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 She first rose to prominence by donning a balaclava and
storming into Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral with others
in Feb. 2012, shouting out a song against Vladimir Putin, then
getting jailed for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred".
But Tolokonnikova was wearing much less confrontational attire
as she spoke at the Login tech festival in Lithuania's elegant
capital Vilnius, discussing plans to build up her online media
platform.
"The real punk," the 26-year-old told Reuters, "is to build
institutions."
MediaZona, the website she helped found in 2014 with a focus on
criminal justice news, has about 2.2 million visitors a month on
various platforms, she said, more than 58 percent of them in the
18-34 age group prized by advertisers.
That still leaves it a relative minnow in a relatively small
independent media scene dominated by Latvia-based Medusa,
founded by the one-time editor of a top Russian news site.
Tolokonnikova, along with her husband and business partner Pyotr
Verzilov, face the same challenges as any new media
entrepreneurs: building an audience, finding a way to pay the
bills and carving out a clear market position in the face of a
strong incumbent.
But then there are the political risks. At MediaZona's launch,
the founders said it would focus on stories censored by the
Russian state -- stories about courts, prisons, arrests,
convictions, riots in facilities and political criminal cases.
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While MediaZona currently has a media license in Russia, it could
readily be revoked, Tolokonnikova says. Some business strategies are
off the table too.
"It's hard to do crowd-funding in Russia now -- I don't want to put
people at risk," she said.
Giants like Facebook and Twitter - used by protest movements from
Ukraine to Hong Kong - can be important channels for news and
activism, Tolokonnika said, but "the government can super-easily
shut down these networks".
"You have to be pro-active, you have to build your own platforms and
not just use existing ones," she said.
Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute in Washington,
said MediaZona had yet to make a dent, and it was a "tall order" to
create a sustainable and influential media outlet. Russians get the
bulk of their news from tightly-scripted, state-run television
channels.
Tolokonnikova, who currently works to make payroll by giving
speeches and seeking donations, said she would keep trying to find a
way, while keeping up her art and her activism.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Winning in Moscow; Editing by
Andrew Heavens)
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