Transformation of an authoritarian regime in the digital reality (the case of Belarus 2006–2015).

Abstract

The collapse of the USSR gave scholars a variety of different political regimes that can’t be easily defined. Among all these examples, the Belarusian case seems to be an interesting one. In scholarly discourse, the country’s regime hasn’t obtained a constant definition. Moreover, the case of the Belarusian regime may help us shed some light upon the peculiarities of this type of post-Soviet authoritarian regime and seek additional peculiarities in it, which will prove helpful in further approaches to define contemporary ‘mixed’ regimes of former USSR republics and other countries all over the world.

The main objective of the study is thus to show the Belarusian political regime’s transformation on the basis of political news of an independent online mass media site Belapan. News between April 2006 – August 2015 was collected and analysed.

The tendencies of the decrease of participation in communication and the increase in the number of unique positions were detected. During the observed period, the indicators of participation in communication and unique political actors show the low dialogism of communication, and low number of stable figures in it, which may lead to minimised citizen familiarity with political figures, their political positions and actions; low level of political engagement. All these features characterise an authoritarian regime, and the fact of indicators decreasing/increasing testify to consistent tightening of the regime.

Low intensity of political communication in Belarus may be additionally observed with the low constant attention towards Belarusian political actors. Dealing with the findings, one should consider digital transformation in journalism. A prevalence of unique political actors has been making political communication more complicated and fragmented, where different positions of these episodic actors are not presented in a structured unity.