Social Media’s Role, Opportunities and Limitations in Building a Dialogue between the Population and the Authorities: The Russian Practice

Abstract

In this paper, we rely on research of specific features of social media’s Internet audience conducted by VCIOM, BrandAnalytics, RBC and other expert and informational communities and consider the social media’s role, opportunities and limitations in building a dialogue between the population and authorities’ representatives. To this end, we assess the level of activity and productivity of authorities representatives’ presence and the existence of feedback from the public on social media like VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook and Instagram. The paper’s theoretical and methodology foundation is the secondary analysis of domestic and Western publications studying specific features of social media as a platform for civil journalism of a new type. Also, we apply comparative analysis of sociological research methods of socio-digital activity. Officials’ reliance on opinion polls that are inefficient (unlike content analysis) in terms of monitoring the socio-digital activity leads to their underestimating the popularity level of social media (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki) “loved by the people” and preferring foreign ones (Facebook and Instagram) or offline communications. This causes officials’ insufficiently quick reaction to acute problems and public needs and, consequently, distribution of fake information (especially under crisis and panic conditions). Medialogy automated mass media monitoring (content-based) system proved to be a good tool of political forecasting to neutralize these phenomena. In this paper, we research the prospects of its application and make a conclusion on the need of its broader deployment in the practice of public opinion monitoring by regional and municipal authorities.