Abstract

Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies This article examines the online self-staging strategies of famous opera singers of Russian origin in Runet (the Russian-language internet). It argues that, in the Russian media context, opera singers’ blogs create an “emotional regime” of high intensity, which helps them to destabilize political hierarchies and intimately connect the grassroots with the political sphere. The study starts from the assumption that the digital environment changes the character of relations between audiences and celebrities in several ways. The most important of these, the paper argues, is that social network communication between opera stars and their fans distorts the traditional limitations and hierarchies.

pdf

Share