'The three heroes': more than a third of social media mentions are related to United Russia, CPRF, and the New People party
15.09.2021
This is the report on the monitoring of social networks during the 10th and 11th weeks (August 23 to September 5) of the election campaign pertinent to the elections of deputies to the Russian State Duma, scheduled for September 19, 2021.
Elections can be considered free only if conditions have been created for a meaningful public political discussion in which all election participants have an equal scope of rights. Such a discussion can take place in the media, in the form of traditional agitation of candidates, as well as on social networks.
Unfortunately, as the weekly monitoring1 of the federal TV channels shows, the information given by traditional media turns to be strictly censored, leaving little space for the TV audience to generate a knowledgeable opinion about candidates and parties. Representatives of TV channels often justify the misbalance in the coverage of other candidates (preferring, thus, the candidates of the 'party of power') by the fact that the other parties do not produce quality news stories.
In order to understand how much the reality of TV channels differs from the reality of the freer space related to social networks, as well as to see how much the citizens are interested in the activities of various political parties, the 'Golos' Movement launched monitoring.
10th and 11th weeks of the campaign: conclusions
- In the 10th and 11th weeks of the election campaign (August 23 to September 5), United Russia sharply broke away from the other parties in terms of mention rates and potential total audience coverage thanks to the pre-election and campaigning congress attended by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The rest of the parties were forced to react to the event, which, by the way, contained promises of new pay-outs. As a result, the remaining parties increased even further the number of mentions of the 'party of power,' involving ordinary users in this discussion. Hence, during the analyzed period, United Russia was ahead of its main competitors from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) by 2-2.5 times in terms of mentions and by 5 times in terms of a potential audience.
- Nevertheless, the number of reactions to posts with references to the two parties (United Russia and CPRF) shows similar indicators. Despite the increase in the mention of United Russia, the lines in graphs2 of both parties for this very indicator are almost parallel.
- New People, by all indicators, is confidently in the top three, displacing the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. In contrast, Just Russia – For Truth looks very weak in terms of its potential audience and the number of reactions to its mentions, ranking 10th and 8th, respectively.
- The Party of Growth still has the best indicators in terms of reactions to a particular post, whereas in terms of the total number of reactions, it is the 5th. Its campaign is resonating quite well on social media. The main constraint for the party is the limited channel for delivering its main messages. In terms of the number of mentions, the party remains 11th.
- In general, only three parties are really noticeable on social networks: United Russia, CPRF, and New People, which altogether account for more than 31% of mentions on social networks in the 11th week of the campaign.
Mentions of political parties on social media
In the period from August 23 to September 5, two peaks of mentions of United Russia and New People are clearly visible on social networks. According to this indicator, the latter rated 2nd, having displaced CPRF. All the other parties have remained at their previous level. In fact, only the first four parties (the three above-mentioned ones joined by the LDPR) are clearly distinguishable.
The peak of United Russia in the 10th week is attributable to the congress of the party, at which its program was adopted. The Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the congress, which actually was nothing but a campaign event. He announced lump sum pay-outs to large groups of voters. This message had been actively promoted on social networks. For example, in the pre-moderated communities of Odnoklassniki3, 2055 identical posts4 had been published. The messages had stated that 10k roubles (approx. 116,50 Euro - REM) had been promised to pensioners and military personnel (as 'material aid'). However, in addition to such a purposeful promotion, the increase in the mentions of the party was also due to the fact that other parties had to actively respond to the event, this way, involving more ordinary users of social networks to take part in the discussion. Yet it cannot be said that all these party mentions were positive. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of negative messages, but even at a glance, one can clearly see a large proportion of posts perceiving the news as an attempt to bribe voters and as a sign of uncertainty of the 'party of power'/Kremlin in relation to the election results.
The 'influence' of the congress persisted on social networks until August 30-31. Later the number of mentions of United Russia returned to the standard framework, namely, to 3-4k posts a day. As a result, during the analyzed period, United Russia was 2-2.5 times ahead of its main competitors from CPRF.
