PhD defence R.F. (Rachid) Gabdulhakov

Imagine living in a society with no police. All matters of legal and moral boundary breaching are handled by fellow citizens acting as judges, jury and executioners. There are no fines to issue, nor are there any prisons. No due process, no innocence presumption. Punitive measures are carried out by citizens and imply exposure and public shaming of fellow citizens for their mischiefs, be it breaching of legal or moral boundaries. This dystopian approach to justice provision resembling someone’s wild fantasy, or a scenario for TV series á la “Black Mirror” is, in fact, anything but fiction. Practices of citizen-led justice manifest globally and across various legal, political, socioeconomic and cultural contexts. From online retaliation against someone for things they Tweeted, to organised ‘witch hunt’ on people in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, social media users acquired participatory functions in both moral and formal justice provision. Sometimes these acts of social justice are spontaneous, performed by people who do not know each other offline. Other times, vigilantes are thematically organised, engaging in systematic target exposure. 
To address the diverse cases and nuances in digitally-mediated citizen-led justice, the current dissertation employs the notion of digital vigilantism in its conceptual framework. In digital vigilantism, the urge to expose, judge and direct the virtual audience to observed and perceived wrongdoings often defies any critical analysis of the situation at hand. As the act of exposure gets viral, crowd reactions and responses become infused with a sport-like drive, in which individuals offer their time, skills and creativity in target punishing. Undoing such damages to the reputation can be a challenging task as posts are shared across social media platforms and in some cases by millions of users. 
The available literature is still largely missing empirical cross-disciplinary studies on digital vigilantism. Studies addressing diverse sociocultural, economic, legal, media and political environments in which these practices take place are in demand. This dissertation aims to respond to these gaps by investigating the case of Russia, where digital vigilantism is manifest in the environment of state-support of select participants and simultaneous suppression of various other forms of online self-expression. There are vigilante formations in Russia that received financial support and endorsement from the state. Such groups enjoyed publicity on traditional media and relative immunity when it came to police involvement. However, this relationship has recently been broken, and the dissertation looks into some nuances of why the state-supported vigilantes in the first place and what caused the deterioration of these relations. 
As such, the studies that make up this dissertation investigate the process of emergence and decay of vigilante formations and, in doing so, addresses the methods of- and motives for participation. Experiences of targets and greater societal impacts of digitally mediated citizen-led justice are addressed. The dissertation elaborates on the nuances of internet governance in Russia while exploring the role of platforms in the negotiation of what social media practices are allowed and condemned by the ruling elites and law enforcement. Social frustrations and biases are addressed along with various motives and modes for participation in digital vigilantism. The dissertation demonstrates that people vulnerable offline, such as women, migrants, ethnic and sexual minorities, state critics and others are also vulnerable online. Sometimes these vulnerabilities are layered as a single person can be targeted by several different vigilante groups. The dissertation also addresses the greater influence of vigilante culture creation and business-like franchising of institutionalised vigilantism across and beyond Russia. Methodologically, the studies rely on literature review, field interviews with various actors, qualitative content analysis of social and traditional media products, and online- as well as in-person observations of vigilantes in action in Russia.

The public defence will take place at the Senate Hall, 1st floor Erasmus Building, location campus Woudestein. The ceremony will begin exactly at 10.30 AM. In light of the solemn nature of the ceremony, we recommend that you do not take children under the age of 6 to the first part of the ceremony.