Experts analyzed Internet communications of members of the Federation Council

Consulting group “Polylog” following a study of the accounts of State Duma deputies on social media (see “Kommersant” dated August 18) conducted a similar analysis of the senators’ “pages”. According to the data obtained, members of the Federation Council (FC) are much less active online, since they do not directly depend on their voters. However, among them there are also significant influencers – for example, former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, journalist Alexei Pushkov and speaker of the upper house Valentina Matvienko.

Polylog examined 230 senators’ accounts in five popular domestic social media – VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Telegram, Zen and RuTube. The total audience of senatorial “pages” is 773.7 thousand people, or 0.53% of the Russian population. The most popular platform is Telegram – 122 members of the Federation Council are registered there, and 38% of the entire audience of the upper chamber is subscribed to their channels. On VKontakte, 86 senators (56.6% of the audience) have accounts, on Odnoklassniki – 18 (4.7%), on Zen and RuTube – only three each (0.07% and 0.66%, respectively) ).

On average, senators maintain 1.2 accounts. Moreover, 12 of them are presented simultaneously on three sites, 59 – on two. However, in general, the network activity of members of the upper house is much lower than that of representatives of the lower house. We would like to remind you that earlier Polylog found that State Duma deputies had an average of 2.2 accounts (1 thousand “pages” for 395 people), the total audience of which reached 8.3 million users.

The leaders in the number of active accounts among senators were First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy Ivan Abramov (represented on all platforms) and member of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building Artem Sheikin (on four). At the same time, 34 out of 178 senators (19%) do not have their own “pages” at all.

The leader in the number of followers is the newly appointed senator from the Zaporozhye region, former Deputy Prime Minister, ex-head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin. 140.4 thousand people are subscribed to his accounts on Telegram and VKontakte. Next comes member of the constitutional committee and head of the commission on information policy and interaction with the media, journalist Alexey Pushkov with 51.1 thousand. Mr. Pushkov is the most active senator in RuTube, his channel is watched by 5.1 thousand viewers. Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko took an honorary “bronze” – her accounts are followed by a total of 38 thousand people. At the same time, she is “the most visible influencer” in the upper house, the authors of the study state: “Low publication activity makes every post a subject of discussion in the media.”

Next in descending order are the first vice-speaker of the Federation Council Andrei Turchak (31.7 thousand subscribers), head of the constitutional committee Andrei Klishas (28.5 thousand), deputy chairman of the committee on budget and financial markets, ex-governor of the Ryazan region Nikolai Lyubimov (24 ,4 thousand), Ivan Abramov (23.2 thousand), member of the International Affairs Committee, ex-head of Kabardino-Balkaria Arsen Kanokov (21.8 thousand), member of the budget committee, former Belgorod governor Evgeny Savchenko (21, 2 thousand) and member of the Committee on Science, Education and Culture Airat Gibatdinov (20 thousand).

According to Polylog, the older the senators, the less represented they are in social media. Thus, in the “younger” age group (35–55 years) 13% of Federation Council members do without “pages”, in the “middle” (55–65 years old) – 21%, and in the “older” (65+) – already 26 %. It is curious, however, that younger senators use Odnoklassniki more actively, and not vice versa. The authors of the study explain this by the quality of media management on the part of “youth” and adherence to the principle of “totality” of information campaigns.

Another interesting feature that the authors of the study discovered is related to the greater activity of senators representing regional parliaments. Thus, delegates from legislative assemblies maintain 125 “pages,” while representatives of governors maintain only 105. And every fourth (27%) member of the Federation Council who entered the upper house from the executive branch is not represented at all on social media. In the group of delegates from the legislative branch there are only 11% of them.

“Senators to a lesser extent (than State Duma deputies.— “Kommersant”) solve their media problems, since their position is more connected with elite agreements than with activity on social networks,” political consultant Dmitry Elovsky comments on the results of the study. “Although the same members of the upper house from legislative assemblies are in any case forced to participate in elections in order to be elected deputies and go to the Federation Council. They need a certain level of media activity, and, by the way, they demonstrate this quite often. At the same time, senators delegated by the executive branch are less focused on media activity.”

“Polylogue” also compiled a rating of the media activity of the Federation Council committees based on an integral analysis of the “pages” of the senators who are on them. The leader was the constitutional committee, the total audience of whose members amounted to 144.9 thousand people (4 of the 19 senators of the committee do not maintain social networks). Next was the Committee on Science, Education and Culture, the activity of whose members on social networks is followed by 77.6 thousand people (1 out of 14 without social networks). Finally, the Committee on Defense and Security took bronze, the total number of subscribers of which was 71 thousand people (5 out of 18 do not have accounts).

Andrey Prah