INTRODUCTION
An individual might never have physically crossed over the border into Russia. But in a way, thanks to Google, he or she might already have been there. He might have wandered the streets of Moscow through Google Maps or witnessed important Russian moments, such as the meteor that hit Russia last year, through the footage created by average citizens and uploaded to YouTube. Never before has it been possible for a foreigner to access Russia so quickly or so easily. While this certainly changes concepts of foreignness and faraway-ness, what is more the phenomenon is that the experience of Russia through Google is not only more widely accessible but also ubiquitous within Russia and without. In the same way that I can see, feel and live the wonders and vices of Russianness through Google, this is increasingly the way people within Russia and around the globe are experiencing it too.
Since its birth in 2001, Google has been working to reorder the world and to redefine traditional, governmentally enforced borders through the global perspective its search engine and other products provide. Understanding the particular experience of Russia through the lens that Google provides reveals Russia’s resistance to a borderless world and, more deeply, the central characteristic of Russianness as the will to define its nation and its self by way of marking out its borders and maintaining distinct sovereignty.
Google, Russian Soverignty, and Algorithmic Authority →