Obama was not the first
There is a lot of conversation going on about Obama’s internet strategies. Even though his team seems to be pretty savvy on the technological side, there are still calls to use more information technology to further government transparency and direct communication. In an earlier post I have already mentioned change.gov and the intent of Obama’s administration to build on the online momentum they created during the election in order to maintain direct communication with the public. People seem to be excited about the move and about the innovation (not as much technological as political) associated with it.
Would you be surprised to discover that Obama was not the first to use that approach? I don’t mean the campaign and the massive online donation, but the direct communication between the president and the masses using the internet. Well, it seems like Russians were there first. Surprising isn’t it?
Not to suggest that Obama’s administration is copying the Russian strategy, but the germ of the idea emerged in the RuNet in the beginning of October (also RU1, RU2, and there is much more out there). I don’t think it ever made it to the Western media, but I find this rather fascinating.
I learned about it thanks to Grisha (RU) who puzzled me with a riddle about who was the author of the following quote:
Freedom of speech should be assured through technological innovation. Experience demonstrates that it is useless trying to convince the government officials to “leave the mass media alone”. We need not to convince, but to more actively develop the free spheres of the internet and the digital television. No government official can interfere with discussions in the internet or censor thousands of channels at once.”
(I really apologize for the quality of my translation :)
Apparently, this quote belongs to Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russian Federation (RU1, RU2, and there is more). It went mostly unnoticed by the Western media and I think it really dissonances with the image of Russia as a place where most of the mass media are virtually under the government control. I was also really surprised and it prompted me to look more into it.
Medvedev turned out to be a fan of information technology and the internet. The Russian version of an entry about him on Wikipedia actually mentions this and through sources who are more immersed in Russian media and politics than me, I learned that he is actually reading blogs and answers his emails personally (not through his aids). Quite fascinating, isn’t it?
His presidential website, which I have never visited before, turned out to be rather interesting . It has both Russian and English versions and both are quite elaborate. It has a lot of information about the constitution, the government structures, news about the president and his travels, as well as related media travels, and much more including a dedicated website for school-age children (RU). It has a database of his speeches and even a video blog, where Medvedev explains “behind the scenes” of the government work (you can embed the videos or get their complete transcripts). From a quick glance over the two versions of the website I couldn’t notice starring differences.
Although the fact of Russian president utilizing the internet in such an innovative way is both interesting and surprising, the comparison to the platform offered by Obama during his campaign, is slightly artificial. The platform Obama offered during his campaign was highly interactive and included many of the social elements that made it so successful. Medvedev’s website is more of a one way communication. You have no option of leaving comments or feeding the administration back. It is more of the propaganda oriented vehicle that allows the president to bypass mainstream media, which I think downplays a lot of the strengths it could have for transparency and accountability.
Unfortunately, change.gov is closer to Medvedev’s model. Although there are feedback channels on the website that allow submitting ideas, job applications, etc., there is no space to have a discussion or even to comment on the blog posts. I do hope this will change and more of an open and interactive approach will be applied once the new government is in place. I hope it will be similar to what Obama had on his election website. But this is not the main point of this post.
This encounter with Medvedev’s website further pushed my thinking about the potential of personal perceptions and attitudes of policymakers to influence the actual outcomes. Grisha and I had a short email exchange raising the point about the difference in technology-related rhetoric of Putin and Medvedev. It seems that it is not only the rhetoric, but also practice is now becoming evident. It will be definitely interesting to watch how two technologically savvy and technologically enthusiastic presidents are going to utilize the cyberspace for their, probably different, purposes and interests.
What do you think?
Amazingly, this is not limited to politicians and presidents(so called “sophisticated people”). Even the terrorists use internet to publicize themselves or you can call that a campaign too although it is of a different sort. Like you often hear comments on television that someone has uploaded kidnapping, murder and grotesque pictures of someone and even has a video uploaded on Youtube. And you also hear some terrorist trying to convey the message through Internet. I’ve never explored this area much but I’ve heard that they have proper website that are not only updated with their latest activities but also people can actually contact them. So I guess Obama is actually not the first and nor is Medvedev… What do you think?
I think there are some important differences between terrorists and government officials when it comes to the use of media. I am not surprised to see that the terrorist organizations are pretty innovative with their media use. They have very little strings attached as to what they can release into the “air” and how. At the same time, government officials are bound to so many regulations and accountability rules, that it is much harder for them to be innovative. For example, I’ve been reading recently that Obama is going to be forced now to give up using his Blackberry and personal email. The first is because it is not secure, the second is because all his communication as a president has to be documented. The terrorists may have to care about the security issues, but not about the public scrutiny. So, I think in this sense, comparing the way governments use technology and the way terrorists do that is comparing apples to oranges. Would you disagree?