Belarus – The Land Of Apolitical Internet Users
Belarusian Internet User. Picture: azattyq.org
In the first week of January various media reported that under Belarusian law browsing foreign web sites on the territory of Belarus became a crime. Soon it became clear that the new law did not target ordinary citizens. A week after the worries around the new law had subsided the online research agency Gemius published the results of its November study. According to the study, the Internet audience in Belarus has reached the record 4 million people and the level of Internet penetration is already more than 50%.
Even despite the authoritarian political realities a growing number of Belarusians freely navigate the World Wide Web, including independent information portals and opposition web pages. However, the Gemius data shows that such web sites are not very popular among ordinary people. And it means that even on the background of massive political repression against civil society and the latest economic turmoil the Belarusians remain mostly apolitical.
The Internet Nation
Gemius does regular measurements of the audience of the biggest Belarusian web sites. It should be noted, however, that not all the web sites are covered by the research — only those that give permission for that. That is why the study does not feature the most popular Belarusian Internet portal — tut.by on one can find everything – from news to jobs and maps. Its daily audience is roughly 1.8 million people.
Nonetheless, Gemius provides quite a telling and systemic overall picture of the Belarusian Internet. Importantly, the company’s archives help understand the dynamic of different data and identify various trends.
According to the study carried out in November 2011, from the gender point of view the Belarusian Internet is a zone of absolute equality: 51,3% of the Internet audience in Belarus is represented by female users and, respectively, 48,7% by male users. The age structure of the Internet audience is as follows:
|
Age group |
% out of total audience |
|
15-18 |
9,77 |
|
19-24 |
21,8 |
|
25-34 |
29,97 |
|
35-44 |
19,31 |
|
45-54 |
13,39 |
|
55+ |
6,48 |
Thus, the Internet penetration indicator in the country is quite high and already higher than in Ukraine and Russia. Internet users are more or less evenly distributed across the gender and age groups. As a result, the role of the Internet as a source of information and communication for the majority of the population is growing. More and more Belarusians create their accounts in social networks such as Odnoklassniki.ru, Facebook and Vkontakte.ru. On Facebook, for example, the number of ‘Belarusian accounts’ grew in the last half a year by 15%. Belarusians aged 25-34 years comprise the most fast-growing group here.
The Internet is gradually displacing the traditional mass media. The latter’s role in Belarus is diminishing. This is particularly true of newspapers. The falling circulation of the biggest state paper ‘Sovetskaya Belarus’ serves as a vivid example of this trend. In January 2012 the circulation dropped by 11,8% (from 400,000 in December to 352, 860). Even though the paper enjoys large-scale administrative support – most of its circulation is literally forced on state enterprises and institutions – these might be very telling numbers.
Free To Choose
The most interesting data from the studies conducted by Gemius concern the web sites that are most popular among Belarusian Internet users. This data reveals clear thematic preferences. According to Gemius, in November 2011 the top-10 Belarusian web sites by the number of visitors (real users) were:
1. mail.ru (mail service)
2. yandex.by (search engine)
3. odnoklassniki.ru (social network)
4. onliner.by (technology and gadgets reviews)
5. livejournal_by (blogging platform)
6. deal.by (online shop)
7. zaycevnet.by (music sharing)
8. irr.by (online classifieds)
9. abw.by (car classifieds and reviews)
10.by.all.biz (equivalent of yellow pages)
As we can see, among the top-10 there are different types of Internet shops (5), an email service, search engine, social network and a music portal. In other words, it is entertainment and shopping that Belarusian Internet users are mostly interested in. Only one page (livejournal_by) in the top-10 has some political content. And there is not a single news site – either governmental or independent.
One possible explanation for such a low level of interest to news and politics might be that the economic situation in Belarus stabilized in November 2011 after Belarus secured various economic subsidies from Russia after the agreements on the Single Economic Space, Beltransgas deal and gas contracts were signed in Moscow. To test this hypothesis we can look at the top-10 Belarusian web pages in, for example, June 2011. At that time Belarus was in the middle of currency crisis and the silent protests were in full swing.
Here are the top-10 web sites by the number of visitors (real users) that Gemius named in its study in June 2011:
1. mail.ru (mail service)
2. yandex.by (search engine)
3. odnoklassniki.ru (social network)
4. onliner.by (technology and gadgets reviews)
5. zaicevnet.by (music sharing)
6. livejournal_by (blogging platform)
7. naviny.by (news)
8. deal.by (online shop)
9. av.by (car classifieds and reviews)
10. charter97.org (news)
The top-10 list in June had two independent from the government news pages – naviny.by and charter97.org. However, as the statistics provided by Gemius shows, each of these sites was visited by only about 10% of the Belarusian Internet users. To compare: the top-3 web sites (mail.ru, yandex.by and odnoklassniki.ru) were each popular among roughly 50% of the Internet users in Belarus.
The data in the archives of Gemius shows that in 2009-2011 the thematic priorities of the Belarusian Internet audience were almost unchanged. Entertainment and shopping were high on the preferences list, but news and analytics were either absent from the top-10 list at all or among its outsiders.
Why Are Belarusians So Apolitical?
