This article addresses the understudied phenomenon of online animal welfare volunteering as a locally rooted form of grassroots civic activism. The lack of sufficient sociological data currently prevents researchers from developing a social profile of contemporary animal welfare volunteers or assessing the extent to which animal welfare volunteer movements influence public opinion in the region, for example by fostering positive (responsible and humane) attitudes toward homeless animals.

The study draws on unstructured interviews with ten representatives of major animal welfare volunteer movements in the Republic of Buryatia who actively maintain public pages on the social networking platform VKontakte; content analysis of these pages; and analysis of selected regional cases.

The study finds that “digital compassion” is gradually developing in Buryatia. This involves animal welfare volunteers using networked communication to fulfill their primary mission of helping homeless animals. Digital resources enable these volunteers to scale up their efforts and gain greater public visibility, which in turn fosters more humane social attitudes and leads to changes in institutional rules.

network society, networked communication, social media, animal welfare volunteers, homeless animals, digital compassion

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