The peak related to New People in the 11th week is largely due to the massive placement on social networks of several types of identical posts, which ultimately accounted for the increase in the number of party mentions as compared to its usual indicators. Such posts looked like typical advertising and often contained New People's position on the election ballot or stated mobilizing slogans.
Total audience of posts mentioning parties
Indicators of the total potential audience of posts in the 10th and 11th weeks also increased in favour (expectedly) of United Russia. In the 10th week, the gap in this indicator between the 'party of power' and CPRF was almost five times.
Once again, the main peak falls on August 24. Yet, that day 86% of the potential audience of the posts accounted for only 7.5% of messages with a potential audience of more than 100k users each. This number was almost entirely generated by posts in pre-moderated communities/accounts owned by the media.
Noteworthy is the fact that the almost skyrocketing growth in the number of mentions of New People on social networks did not lead to a similar increase in the potential audience. It is clear that according to this indicator, the party remains stable and even slightly lower in terms of performance if we compare the 11th week with the 10th.
It is also important to note that in the 11th week, the Party of Growth got into the top 4 parties by this very indicator. It is largely due to individual posts from topic starters with a large number of subscribers. For example, on August 30-31, out of 38.6 million users of the potential audience, 24.6 million was related to 2 posts only: an election video5 with clowns in the "Cinema ► Movies and TV Series 2021" community on VKontakte6 and another video7 on the actress's Anastasia Samburskaya's Instagram page.
In general, the indicators of the potentially reached audience of posts mentioning various parties of the 11th week form a truly amazing rating of all the parties: the Liberal Democratic Party is on the 5th place, whereas Just Russia – For Truth is on the 10th, giving way to the Party of Pensioners, Rodina/Fatherland, the Russian Party of Freedom and Justice, and Yabloko.
Engagement rates for posts mentioning political parties
In terms of engagement (that is, the sum of different reactions to posts mentioning parties), the top three look the same as the other two ratings. First goes United Russia, then CPRF, and then New People. A noticeable difference, which catches the eye, is a tiny gap between the two main competitors, United Russia and the CPRF. In general, the lines of these two parties run almost parallel on the graph8. The line of New People, in turn, is going up sharply, approaching the two leading parties.
LDPR is the 4th. The Party of Growth is in 5th place, although it occupies only 11th place among 14 parties in terms of the number of mentions. It means that the party retains one of the best indicators in terms of the number of user reactions to a single post mentioning it. The campaign of the party looks like the one that evokes the greatest user response. The only limitation for converting this response into real votes will be the limited channel for the dissemination of the main party messages.
The 6th and 7th places, respectively, are occupied by the Russian Party of Freedom and Justice and Rodina/Fatherland. Just Russia – For Truth turns out to be only the 8th.
Methodology
The systems for automatic monitoring of social networks/mass media (Scan Interfax and Brand Analytics) were used to conduct the research. Monitoring was carried out by the names of parties. In some cases, abbreviated or informal party names were also included (CPRF, SRs, 'yedinorossy', etc.).
Reports are downloaded daily at 9:00 am. Therefore, the weekly monitoring includes posts published on social networks from 9:00 am on Monday of one week to 9:00 am on Monday of the following week.
Reports for all parties are regularly spot-checked to identify posts that were monitored by mistake. Since the reports of the parties 'Greens', New People, Rodina/Fatherland, and Yabloko initially contained a large number of erroneous posts, they underwent a full check throughout the entire monitoring period (up to the 8th week) in order to filter out unnecessary posts. For New People, Rodina/Fatherland, and Yabloko, the full check stopped only in the 9th week, when, thanks to fine-tuning of the algorithms, it was possible to reduce the unwanted information to an acceptable level that did not affect the correct determination of the position of parties in relation to the other election participants. Currently, a full check of reports is retained for posts mentioning 'Greens'.
Monitoring has been carried out from July 20. Data collection is carried out on social networks (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter), blogs, forums, map services, public channels, and Telegram chats.
The original report may be found here (RU).
1 https://www.golosinfo.org/reports
2 https://www.golosinfo.org/articles/145466
3 A popular Russian social network
6 A popular Russian social media network
