between 2012 and 2020. A total of 27,259 petitions were processed, using the Content Downloader X1 software. Using the conceptual tools of the ‘philosophical anthropology of the victim’ as theoretical approach, this article considers the specifics of Change.org as a means of interaction between citizens and victimized objects of social reality, thus including the effect of e-petitions in the space of victim economic. The revealed similarities between categories of cultural victimology and the key themes of Change.org petitions suggest that e-petitions mark zones of the victim’s structure, understood as social asymmetries built on vulnerability and requiring a decentralized collective decision about justice. The horizontal structure of e-participation is discussed through the concepts of casual politics and slacktivism, while the new type of civic responsibility is defined through the concept of theater of solidarity. Random politics and slacktivism can be interpreted as ways of constructing a new collective identity, oriented towards vulnerability, guided by the moral imperatives of justice and implemented horizontally in the media. The discovery of vulnerability as a victim’s potential in certain areas of the socio-cultural space in Russia indicates that the specific structure of these areas and their greater orientation toward globalism are an important semantic dominant. The work done with the database allowed the authors to identify the petitions which had a high public resonance, collect their characteristics and obtain an overall view of the dynamics of digital activism in Russia over the years. In general, this study contributes to two areas of new knowledge – the theory of political digital participation and the philosophical anthropology of the victim. 

Keywords
e-petitions, Change.org, casual politics, slactivism, victim, victimized identity, activism 2.0, theater of solidarity, politics of pity, justice, victim economics.


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Content No. 2, 2022

See also:


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