Kremlin no longer hides its spinning strategy

This week the Russian government acknowledged that the production of Internet spin is an activity they are very keen to pursue. A new project call from the Ministry of Communications –  posted on the government’s official site for tenders – invites proposals for "researching the basic ways of promoting state interests with the help of specialized social networks". The details of the call stipulate that the winner should be able to identify "specialized social networks", create a database of them, develop a system for monitoring them, and come up with a strategy for "promoting state interests" on them.

As far as I can judge, this is the first time that the Russian government has publicly acknowledged that it wants to manipulate the Web with its own propaganda (by creating what I call the "spinternet"). It’s also quite intriguing how the government has turned to crowdsourcing in order to aggregate the wisdom of the crowds! Not surprisingly, the government says that they only want to do this to harvest new and creative ideas from Internet  users – even though the very wording of the call makes it plain they want to know how these ideas originate and spread.

The reasons for this project are manifold. First, the government realized that even though they have established tight control over the editorial departments of the mainstream media, they are absolutely powerless to control the information flows in the blogosphere. Most often, this is a good thing: Medvedev (and Kremlin as a whole) are very popular among Internet users, so it’s often a source of extra praise. Sometimes, however, bloggers do uncover and amplify stories that the Kremlin is uncomfortable with – and they logically would prefer to have a better understanding of where they need to intervene to prevent these stories from gaining a wider audience. Mapping connections between different parts of the blogosphere and understanding how they influence one another – the subject of the announced tender – would be crucial to this effort.

Second, the government is very well-aware that opinions of active Internet users are quite representative of the middle class in Russia believes in. Studying and learning how to shape them is crucial to maintaining power in the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the outcomes of the current tender would be the proliferation of advanced systems for sentiment analysis: the Kremlin would be all too happy to get access to real-time polling base. The ugly truth about today’s Kremlin is that it has no ideological base; the ambiguity over who’s really in charge makes it even harder to discern what kind of ideas and beliefs Krelmin should be imposing on the masses. Studying the blogosphere could definitely help here.

Third, involving the public into decision-making would also allow to blame them for the failed policies. Realistically speaking, no one in Kremlin would let bloggers anywhere near influencing Russia’s foreign policy; they would be allowed to give input on minor issues – or on issues that are bound to fail, so Kremlin wouldn’t risk anything. It’s a win-win for Kremlin: some ideas may prove to be good and working; whatever fails could be blamed on Kremlin’s newly acquired penchant for innovation and experimentation.