Robert A. Saunders (PhD, Global Affairs, Rutgers University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Economics and Politics at the State University of New York-Farmingdale. He is a consulting editor of the Journal of Global Change and Governance and an editor of Russian Cyberspace. His first book, The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody, and the Battle over Borat, was published by Lexington Books in 2008. Dr. Saunders is currently completing work on his monograph The Web of Identity: Minority Nationalism and Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace (Berghahn Books), as well the Historical Dictionary of Contemporary Russia (Scarecrow Press), co-authored with Vlad Strukov. His research has appeared in Slavic Review, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Global Media and Communication, Identities, Russia in Global Affairs, and Nations and Nationalism.
Over the past two decades, the residents of the "Second World" - the vast geopolitical bloc that stretched from East Germany to the Pacific Ocean - have experienced multiple revolutions: political, economic, and cultural. Girding this change has been the free flow of data, images, music, and ideas via new information and communications technologies (ICTs). I explore the history of "wiring" the Second World, current trends in ICT deployment, the cultural penetration of new media, and the impact of these developments on the political environment in post-totalitarian Eurasia. I argue that certain Second World states benefited from pre-existing relationships, infrastructures, and socio-cultural orientations as they entered the global information age, while other nations found (or placed) themselves at the periphery of the new technology grid. Through an updated application of the geopolitical concepts of "Heartland" and "Rimland", I also attempt to explain certain aspects of the current digital divide as it applies to the former Second World.
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Robert Saunders
Language of contribution: English
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