ИСТИНА

Until 2016, Roskomnadzor regulated online mass media directly by law, which Russian media professionals assessed mainly positively (Galkina & Lehtisaari 2016). However, in 2016, Roskomnadzor began regulating online mass media indirectly through cooperating with private Internet companies in a project launched in 2012 to boost network security on the net and called Netoscope. This cooperation enables Roskomnadzor and Yandex to shape the online media landscape by removing websites far away from Internet users’ eyes (Sivetc 2017). The Netoscope regulation presents an example of new cooperative regulation of speech. The danger of this regulation to online free expression has generally been acknowledged in the academia (Balkin 2014). However, researchers have not yet studied effects of this new regulation on Russian journalistic practices. The paper fills the gap by conducting a survey among ten top-managers of leading online media outlets. The general aim of this study is to examine what role respondents assign to Netoscope in shaping the online media landscape. The paper hypothesizes that this project, used by Roskomnadzor to prevent the dissemination of harmful online content, may change the previously revealed, positive attitude to this government agency. This paper finds that respondents mostly unaware of the Netoscope regulation. Further, after being informed on the project, they will not adjust their practices and change attitudes to Roskomnadzor. This paper explains the results by the lack of understanding among Russian media professionals that cooperative regulation has posed new dangers to their practices. Disinterest in the Netoscope regulation may also be explained by the passiveness of Russian media, which, according to Vartanova (2012), are used to reacting to decisions by regulators instead of acting as independent players in mass media politics.