The Role of Social Media in Protest Potential of Students

In the last decade there were numerous political protest in Russia. Mediatization and Internet access made social media an essential part of the political protest. This thesis is dedicated to the role of social media in protest potential of students in Russian Federation. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the social media on student's political activities, including political protest. This paper consists of three chapters, former of which is theoretical and describes the history of political protests within studentship. The second chapter is dedicated to the role of social media in protest organisation. In this part we explore the ways students use social media in their protest activity. The last chapter mainly consists of analysis of social media usage by students. Methods such as content analysis and case-study were used. The result of this paper may reveal that social media is not only a powerful tool in organizing protest, but also can be used (and is used) by students to perform the protest itself and to involve other students into active political protest. Keywords: media, social media, protest, student political protest