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"A YouTube video of a poll worker casting a vote for an elderly lady went viral; arrested Russian bloggers uploaded a jubilant photo from the police bus on Twitter.\nIn Russia, a country with Europe's highest Internet penetration, social media offers an alternative form of election coverage.\n\u201CThese elections are for the first time taking place in a real situation of parallel information flows \u2013 the official one and the one of mass civic networks,\u201D noted media specialist Anna Kachkaeva.\nTwo examples:\nAn elderly woman waves her hands in confusion at a ballot in a viral video about parliamentary election violations. A poll worker steps in to do it for her, casting a vote for the pro-Putin United Russia party. One viewer commented: \u201COur country is like that old woman \u2013 silly and silent.\u201D\n\n\n\n\nAfter complete results of the elections were announced Monday, thousands of protesters went to the streets. Bloggers posted and tweeted the gathering places of protesters.\nIlya Varlamov covered these events on his Twitter feed, his blog and at Ridus, a citizen journalism news agency. Police arrested prominent blogger Alexei Navalny and Iliya Yashin, an activist from the Solidarnodst movement, along with other protesters. He snapped a picture with his iPhone and uploaded it to Twitter. \u201CSitting with my lads on the police bus. They all say hi,\u201D Navalny tweeted in Russian. (An hour later, he posted a group photo of those arrested in the Izmailovo precinct.\nToday Navalny's court trial was live-tweeted with photos from the courtroom. Both Yashin (in the earlier trial) and Navalny were sentenced to 15 days in jail.\nThis parallel information network is bound to grow: Russia currently has the highest number of internet users in Europe \u2013 50.8 million people over 15 years old - overtaking Germany, according to recent ComScore data.\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, duncan1890"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/12/06/russian-elections/>