Issue 6.
Tine Roesen
Tine Roesen is Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. She obtained her PhD from Copenhagen University in 2001; her research project was a narratological analysis of Dostoevsky’s early works. She has published several articles on Russian literature and is the co-editor (with Ingunn Lunde) of the volume Landslide of the Norm: Language Culture in Post-Soviet Russia (2006). Currently, she is an active partner in the Bergen-based project The Future of Russian: Language Culture in the Era of New Technology and her research interests include Russian literature and literary sociology, writers’ blogs and social network sites. She is also a literary critic for the Danish newspaper Information, and has translated several essays and books into Danish, among them novels by Vladimir Sorokin and Aleksey Slapovsky.
6.4 www.snob.ru: A Social Network Site for the Elite
Since its launch in 2008, the Russian project Snob, involving a printed magazine and a website, has fascinated observers as the first example of a self-proclaimed Russian elite network, joining the league of asmallworld.net and affluence.com. Sponsored by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, the project initially resembled yet another invention by New Russians who are eager to flash their riches, with its online social network serving acting as yet another exclusive club. However, in 2009 the site was opened for guest access and membership by subscription; it is now possible not only to establish the basic facts of the site’s interface, design, membership numbers and profile options, but also to analyse the interests and characteristics of the so-called ‘Snobshchestvo’ community. The result of the analysis reveals that we may have to reconsider not only our perception of this particular elite, but also, more generally, our understanding of the social aspect in online social networks.
Language of contribution: English