Let's count together

Navalny's supporters flooded the RIA Novosti Olympic hashtag with reports of corruption in Sochi

After opposition leader Alexei Navalny began using the Olympic hashtag RIA Novosti to spread information about corruption in Sochi, the agency introduced a new hashtag. Later, the agency denied the connection of this change with Navalny’s activities.

On January 22, RIA Novosti launched the “#countingtogether” project, within the framework of which it invited its readers to count the days until the start of the Olympics in Sochi. The essence of the project was to publish photographs that in one way or another mention the current number of days before the Games, with the hashtag #countingtogether.

12 days until the start of the Olympics in Sochi! We are waiting for your pictures with the hashtag #countingtogether pic.twitter.com/d6v7kKl8qM

— RIA Novosti (@rianru) January 26, 2014

A few days later, on January 27, opposition leader Alexei Navalny presented his “Olympic” project - a website that collected information about the money spent on the Olympics and the corruption schemes used.

In the midst of discussions of Navalny’s project, a tweet from RIA Novosti appeared, once again calling on users to publish photos with the hashtag #countingtogether.

11 days until the start of the Olympics in Sochi! We are waiting for your pictures with the hashtag #countingtogether pic.twitter.com/WZNAhJLia2

— RIA Novosti (@rianru) January 27, 2014

Soon, Navalny’s supporters drew attention to the publication and began posting links to a website with information about the funds spent on the Games using the “Olympic” hashtag. Later, the oppositionist himself wrote a post in which he also spoke about the RIA Novosti action. As a result, many posts with the hashtag #countingtogether have appeared on social networks (mainly on Twitter), which do not correspond to the original intent of its creators.

#countingtogether Putin's Lunar Glade: officials are building a road especially for Putin pic.twitter.com/ACGlbLwlPJ http://t.co/H4YZJceZYh

— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) January 27, 2014

Instead of the Olympics in Sochi, 10,807 kindergartens with 313 places could be built, 3,382,591 could go to kindergarten #countingtogether http://t.co/DFCzSpGYp2

— Evgeniy Polovnikov (@EP_IKS) January 28, 2014

Let us note that RIA Novosti also has a “backup” hashtag #sochi2014countdown, which was mentioned in posts on Instagram, but only appeared on Twitter on the agency’s international accounts. On January 28, the day after the opening of Navalny’s website, RIA Novosti did not mention its photo project on Twitter at all.

On January 29, an announcement of the project appeared again on the agency’s microblog, but this time readers were already invited to publish photos with the hashtag #sochi2014countdown, without mentioning its Russian-language counterpart.

RIA Novosti denied the connection between the hashtag change and Navalny’s revelations. An agency representative told TJournal that the incorrect tweet was posted due to a manager's error. The post was later deleted and replaced by a post with the original hashtag.

There are 9 days until the start of the Olympics in Sochi. We are waiting for your photos on Instagram with numbers and the hashtag #countingtogether pic.twitter.com/xp3aCUDIJq

— RIA Novosti (@rianru) January 29, 2014

#Scandal #SMM #Alexei_Navalny #Olympiada #RIA_Novosti #schitaemvmeste