P2P file-sharing has been in the focus of many studies, often in the context of copyright and resistance to it. However, there is evidence that it is also conducive to civic, community and identity-oriented action far beyond the plethora of copyright issues.
The next Online Talk on December 8 presents the outline of Kateryna Boyko’s PhD project on the civic cultures of file-sharing practices in Ukraine and Russia. Her study is anchored in the media practice research paradigm and interested in conjunctions and interplays between civic practices and file-sharing practices, in how and under what conditions file-sharing can become embedded in the civic context. This project has an ethnographic approach and will explore empirical material accumulated mainly from in-depth interviews with users and observation of the two biggest torrent-trackers in Ukraine and Russia.
Kateryna’s talk will be organized on Zoom on Tuesday, December 8 from 12:00 to 13:30 (Finnish time). It will be moderated by Dr Olga Dovbysh from the Russian Media Lab Network (University of Helsinki). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here.
Speaker bio: Kateryna Boyko is doing her PhD in media and communication studies at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies (Uppsala University, Sweden). Her research interests are identity construction, online communities, the intersection of entertaining content, and politics. Her doctoral project explores civic cultures of torrent communities in Eastern Europe. Kateryna holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, while her second MA degree in Media Studies was obtained at Södertörn University (Stockholm).
Online Talks on Russian Media is a collaborative initiative between the Russian Media Lab Network (University of Helsinki) and TaRC.