How do Quite Ordinary People support a Quite Ordinary Hybrid Regime, and do they?

Among the hypothetical factors of the instability of the current Russian hybrid regime, broad pro-democracy mobilizations and changes of the political opportunity structures including the division of elites are most obvious. The research project which first findings are presented in the paper reverses this logic by switching the focus from the quality of the challenge to the quality of the support for the regime. A prolonged economic crisis and a depletion of the state reserves force the state actors in the situation typical for social movements: the (human) resources must be mobilized under conditions of uncertainty, instead of being allocated via institutional channels. It has been demonstrated for a broad range of different social movements, that social networks have a crucial role in mobilization of resources and negotiating of collective identities and interpretative frameworks. The study aims to deepen our understanding of how loyalist and conservative orientations in contemporary Russia are constructed and mobilized via different networks for communication of meanings. Of particular interest is the contribution of communication processes which are embedded in everyday life and horizontally organized, i.e. lie beyond the well-documented top-down-mobilization. Three dimensions of such processes are analysed: • Everyday life: How and where does communication occur between the members of socio-cultural milieus which depend on the distribution of resources by state actors and therefore are often considered as their core supporters? How does this process complement their role as the audience of mass-media outlets? Which topics and frames are of special importance here? • Mobilization: How do mobilized public groups or networks, oriented towards collective action for specific causes, emerge and develop? Conservative, pragmatic, and loyalist campaigns are of special interest here. • Intersections: How are different offline and online arenas for the public communication of meanings connected? The research project is based on two in-depth case studies of large federal cities. Such cities represent the periphery when compared to Moscow, but concentrate human, financial, and administrative resources of the regions. They are characterized by a diverse population but also demonstrate a rather comprehensible range of local public spaces and arenas. This allows for communication networks within and between different social and cultural milieus to be traced. To provide a variety of perspectives on the development of the publics in both cities, different methods and data are used. Most important are group discussions with political and social activists and members of different socio-cultural milieus and the analysis of online communication in relation to local discussions and mobilizations.