Internet colonization

By the 2018 elections, the Kremlin learned to work with the network

To mobilize citizens to the elections on March 18, the authorities involved all possible resources, from traditional television videos to SMS newsletters from the Central Election Commission. All these measures are quite familiar and differ in the framework of the current campaign, except for a particularly high intensity.

However, there are innovations: in the 2018 election, the Kremlin demonstrates that he has learned to work with the Internet.

A fracture was outlined several years ago, when the details of the famous “troll factory” in Olgino became known. Nevertheless, when at the end of last summer, information appeared in the press about the CEC and Mail.ru Group, the owner of the main Russian social networks, no one expected special surprises. It seemed that the authorities would go according to the traditional path - they would buy banner advertising and remove the videos. As a result, the authorities managed to advertise participation in the elections using much more modern methods. In particular, announcements of meetings at polling stations appeared in dating applications, and information on where it can be voted was offered to their users Yandex.mac. Experts note that this is the first such modern PR campaign of the CEC when the authorities inform about the elections from YouTube, from iPhone applications and social networks. Some evaluate such tactics as “copying” of the opposition political technologies. For example, in the municipal election, the team of Dmitry Gudkov also posted their advertisements in applications and social networks.

Is there Instagram? You can vote!

A week before March 18, Russian celebrities arranged a baton on Instagram social network. The campaign in the social network was held under the slogan “Elections where you” and was devoted to the opportunity to choose a convenient voting site through the public services website. The first such post was the comedian Mikhail Galustyan laid out. He wrote: “On March 18 there will be presidential elections. This applies to everyone! It is on this day that I will not be at the place of registration. But you need to vote. How? It turns out very simple. I filed an application through the Gosuslugi.ru system. <...> Guys, use this thing. Really convenient! "

At the end of the message, Galustyan celebrated his colleagues from the TNT channel and the silver group so that they also continue the baton. Then a chain of identical posts on Instagram from bloggers with millions of subscribers went. The action was participated by TV presenter Olga Buzova, singer Nyusha, singer Dmitry Malikov.

Nikolai Baskov promised to personally like those subscribers who will publish selfies from the polling station and mention his name.

The press secretary of one of the participants in the action of the actress Anna Khilkevich said that this publication had no customer, and the story about the elections became a “civil act” for the elections.

It is interesting that many of these celebrities took part in the action a few months ago #Life -Life, where they talked about a convenient city and good roads in Moscow.

Agitation can be found now on Instagram of Russian football players. They do not exhibit the text, but the picture where the athlete himself is drawn and the inscription “Your Voice is your victory” or “The country chooses - what are you doing?” Under the post there are hashtags #long, #Nedlagalchiki. Such publications were placed by the players of the Russian national team Alexander Kokorin and Artem Rebrov.

Video bloggers joked

On the pages of famous video bloggers on YouTube, clips began to appear in which they read rap about elections. Later it turned out that all these videos were made as part of the comic project Lenta.ru “Who is your candidate?”. According to the rules of the project, each blogger took off his pre -election video in which he told why he had to go to the polls and vote for him. For example, Danya Komkov in her video walks in a fur coat between expensive cars, waving the Russian flag. In the rap style, he pronounces such words: “Tell me, Sobolev Kolya, where did you climb? If you yell like that, you will see Kirovles ”,“ And let everyone who say this is a farce. ” The blogger Lizka in his video flies on a private plane and rides on a limousine, around her a crowd of youth, who wants a lizzka in the president. “Thank God, I was born, where is freedom of choice,” the girl reads the text.

The seventh candidate was Yuri Khovansky. In his song “Sex, Board, Russian rap” he says that from the age of eighteen, everyone makes “his adult choice in late March in the elections.” After the release of the clip of Khovansky, like the rest of the bloggers, began to write in the comments that it was "sold to the Kremlin." Khovansky made a statement that Lenta.ru set them up without making a statement after the end of the action that the entire flash mob was conceived as a joke.

“Some people are trying to get grandmothers, slipping a linden report to the Kremlin,” Khovansky wrote on Twitter.

If the format of song agitation for participation in the elections can still be attributed in earnest, then the CEC advertising in a popular video blog about cars is unlikely. The creator and at the same time leading the Academeg Dailystream channel (which has almost a million subscribers) published a video in which he sits in the car, tells about the upper brake of the car and his other features for the first ten minutes, but then suddenly finds a cycle advertising under the windshield on the windshield. The advertisement says the possibility of attach to another site through public services. The blogger is outraged by the complexity of the sentences and, as it were, in an accessible language, begins to correct them: “Oh, how difficult it is written. It is necessary - all this will take you only 5 minutes. ” Such work with bloggers requires a very subtle understanding of the Internet audience: political agitation is now submitted in the format natural for the video blog.

Native CEC

Users of mobile applications, such as Yandex.Maters or Tinder dating service, began to notice political agitation inside applications - in the form of the so -called native advertising. In Yandex.Marts over the categories about where to find an ATM, pharmacy, cafe, the icon “Polling Parts on the map” appeared. In Tinder, advertising works like this: as while watching a person’s profile, you can “shake” it on the smartphone screen left or right - depending on whether you want to learn more about the elections.

Large state banks, VTB and Sberbank also use the “native” format for notifying customers about the upcoming elections: they send them information SMS.

Comments of political strategists

Vladimir Perevosovchikov

Head of the Expert Group of Political Technologists "First Advisor"

- Of course, such an advertisement is effective. Especially when compared with the latest elections to the State Duma, where there was almost no information. One or two billboards hung all over Moscow. Now you go to VKontakte, in Mail.Ru - everywhere agitation, but not for the candidate of a particular one. We return to the practice of the zero when they raised the turnout, because it was fundamentally needed to recognize the elections legitimate. There is an official appeal from the CEC, a letter signed by Pamfilova with a request to inform citizens about the elections. I do not think that banks are paid for this, because how many billions are needed? Here are agitation from bloggers, which are in no way connected with politics, this, of course, is custom -made.

Vitaly Shklyarov

Political strategist of the campaign headquarters of Ksenia Sobchak and headquarters Dmitry Gudkov in past municipal elections

-The PR campaign of the cyc is ineffective. The fact that the state allocated some money of taxpayers, and political technologists earned money on this, selling interesting technology and some kind of garbage-this is complete nonsense. She will not encourage to come to vote. What encourages people to come is an understanding why this is important. But our state is engaged in the creation of beautiful things.

Of course, they copied this method of agitation, for example, in applications and social networks, with opposition. But the difference is that the people who create this with the opposition, in Sobchak, Navalny, Katz, and Gudkov, are ideological people. Why does everyone say that the Kremlin needs a turnout? Yes, it is needed, but not the opposition are waiting in the areas, but their people. And their people do not go to the polls, they do not believe that something will change. Understand that technology is just a machine. You may have a bulldozer, moped, tank. But they will not go without gasoline. And people in politics are like gasoline. You can come up with a hundred most creative strategies, but the car will not go without gasoline.

As for advertising through applications, newsletters from banks - hand washes his hand. When advertising is issued by the organization or corporation controlled by the state, it is clear that in some way they solve it to each other. On a monetary basis, barter, or on the basis of mutual services. But this does not characterize people in Cyc as political strategists and this process as an election.

Tatyana Vasilchuk , "New", Anastasia Kuts - especially for "New"