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By Ora John Reuter and David Szakonyi December 31, 2014

The following is a guest post fromOra John Reuter, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, andDavid Szakonyi,a doctoralcandidate in political science at Columbia University. Follow Szkonyi on Twitter @dszakonyi.

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Ever since online social networking became widespread in the mid-2000s, observers have been bullish about the ability of social media to bring about democratic change. Drawing on examples from around the globe Iran in 2009, Egypt, Tunisiaand Russia in 2011-2012; and Ukraine and Hong Kong in 2014 are among the most commonly used pundits and social scientists have argued that social media can help citizens access free information in unfree media environments and, when the moment is right, help anti-government protesters organize. At the same time, there have been some detractors, who point out that social media may actually help dictators gather information on opponents and cut off the flow of information between activists.

In a recently published article at the British Journal of Political Science, we use survey data from the December 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia to examine one aspect of this debate. Specifically, we look at how usage of different social networks affected users awareness of electoral fraud in those elections. That question is important because the mass protests that broke out after those elections, the largest in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, were organized primarily in response to allegations of fraud. Hence, belief in electoral fraud was an important determinant of protest participation.

Our findings indicate that the ownership structure of social media sites matters greatly. Controlling for a range of possible confounding factors, we find that users of Western networks like Facebook and Twitter were more likely than non-users to believe that there was significant electoral fraud during the elections. And yet, users of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki Russian-owned social networks that each have four times more users in Russia than Facebook does (in 2011, only 5percentof Russians were on Facebook) were no more likely than non-users to believe that fraud had taken place. The reason for this discrepancy, we argue, is that opposition activists politicized Facebook and Twitter with accounts of electoral fraud, but refrained from doing the same on domestic networks, which were more vulnerable infiltration by the regime.

Russia is one of a small, but important, group of countries China and Iran being two others where domestic social networks still draw more users than Facebook. In these countries, we suspect that the effect of online social media on regime change may be muted. After all, when nondemocratic governments have leverage over the content and structure of social networks, users lose the ability to access independent points of view and learn about government malfeasance. Not only is information sharing monitored and potentially blocked, but democracy activists avoid networks connected with government authorities for fear of reprisals.

The story of VKontakte, Russias largest social network, illustrates this point well. Following the 2011 elections, pressure mounted on VKontakte to limit opposition activity on the site. The authorities were especially concerned about activities related to protest coordination. The companys founder, Pavel Durov, was reportedly questioned by the FSB (Russias internal security service) over opposition activity on his site.

Accusations again arose in March 2013 that the company had been sharing data with security services about how opposition groups utilize the social network to coordinate their online and offline activities. Durov claimed that VKontakte had resisted these entreats, but suspicions flew that the site had been shutting down opposition groups and disrupting private communication between opposition figures. The very next month two key partners sold their 48 percent share in VKontakte to individuals thought to be well-connected to the Kremlin, intensifying pressure on Durov to play by the governments rules.

The final straw for Durov appears to have been requests from the FSB to report on Ukrainians who were publicly critical of the Russian government on the site. Durov refused to comply, instead publishing the FSB requests online and further drawing attention to the censorship being applied.

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Monkey Cage: In Russia, the political impact of social media varies by platform