Despite the authoritarian political system Belarusian citizens are free to use the Internet and choose what they want to read or watch there. But the research findings demonstrate that the majority of the Belarusian Internet users do not make use of this freedom in order to access uncensored news and analytical web sites. In other words, people choose to be apolitical.
The reasons why the Belarusians are so apolitical are multiple and need to be thoroughly researched. However, one reason clearly lies on the surface – no attractive and trustworthy political group has emerged which would make the Belarusians believe that reading political news will be of any importance to the future of the country.
Lukashenka and Mickey Mouse
Lukashenka inspects the crops
Last autumn when Belarusian rock band IQ48 approached a regional TV channel, its editors told the musicians that their song contained unacceptable political hints. The editors in western Belarusian city of Maladzechna interpreted the original Belarusian words of the song “And let Mickey Mouse hang in the fridge” as a hint to the Belarus president who is a known as an avid hockey player and promoter of dozens of ice hockey palaces throughout the country.
The careful editors also understood “and year to year we become ever more slim like birch trees” as a hint that there was not enough food in the country, so the Belarusians were getting thin. That was enough for ideological supervisors to ban the song, silencing the band as since some years all public concerts and broadcasting in Belarus are controlled by the state. Some could dismiss the Maladzechna incident as stupidity of provincial censors but there further examples show that the regime's paranoia is increasing.
Law as a Joke
When the Justice Ministry and other state agencies deny registration to new non-governmental organizations their justifications sound no less amazing.
Following the 2010 amendments to the Law on NGOs, every tiny mistake or incorrectness in the documents has become a ground to deny registration. NGO's lawyer Yury Chavusau recently shared on “Nashe Mnenie” website some of the reasons given by state agencies to deny registration:
- The office telephone number of one of the founders has not been given
- Room for the founding meeting has been too small
- The statute does not make clear what the organization is going to do
- The founders previously have committed administrative offenses, therefore they are going to use the organization to break the law
- One of the documents has been printed using font which does not correspond with the font required by the official instruction
- The birth date of one of the founders was incorrect.
Lukashenka's Personal Security
Kafkaesque reality of the present-day Belarus culminates in Lukashenka's own behavior. Belarusian leader seriously fears for his life despite the fact, that so far no attempt has ever been made on it. The security measures taken on all his movements in Belarus are spectacular.
The whole nation knows that Lukashenka's visit is a big problem for the local population. First, the police and KGB will temporarily detain or remove on some pretexts all local opposition activists. Second, the entire local population will be effectively incarcerated to their houses and neighborhoods during the visit. And woe to anyone who lives along his route – to come to the windows and to open them while the president is passing is strictly prohibited. The snipers will be on the roofs, police in courtyards in even remote blocks of flats. The schools will be closed and emptied of children to provide shelter for hordes of special police forces brought to prevent protests.
These security measures led to innumerable jokes. For good reason. When Lukashenka wanted to travel through Slonim to another Belarusian town, the local authorities ordered the administrative staff at a weaving plant to put aside their work and remove certain yellow wild flowers along the road because they thought they did not look good enough.
Painting the Crops and Killing the Flies
In December 2011, before Lukashenka's visit, the local authorities of Ivacevichy in Brest region were ordered to kill all pigeons to make the town look nicer. The Belarusian ruler was going to visit the “Ice Palace” and all schools of the town had to provide pupils to fill all the seats of the large sport facility. Of course, the lessons had been canceled and teachers had to force children to go to the ice hockey palace.
Lukashenka who used to be a collective farm director loves visiting the country side. Last July, he decided to visit Pastavy in northern Belarus. Oppositional Charter-97 has published a document of local administration on preparation for the visit. He planned to visit some cattle farms among other objects. In the leaked plan among other most urgent tasks to be done, the local authorities ordered repairmen of 2.5 ha of maize”, “treatment of horns, hooves and tails, cleaning of cows”, “liquidation of flies and removal of adverse smells”, “removal of white-headed calves to other farms” etc. Among other weird actions was to urgently plow empty areas (in July!) and remove – although with compensation for owners – crops from private fields.
Local officials explained to the European Radio for Belarus why they had to combat flies and their reasons for removal of white-headed calves. Apparently, the farm's specialty was to work with certain high-quality cattle and white-headed animals did not belong to this category. Therefore in order to prove Lukashenka the success of cattle breeding in the region non-qualifying animals had to be hidden. A few days later, the official Belarusian media reported of a 'sudden visit' to the farms already described in the leaked document published by Charter-97.
Other regions of Belarus saw similar things happening. Prior to another visit of Lukashenka to Maladzechna the staff of a local agricultural school had to 'repair' a rape seed field on president's route. The clerks had to choose the most yellow plants from the middle of the field and put them along the road to make it look nice. If they did not look yellow enough – they had to paint the plants. Rumors from other areas suggested that treatment of cattle hooves also included painting.
The closed state system of Belarus and Lukashenka's dictatorship is more than just ineffective and abusive. It degenerates to outward nonsense. The cases of ridiculous measures are abundant and many of them became so normal to Belarusians that they are no longer surprised. Outward lies about sudden visits seems harmless compared to much more serious human right abuses and falsifications. The essence of every dictatorship is lie, often a very ridiculous lie.
SB
