Medvedev podcasts to the masses

Carl Schreck, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: October 09. 2008 12:13AM UAE / October 8. 2008 8:13PM GMT

MOSCOW // Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian president, clearly relishes opportunities to portray himself as a modern, forward-thinking leader – particularly when it comes to the internet.

He has expressed a familiarity with a peculiar jargon that pervades the Russian-language internet and has said he begins every day scanning the web for domestic and international news.

Now Mr Medvedev, like many prominent Russian politicians and businessmen, has taken to addressing the public via the internet, launching a so-called “video blog” on the Kremlin website, where Mr Medvedev will address the Russian public in podcasts.

Mr Medvedev’s inaugural podcast was posted on the Kremlin’s website on Tuesday, before his planned address yesterday to the World Policy Conference in Evian, France.

“Greetings, dear friends,” an earnest-looking Mr Medvedev told viewers in the 150-second video. “For the first time I am using this form of communication, an address via my own site, and I would like to talk about several critical and urgent issues that the world is currently facing.”

Mr Medvedev proceeds to mention the necessity for new global security arrangements following “events in Iraq, Kosovo, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and many other regions of conflict”, as well as call for “joint and immediate actions” to tackle the global financial crisis.

The short video was even shorter on policy details. But the launch of the podcast section did help further cement Mr Medvedev’s reputation as the country’s most prominent internet buff.

During his eight years in office, Vladimir Putin, Mr Medvedev’s mentor and predecessor and the current prime minister, made televised question-and-answer sessions with citizens nationwide a signature annual event of his presidency. Now, it appears Mr Medvedev wants to make the podcast his trademark way of communicating with the country, said Alexander Plyushev, who hosts a talk show about the internet on Ekho Moskvy, a Russian radio station.

“Every leader has his own thing,” Mr Plyushev said. “Medvedev has tried to make the internet his thing.”

Indeed, in an interview with the Financial Times just two weeks after he was elected president in March, Mr Medvedev said he begins each day browsing news on the sites of Russian state television and prominent Russian and foreign media outlets.
He told the newspaper he not only read the sites of servile state media, but also those that “staunchly oppose authorities”, according to a transcript of the interview posted on the Kremlin’s website.

With state-run media firmly under the Kremlin’s control, the Russian blogosphere has become one of the country’s most vibrant forums for political discussion. Several Russian parliamentarians and billionaire businessmen regularly update their own blogs, a majority of which are hosted at livejournal.com.

Addressing an internet conference in March 2007, Mr Medvedev, then the Russian first deputy prime minister, described himself as “quite an active internet user."

“I was even before entering public service, when the internet was still something exotic,” he told the conference. “I think that anyone who wants to be a part of modern life simply has to know this technology and use it actively.”

Mr Plyushev said many of Mr Medvedev’s attempts to display his internet savvy are largely for show.

During the March 2007 internet conference, Mr Medvedev offered tempered support for FidoNet, a largely outdated computer network that still enjoys popularity among Russian enthusiasts.

“It was clear that he didn’t really know anything about FidoNet,” Mr Plyushev said.
Mr Medvedev also indicated he was familiar with “Olbanian”, a bastardised form of Russian widely used on the Russian-language internet, or RuNet.

Mr Medvedev is not the first world leader to post podcasts on his web site. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, began doing so in June 2006.

A Kremlin spokesman said he was unsure how regularly podcasts from Mr Medvedev would be posted, given the Russian president’s busy schedule.

He did say, however, the Kremlin planned to open the videos to comments from visitors.

Mr Plyushev said such a move would be fraught with dangers if no one were to filter the comments – though it is unlikely the Kremlin would allow unfettered comments.

“This isn’t about a crackdown on free speech,” Mr Plyushev said. “It’s just that there are a lot of hooligans out there who would be interested in targeting the site and making trouble.”

On a morning radio show he hosts, Mr Plyushev called on bloggers to post comments about Mr Medvedev’s podcast on his co-host’s blog, which he then promised to forward to the Kremlin press service.

The first comment came from a blogger called Izengrimm, who posted a coarse Olbanian phrase to boast about commenting first.

cschreck@thenational.ae