Russian Internet Expert Says Online Campaigning Ineffective

Text of report by heavyweight centrist Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 3 December

[Interview with blog service director Anton Nosik by Aleksandr Deryabin; date and place not given: "Anton Nosik: 'Web Audiences Not Responsive to Campaigning'"]

Internet expert Anton Nosik Mediaguideru Sep

Internet expert Anton Nosik (Mediaguide.ru, 27 Sep 07)

Most parties took a passive approach to the recent election campaign, keeping live communication with the electorate to a minimum and cutting back as much as possible on distributing or putting up pamphlets. And it was only on the Internet, on the blogs and forums, that the political battles unfolded very actively: Web users argued with each other until their virtual voices were hoarse, campaigning as much as they could for their respective parties. Well- known expert on Internet communication Anton Nosik tells Nezavisimaya Gazeta whether these clashes on the World Wide Web brought the slightest gain to the politicians.

[Deryabin] Anton Borisovich, how effective is political campaigning on the Internet?

[Nosik] Our public life is arranged in such a way that campaigning on the Internet is extremely ineffective. Web audiences do not march in step, are not responsive to political campaigning, and are not prepared to take any kind of action in response to online appeals. Attempts to campaign over the Internet are generally in vain. The funny thing is that in recent times half of the elections to the lower house of parliament (i.e., the single-seat constituencies) and 100 per cent of elections to the upper house have been abolished, and yet there has been no “cull” of political strategists or PR experts. There is plenty of demand for pretexts to develop a budget, so online campaigning is conducted very actively. But no one dreams of taking it seriously, not even those who spend money on it.

[Deryabin] So all of the strategies that the parties used in the elections – boosting website ratings, circulating posts on LJ -do nothing to attract supporters?

[Nosik] That is absolutely right. I cannot imagine a single Live Journal user who would say: “Gee, these people really know how to stack Yandex [Russian Internet search portal] – I should vote for them.” Since 1999, when all of the major players in the electoral process started having their own websites, I have not seen a single instance where these sites had any influence on the outcome of the elections. This activity seems pointless to me, but I understand there is an eternal need to develop a budget, so this work will continue.

[Deryabin] What is the Central Electoral Commission’s [CEC] stance on Internet campaigning?

[Nosik] The CEC said at a briefing that it was going to crack down on Internet campaigning, except in cases where it is duly financed out of campaign funds. But even the members of the CEC themselves could not delineate the boundary beyond which they would be prepared to view a private individual’s opinion on one candidate or another, expressed in the form of private notes, as political campaigning. The CEC was unable to explain whether this crackdown would apply to criticism of the authorities; after all, incumbent authorities often run for office. [Moscow] Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, for example, heads the Moscow candidate list [of United Russia] – does that mean the CEC would be prepared to view material on Moscow traffic jams as campaigning? So far I have heard that Ilya Yashin (Yabloko’s youth wing) was planning to file a petition with the CEC against the [pro-Putin] zaputina.ru website. As a form of campaigning in favour of the heads of one of the party lists, the site should be financed out of the party’s budget – i.e., this kind of campaigning cannot be conducted outside the legally prescribed limits. I do not know what ever happened with this petition.

[Deryabin] Were there any noteworthy campaigns on the Internet during these elections?

[Nosik] The thing is, you see, the Internet is an environment oriented towards thinking people. Generally speaking it is very difficult to imagine any intelligible information that would be capable of changing public opinion in favour of Putin, or Nemtsov, or Kasparov. The scope to change voters’ perceptions of the candidates is limited to the genre of political dirt, because that is the only genre where it is possible to say anything new about a candidate that might alter people’s attitudes towards him. But this genre is not trusted by thinking people, and each new bit of dirt that gets posted on a website reduces people’s trust in that site, not in the target of the dirt. The noteworthy thing this time around was the mass campaign aimed at discrediting SPS [Union of Right- Wing Forces] through various provocations such as telephone calls and virus-infected websites. The discussions on my journal suggest that these provocations against SPS, along with the confiscation of their campaign materials, the use of force, and the use of administrative resources against them in the regions, were the only argument if favour of voting for the party. The fact that they were being “silenced” demonstrated to some Internet users that the right wing was feared and taken seriously, and that the people currently holding power in the country care whether SPS gets 1-2 per cent of the vote. This example of how strangely Internet campaigning works was the best thing that happened in these elections.

Anton Borisovich Nosik heads the blogging service of an Internet company.

Originally published by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, in Russian 3 Dec 07.

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