Russian politicians challenged online
By Ilya Khazin
My post is not really about stealth conflicts but more about the role of the Internet in bringing up problems and opinions that politicians in Russia want so much to hide from the public. ‘Stealth problems and the Internet’ I would say. These days the vast part of the anti-government political debate in Russia happens online, on Livejournal, Facebook and the Russian social network, Vkontakte. It seems that the Internet today is the last chance for the Russian people to speak up loudly on their positions and problems.
In this post I’d like to talk about the role of the Internet if not as an agenda-setting “game changer” but at least as a public “ mood-changer”. Analysts say that one of the special features of the recent pre-election campaign is the increasing role of the Internet and blogs. Nowadays the Internet has become the second most popular information source in Russia (and even the most popular for some social groups). Many people do not watch news on TV any more, and for them the Internet is like a window to a free world, where one can always find out something that others are trying to hide.
A few weeks ago I read an interesting article about Russian opposition artists using the Internet and specifically YouTube to challenge and discredit the ruling party United Russia as well as Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
Here are the fragments of the article “Russia satirists use YouTube to challenge Kremlin” I found on BBC web-site the other day:
“Media control has been one of the key factors that have allowed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to dominate Russia’s political landscape since he was first elected president in 2000.
As the country prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections, though, there are signs that the Kremlin is facing a fresh media challenge in the form of an increasingly politicised audience on YouTube.
Over the past few weeks, a number of Russian politics-themed clips on YouTube have achieved over one million views.
The videos are in a variety of genres – political polemic, satire and song – but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country’s leadership – Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia…”
“YouTube is not only giving a powerful voice to the opposition, it is also helping to revive subversive art forms.”
“Changing perceptions
Anti-government or satirical clips on YouTube are unlikely to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the forthcoming elections.
But they may already be changing perceptions.
Recent research by academics from Moscow State University found that Mr Putin is regarded in a much more negative light today than before the previous presidential elections he fought in 2000 and 2004.
The researchers found that just 17.1% of respondents had a positive view of his professional capacities as against 69% in 2000 and 64 per cent in 2004. According to the website Gazeta.ru, among the negative sides of Mr Putin’s rule listed by respondents were “unfulfilled promises“, “failure to solve corruption problems”, “excessive populism” and “excessive authoritarianism”.
Watching political content on YouTube is likely to reinforce these perceptions.”
While writing this post I found another fascinating example of how Russian citizens are trying to stand their ground against the political machine through the Internet . A few weeks ago there was a mixed martial arts fight event between Russia’s Fedor Emelianenko and America’s Jeff Monson. The event was carried out in Moscow and it turned out that the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in the crowd. Emelianenko won the fight and Vladimir Putin climbed into the ring to congratulate him, when the crowd booed the untouchable prime minister as he started to speak, and continued to boo him except when he was praising Emilianenko. The whole event was broadcast live on the state-owned television channel Rossiya 2 and eventually the booing was cut out in all subsequent replays of the fight. This video clip broadcast appeared on YouTube and has been viewed 2.5m times. The Putin’s administration tried to restrict the damage and stated that fans were actually booing the American fighter Jeff Monson who lost the match, and this was repeated in many Russian newspapers thereafter. As a response Russian fans left more than one thousand messages on the Monson’s Facebook page with supportive messages in English. Many of the were attacking Mr Putin and his administration in these comments. For example, one of the fans wrote:
“greatest date for our country because Putin the first time was whistled and shamed!”, adding “Russia must be free”.
Or
“His corrupted government, muppet courts, punishers in police clothes, pocket electoral commissions and people of his clan at all the most important and profitable chairs – it all drives us crazy!”
The mood of this politicized Internet audience tells us that everyone on the Russian political arena besides United Russia can benefit from its mobilization. And here the primary goal of the opposition should be to find the way to motivate these people to leave their computers on election day.
Link to the original articles on BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15553373
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15869047
December 6, 2011 at 11:20 am
Thanks for this post Ilya.
Looking at the protesters coming out onto the streets of Moscow (it looks like many of them have left their computers to come out), could it be that it is getting too difficult to keep this a stealth issue after all? Are protests likely to grow or die out?
December 18, 2011 at 9:16 pm
I wrote my post about Russian politicians challenged in the Internet more than 1 month ago. However, I am very glad that it was published just one day before the parliamentary elections. It was very good timing, which allowed us to see the real power of the Russian Internet and blogosphere in mobilizing opposition and taking people outside. According to an article in the Financial Times that came out last week, Russia has the biggest Internet audience in Europe with more than 50 million users. The people are now realizing how powerful online activism can be. The FT calls Internet in Russia as the new politic arena and the main tool for organizing the first serious protests since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Since the main TV channels were ignoring all protest movements, the vast part of the protesters found out about the upcoming demonstration on December 10th from the Internet. People said it was the Internet videos of ballot-stuffing, vote-stealing, and blatant forgery of official results that drove them mad. That day 40,000-60,000 people (25,000 according to Russian police department) went out to protest against the falsification. This was Russia’s social network moment indeed. The demonstration was basically inspired and organized online through Live Journal, Twitter, Russian social network Vkontake and Facebook.
Talking about the perspective of the protest movements in Russia, it is still very hazy. Even though, the opposition leaders promised to organize demonstration regularly from now on, there is a big possibility that protests will fade away within a few months. The main problem is that the parties in the opposition movement are too different from each other – there is Liberal opposition party Yabloko, radical opposition, communists and Liberal Democratic party. Thus it will be very difficult for them to find a compromise and work out a common plan of action. They still don’t have a clear programme where to go and what to do next. They are claiming new elections and resignation of the head of Central Election Commission. But they don’t say who and how will provide different nature of new elections. Register all parties for the new elections? I doubt that it is possible. The opposition hasn’t come to an agreement yet and there is no distinct plan how to change the system. And there can’t be any positive effect until they do that.