President and his YouTube

The fifteenth large presidential press conference as a monument to the genre

The press conference has been going on for three hours, in addition to the federal television channels, several venues on YouTube are broadcast. If we evaluate how viewers react to the traditional performance of the president, then the Internet immediately demonstrates all the necessary numbers. The most popular online change in observation of how Vladimir Putin communicates with reporters is the YouTube channel of Russia 24. 65 thousand people watch the video at the same time, this is a lot, hundreds of comments flash in the right side of the screen, so it is impossible to read them. 10 thousand spectators put a like to the presidential show, 45 thousand - Diezlaik. The format that has existed for almost two decades, many Russian citizens now cause irritation.

We can say that the numbers in YouTube are not indicative, a young skeptical electorate sits in it, and even persons who, due to age, cannot vote in the elections. It is better to watch the president on the TV, because there is still stability and nothing changes. But by the end of 2019, it was YouTube - the main media platform of the country, its audience competes with the audience of Channel One and should exceed the latter in the coming months. This means that if in the Kremlin they still want to rule the country with the help of media signals and media shows, they need to either change themselves or try to forbid YouTube. The moment when they could change was in the past, so in the interests of stability it will be necessary to ban the dizlaiks to the president along with the American video hosting that makes it possible.

All legal resources in order to put the Runet under control, there is already in power: they were brought up just the day before. It is enough to declare, for example, the authors of political programs on YouTube by foreign agents and offer everyone who does not want such a fate to move to the Russian analogue of the service - one of them two weeks ago presented Mail.ru. On December 19, 2019, we observed a unique historical moment: the president’s power was already recognized as a state apparatus as an unconditional one, but a citizen can still publicly express his attitude towards her by pressing a button on the Internet. The logic of power requires that such buttons no longer be.

So the great era ends when television authoritarianism was combined in the country with digital freedom of speech: only one could survive these two systems.

However, President Putin calls not to be afraid of anyone: the sovereign Internet, according to him, does not deny the Internet at all. Simply, we add from ourselves, the state will repair what is not broken. And how it works, everyone has already seen on the example of Telegram blocking: despite the state’s attempts to improve Runet, it still works, only slower and with interruptions.

Be that as it may, the topic of turning freedoms on the Internet may be one of the most sensitive for Russian society this year. This is evidenced, for example, the story published by the IT expert Mikhail Klimarev in the Zelecom Telegram channel: on December 19, the day of the press conference, large-scale exercises were assigned to use the equipment of the “sovereign Runet”, but then they were postponed in a separate order four days later. In fact, if the broadcast of the president’s conversation with journalists as a result of “exercises” would be inaccessible to some citizens, it would have been awkward. All authoritarian regimes in the world are faced with this problem: the Internet interferes with them, but at the same time it is very necessary in order to dictate the “general line” to citizens.

The presentation of the general line this time was almost without surprises. Putin said that he was not against changing the constitution in such a way as to remove the word “in a row” from the famous phrase about two presidential terms, so that the head of state certainly changes at least once every 12 years. It seems to be liberalization, but here you can see the sounding of the soil: they say how to improve the Constitution, since we regain the word. Is it not to introduce, for example, the board of the State Council? The casting of ideas by 2024 continues, now with the indirect participation of Putin himself.

The president began not with a traditional boring economy, but with ecology, saying that, although in Russia there are many problems in this area, we successfully solve them, and we will overcome the trash crisis, and we have a lot of environmentally friendly fuel. Analyzing this rhetorical move, you can feel some nostalgia: it came straight from those times when the Kremlin advisers focused on fashion from the west. Greta Tunberg is named the man of the year, Europe is shaking a new ecological movement, and we also do not lag behind, the authorities feel and know this.

The main sensation of the fifteenth large press conference was created by the journalist of Interfax Ksenia Golovanova, who asked the president to comment on what happened to the police, who in the summer detained Ivan Golunov. Cleaning remained in the past, but the system must be improved, and criminal cases against such police officers are already being investigated: so you can summarize the answer of Vladimir Putin. The Investigative Committee immediately stated that the criminal case would be investigated: they started yesterday, December 18.

Our specialist Ilya Azar, who sat in the hall for 4 hours with a sign “New Gazeta. Freedom to all the political prisoners ”did not give words. Not time for acute questions, when such a difficult time in the country, you yourself understand.